Sherif Heikal (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies; Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Institute of African Studies) has posted Constitutional Trust and its Breakdown: A Fiduciary Analysis of Executive Power in South Korea and the Arab Spring States on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This article investigates executive crisis accountability through the analysis of South Korea's presidential system together with selected Arab Spring states. This article uses Legalist Constitutionalism and Fiduciary Constitutionalism as two interpretive paradigms to understand executive power dynamics and institutional design and public trust relationships. The Legalist Constitutionalism framework establishes the base for statutory authority and procedural legitimacy, yet its limitations become apparent when public trust declines even with strict legal adherence.
In contrast, Fiduciary Constitutionalism offers a normative-legal framework that conceptualizes executive power as a delegated trust grounded in the duties of loyalty, care, and institutional responsibility. Rather than rejecting the legalist approach, the fiduciary model complements and expands it by integrating ethical constraints and public accountability mechanisms that are often absent in purely procedural systems. Through a comparative analysis of South Korea, Egypt, and Yemen, the article demonstrates that fiduciary accountability requires enforceable constitutional structures supported by the principles of popular sovereignty, separation of powers, judicial independence, and legislative oversight. South Korea’s post-1987 framework illustrates a successful integration of fiduciary logic into constitutional design, enabling institutional responses to executive overreach through impeachment and judicial review. By contrast, the Arab Spring states reveal the failure of fiduciary enforcement where legal provisions exist without operational mechanisms, resulting in systemic breakdowns and extra-constitutional regime changes. This article concludes that effective constitutional accountability in presidential systems depends on embedding fiduciary reasoning within legal frameworks, ensuring that the exercise of public power remains both procedurally lawful and ethically legitimate.