Who's Getting the Office? Autocracy and Elected Politicianss Career Path: Evidence from the Mexican States

Abstract

This paper examines how party dominance affects elected politicians’ quality, measured by their career path. Politicians’ career is divided between political and technical or administrative posts. To examine the relationship between party dominance and career path, 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 experience a shift away from political posts after experiencing party turnover due to a sudden loss in popularity. I find that after the 2008 US financial crisis, elected politicians in states with a dominant party had over 25 percentage points less of their career in political posts. Party turnover explains the decrease in political experience. Results are robust to different measures of political and technical or administrative career path.