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"Baturo, Alexander"
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Cursus Honorum: Personal Background, Careers and Experience of Political Leaders in Democracy and Dictatorship—New Data and Analyses
Politics in democracy and dictatorship is markedly different; democracy and dictatorship are also associated with distinct policy outcomes. Do political regimes also select different leaders, i.e., do democratic leaders have distinct personal backgrounds to those of their peers in dictatorships, do they tend to hold different prior careers and posts while climbing the “greasy pole” of politics? The aim of this paper is to introduce the new data on leaders’ careers in democracy and dictatorship and compare their personal background, experience in politics, careers and significant posts prior to their tenure, and details about their time in office, inter alia. In general, democratic leaders differ from nondemocratic ones in terms of their educational, social and career background. The paper also finds significant differences among leaders in different nondemocratic regimes, and suggests possible venues for further research.
Journal Article
The politics of presidential term limits
Presidential term limits are one of the most important institutions in presidentialism. They are at the center of contemporary and historical debates and political battles between incumbent presidents seeking additional terms and their political opponents warning against democratic backsliding and the dangers of personalism. Bringing the team of country experts, comparativists, theorists, constitutional lawyers, and policy practitioners together, The Politics of Presidential Term Limits is a book that aims to provide a one-stop source for the comprehensive study of this topic. It includes theory and survey chapters that explain presidential term limits as an idea, constitutional norm, and an institution; country and comparative chapters including historical, intra-regime, and comparative regional studies, chapters that examine the effects of term limits as well as studies from the perspective of on-the-ground international constitutional builders and that ask what difference do term limits make.--Provided by publisher
Book
Understanding state preferences with text as data: Introducing the UN General Debate corpus
Every year at the United Nations (UN), member states deliver statements during the General Debate (GD) discussing major issues in world politics. These speeches provide invaluable information on governments’ perspectives and preferences on a wide range of issues, but have largely been overlooked in the study of international politics. This paper introduces a new dataset consisting of over 7300 country statements from 1970–2014. We demonstrate how the UN GD corpus (UNGDC) can be used as a resource from which country positions on different policy dimensions can be derived using text analytic methods. The article provides applications of these estimates, demonstrating the contribution the UNGDC can make to the study of international politics.
Journal Article
Leaders in the United Nations General Assembly: Revitalization or politicization?
How do leaders address the world in service of international cooperation, and do their messages enhance or detract from the global agenda? Leaders increasingly appear at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), a deliberative forum meant for diplomacy, not politics. At the same time, the UNGA has long undergone revitalization efforts, and leaders’ contributions could potentially ensure more meaningful cooperation. Building on theories of leader communication, we argue that, in contrast to other country representatives, heads of state have more leeway to deviate from the assembly’s priorities; as politicians, they have incentives to discuss their own, more particularistic, topics. Drawing from novel data on leaders’ speeches in the UNGA, we use text analytics to show that leaders tend to depart from the policy agenda of the session. Furthermore, national political leaders speak more plainly, centering speech on themselves and departing from the general conventions of diplomatic debate. This suggests that, while leaders’ attendance potentially generates more publicity and visibility for the UNGA, their contributions may also undermine the general debate. Our findings shed light on the ways in which leaders can politicize mulitlateral cooperation, and we give evidence for the role of individuals in the vitality of international organizations.
Journal Article
When Do Family Ties Matter? The Duration of Female Suffrage and Women's Path to High Political Office
While the percentage of female heads of state in the world has increased to around 10 percent in the 2010s, a female president or prime minister still remains an exception. Recent scholarship has proposed a number of explanations behind this phenomenon, but there exist important gaps. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, we use new and comprehensive data to undertake a systematic examination of the differences in the personal, education, and career backgrounds between female and male effective political leaders from 1960 to 2010. W e find that female leaders are as qualified as men. Second, because the phenomenon of female leadership is still a rare occurrence, we argue that this fact must be accounted for in empirical modeling. Third, we show that many female leaders tend to acquire the necessary resources, support, and name recognition through political dynasties. To that end, women leaders need to rely on family ties more than men do. However, the importance of such connections attenuates when female suffrage has been in place for longer, and citizens are more open to women in politics.
Journal Article
Blair disease? Business careers of the former democratic heads of state and government
Examining the careers of democratic heads of state and government from 1960–2010, we find that one in every seven turns to the private sector after office. Distinguishing between the factors that attract leaders to business and those that render leaders attractive, we find that the global CEO compensation rates, cultural norms, having served in office in Anglo-Saxon countries as well as their personal background matter. We also find that certain economic outcomes and policies in office such as economic growth and reduction in state spending are often associated with post-tenure business careers. We do not find evidence, however, that leaders are able to implement policies with future careers in mind, which would in turn raise concerns over accountability.
Journal Article
The Stakes of Losing Office, Term Limits and Democracy
Some presidents facing term limits attempt – often successfully – to scrap tenure restrictions, while others step down when constitutionally required. Whether democratic, partly democratic or non-democratic, there is considerable variation among electoral regimes as to whether presidents respect term limits. This article focuses on what is at stake for a president required to leave the highest political office. It argues that for a given level of executive constraints, the value of holding political office in polities with large public sectors and prevalent corruption, combined with the probability of retaining assets and immunity after leaving office, influences whether presidents attempt to overstay their tenure.
Journal Article
What Countries Select More Experienced Leaders? The PolEx Measure of Political Experience
How can one assess which countries select more experienced leaders for the highest office? There is wide variation in prior career paths of national leaders within, and even more so between, regime types. It is therefore challenging to obtain a truly comparative measure of political experience; empirical studies have to rely on proxies instead. This article proposes PolEx, a measure of political experience that abstracts away from the details of career paths and generalizes based on the duration, quality and breadth of an individual's experience in politics. The analysis draws on a novel data set of around 2,000 leaders from 1950 to 2017 and uses a Bayesian latent variable model to estimate PolEx. The article illustrates how the new measure can be used comparatively to assess whether democracies select more experienced leaders. The authors find that while on average they do, the difference with non-democracies has declined dramatically since the early 2000s. Future research may leverage PolEx to investigate the role of prior political experience in, for example, policy making and crisis management.
Journal Article
Reading the Tea Leaves: Medvedev's Presidency through Political Rhetoric of Federal and Sub-National Actors
In the absence of public information on the inner workings of the Russian political regime, especially during Medvedev's presidency, outside observers often have to rely on politicians' unguarded comments or subjective analysis. Instead, we turn to quantitative text analysis of political rhetoric. Treating governors as a quasi-expert panel, we argue that policy positions revealed in regional legislative addresses explain how elites perceived the distribution of power between Putin and Medvedev. We find that governors moved from a neutral position in 2009 to a clearly pro-Putin position in 2011, and that policy initiatives advocated by Medvedev all but evaporated from the rhetoric of governors in 2012.
Journal Article