Coordinating reform requires a leader, and leaders exploit that necessity

Evidence

The role of the political leader in the basic model is highly stylized. A leader is needed to promote the reform and to pass it (unless it is blocked). However, the leader can take advantage of his position to expropriate. Obviously, if the citizens could prompt reforms without a leader, expropriation would not occur, but we emphasize the realistic idea that a centralized entity is needed to coordinate the reform policy. — Philippe Aghion, Alberto Alesina, and Francesco Trebbi, Endogenous Political Institutions, 44

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the classical principal-agent problem of why rulers granted coordinating power cannot be bound without losing the capacity to govern.
• DEEPTHINKING: The tension between needing concentrated authority to enact Pareto improvements and that same authority enabling expropriation is a durable institutional dilemma, not a mere modeling convenience.