Democracy, Dictatorship, and Term Limits

Cursus Honorum: Personal Background, Careers and Experience of Political Leaders in Democracy and Dictatorship—New Data and Analyses

“…Several variables from the data set first appeared 2 Arguably, with a notable exception of a cross-national study by Bienen and van de Walle (1991) or several studies of personal characteristics, recruitment and careers of political elites in Western democracies (Eulau & Czudnowski, 1972;Putnam, 1973), the majority of earlier studies generally did not rely on, nor introduce new empirical data about leaders (e.g., Blondel, 1987). 3 It appears that political scientists and economists study similar phenomena in isolation: Dreher et al (2009, p. 171) acknowledged that they collated the list of leaders independently without prior knowledge of the existing Archigos dataset which has long been a standard in political science (Goemans et al, 2009). in Baturo (2014). The Cursus Honorum data set covers 1,501 political leaders in office from the 1960-2010 period, including interim leaders, in all countries (except small island nations), in democratic and nondemocratic regimes.…”

“…Because such studies require more detailed information about leaders' personal background which is not covered by the Archigos, the majority of scholars have to undergo their own significant data-collection efforts pertaining to some aspect of leaders' personal background and traits. As a result, the new wave of leadership studies in political science and economics is extremely data-intensive (e.g., Alexiadou, 2015;Baturo, 2014;Byman & Pollack, 2001;Colgan, 2013;Dreher, Lein, Lamla, & Somogyi, 2009;Hayo & Neumeier, 2014;Horowitz & Stam, 2014;McDermott, 2007). While several new cross-national data sets have emerged that are able to account for various aspects of leaders' background and traits (e.g., Dreher et al, 2009;Ellis, Horowitz & Stam, 2015;Gerring, Oncel, Morrison, & Keefer, 2014;Ludwig, 2002), the majority of leadership studies focus, and provide data on, very specific aspects of leaders' personal background (e.g., Byman & Pollack, 2001;Horowitz & Stam, 2014); many only cover particular geographic regions or political regimes, e.g., only democracies or presidential regimes (e.g., Alexiadou, 2015;Baturo, 2014;Pérez-Liñán, 2009).…”

“…12 Still, many nondemocratic leaders leave office in a regular manner: 10 per cent comply with term limits (Baturo, 2014), 25 per cent resign peacefully, and 3 per cent lose elections. Also, excluding leaders who die in office or are forced into exile or are imprisoned, overall half of former rulers remain in politics while on average 8 per cent turn to business, 10 per cent primarily engage in non-governmental and charitable activities or turn to academic work, and 7 per cent are civil servants, e.g., ambassadors.…”

Democracy, Development, and Career Trajectories of Former Political Leaders

“…Political elites are more likely to accept democracy and depart from power if they are not afraid of redistribution (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2006) or worried about their fate and immunity after leaving office (O'Donnell & Schmitter, 1986;Przeworski, 2015). There is also a growing literature that focuses on the negative consequences of leaving office behind (Baturo, 2014;Escriba-Folch, 2013;Escriba-Folch & Wright, 2015;Goemans, 2008). If leaders are influenced by the expected losses after departure, they may, however, be equally influenced by the expected gains, i.e., turnover in office may be facilitated by the opportunities presented in political afterlife.…”

Dynamics of regime personalization and patron–client networks in Russia, 1999–2014

“…Indeed, the characteristics that many personalist regimes share, i.e., an absence of autonomous institutions or of elite coalitions autonomous from the ruler (Geddes, 1999;Jackson and Rosberg, 1982) and the ruler's permanent -de facto permanent following the 2008 constitutional amendment -tenure (Baturo, 2014;Brooker, 2000;Svolik, 2012) are clearly present in contemporary Russia. It is not entirely clear, however, at what stage in the 1999-2014 period the regime became personalist, if it did.…”