Abstract
We examine whether economic and military competence of political leaders affect their duration in office. We introduce leader heterogeneity in the selectorate theory of Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) and derive the hypothesis that in the presence of a revolutionary threat, economic competence is negatively related to political survival, but that the effect is moderated by the size of the winning coalition. As military and economic competence are negatively correlated, the opposite holds for military competence. We present empirical estimates using proxies for military and economic competence in a parametric Weibull duration model that support our theoretical predictions.
Highlights
Even though almost all political leaders enter office with the aim of maximizing tenure, we observe wide variety in actual tenure throughout the world
We introduce leader heterogeneity in the selectorate theory of Bueno de Mesquita et al (2003) and derive the hypothesis that in the presence of a revolutionary threat, economic competence is negatively related to political survival, but that the effect is moderated by the size of the winning coalition
Hypothesis 1 In the presence of a revolutionary threat, an increase in economic competence reduces the probability of political survival, but the magnitude of the effect depends on the size of the winning coalition
Summary
Even though almost all political leaders enter office with the aim of maximizing tenure, we observe wide variety in actual tenure throughout the world. We examine how the competence levels of political leaders with respect to welfare maximization and repression influence their political survival We study this relation both theoretically and empirically. By introducing leader heterogeneity into the selectorate theory, we bridge the gap between the empirical literature emphasizing the relevance of leader characteristics for economic and political outcomes, and the theoretical framework offered by the selectorate theory to study leader survival Connecting these strands of the literature teaches us that political regimes facing the threat of revolution do select leaders of low economic competence (Besley and Reynal-Querol 2011), but the impact of competent leaders is constrained as office duration is likely to be short.
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