Abstract
The last two decades have seen a revival in work that takes the role of individual leaders and elites seriously. This article surveys new research that explores how biographical factors influence their behavior. We call this literature the personal biography approach to political leadership. Our survey first lays out four mechanisms through which biographical characteristics might affect leader behavior. We then discuss the main findings, grouping them according to socializing experiences (e.g., education, military service, and prior occupation) and ascriptive traits (e.g., gender, race, and ethnicity). We also consider the methodological problems, especially endogeneity and selection effects, that pose challenges to this style of research. We conclude with an assessment of gaps in the literature and provide suggestions for future work in the biographical vein.
Highlights
The conventional wisdom about the importance of individual leaders for politics has changed remarkably over time
Which elements of leader biography matter, and how are they connected to political outcomes? For the sake of parsimony, we group the various elements of personal biography into two core categories, socializing experiences and ascriptive characteristics, though the distinction is not airtight
The literature has focused almost exclusively on how military experience shapes leaders’ beliefs, their competencies, and rivals’ perceptions of them in the security realm, but military service has been linked to other kinds of beliefs, including tolerance for social difference, that could be tied to outcomes beyond armed conflict ( Jennings & Markus 1977)
Summary
Elites, biography, education, military, occupation, gender, race, ethnicity
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