Who’s getting the office? Party dominance and elected executives’ career path

Abstract

AbstractI examine the role of party dominance on elected politicians’ career path. Politicians’ career is divided between political and technical or administrative posts. To examine this relationship, I use data from the Mexican states over the period 2000‐2014. The paper exploits the 2008 US financial crisis as a source of exogenous variation in incumbents’ popularity level. Results support theoretical predictions that elected politicians’ profile in states with a dominant party changed more than in competitive states after the financial crisis. I find that after the 2008 US financial crisis, political experience of new elected governors in states with a dominant party decreased by 36 percentage points, on average, compared to states with no dominant party. Results are robust to different measures of political and technical or administrative career path.