The personality of political leaders matters for their electoral success and performance once in office. Yet, we still know too little about the personality profiles of leaders worldwide. In this ...article, we focus on the profile of a particular type of leader, central to contemporary warnings about 'democratic backsliding': strongmen. Who are they? Much has been written about their behaviour and policies, but little attention has been granted to their personality profile. As we argue in this article, looking at their personality is a potentially important new avenue to understand the rise and success of strongmen worldwide. We compare the profile of 157 leaders having competed in 81 elections worldwide between June 2016 and July 2019 - including 14 leaders with autocratic tendencies (Putin, Trump, Bolsonaro, Erdoğan, Orbán, Duterte, Netanyahu and several others). Using the ratings provided by 1800+ scholars we show that autocrats score significantly lower on agreeableness and emotional stability, and (marginally) higher on extraversion. Autocrats also score significantly higher than non-autocrats on the Dark Triad (narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism), even when compared to right-wing non-autocrats. These results have important implications for the study of democratic deconsolidation, authoritarianism, and the personality of elected officials.
What drives politics in dictatorships? Milan W. Svolik argues authoritarian regimes must resolve two fundamental conflicts. Dictators face threats from the masses over which they rule - the problem ...of authoritarian control. Secondly from the elites with whom dictators rule - the problem of authoritarian power-sharing. Using the tools of game theory, Svolik explains why some dictators establish personal autocracy and stay in power for decades; why elsewhere leadership changes are regular and institutionalized, as in contemporary China; why some dictatorships are ruled by soldiers, as Uganda was under Idi Amin; why many authoritarian regimes, such as PRI-era Mexico, maintain regime-sanctioned political parties; and why a country's authoritarian past casts a long shadow over its prospects for democracy, as the unfolding events of the Arab Spring reveal. Svolik complements these and other historical case studies with the statistical analysis on institutions, leaders and ruling coalitions across dictatorships from 1946 to 2008.
Abstract
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.
The successes and failures of political leaders and their rise and fall from power are well analysed by academic studies. The roles played by former leaders however are more obscure, particularly if ...they continue to maintain an institutional presence. This article explores the backbench behaviour of 12 former UK prime ministers following their departure from Downing Street. We find that contemporary former prime ministers display more diverse backbench behaviour in the House of Commons, are more focused on performing constituency representation in the chamber and engage in a form of statecraft focused on real time assessments of their successors. This is significant as it suggests that our traditional assumptions of post leadership careers may need reinterpreting. It also demonstrates an ongoing democratic benefit to the presence of former leaders within legislatures.
In the context of public disaffection towards representative democracies, political leaders are increasingly establishing citizens’ assemblies to foster participatory governance. These deliberative ...fora composed of randomly selected citizens have attracted much scholarly attention regarding their theoretical foundations and internal functioning. Nevertheless, we lack research that scrutinizes the reasons why political leaders create such new institutions. This article fills this gap by analysing a specific case: the first permanent randomly selected citizens’ assembly that will work in collaboration with a parliament in the long‐term (Ostbelgien, Belgium). This case is analysed through a framework that pays close attention to the context in which it developed, the profiles of political elites that supported its creation, as well as the multiple objectives it was vested with. The findings reveal that initiators of citizens’ assemblies fundamentally conceive them as a way to strengthen a polity's identity, to save the electoral model of democracy, and to restore the legitimacy of traditional political leaders. Our analysis of this particular conception lead us to argue for the need of developing context‐sentive approaches to participatory and deliberative procedures, as well as to discuss whether we should consider the latter as mere elites’ legitimation tools.
Do political leaders influence the level of economic inequality in authoritarian countries? Building on previous studies on political leaders and authoritarian regimes, we argue that economic ...inequality is likely to decrease during the tenure of authoritarian leaders with personal experiences of economic hardship. Since authoritarian leaders have greater policy discretion than their democratic counterparts, their policy choices are less constrained by other political actors and institutions. As their material background makes authoritarian leaders more likely to favour introducing redistributive measures, they are expected to use such strategies for political survival, leading to a decrease in economic inequality. We created and analysed a new dataset on political leaders' socioeconomic backgrounds in authoritarian regimes and found support for our arguments. In line with recent studies on political leaders and policy outcomes, our findings suggest that leaders' personal experiences of economic hardship greatly affect their policy choices in authoritarian countries.
How do domestic political conditions shape when leaders get punished for backing down in international crises? We explore how three factors—the president’s partisanship, the reaction of other elites, ...and whether the president justifies his decision on the basis of new information—influence the size of domestic audience costs. While standard theories in American politics suggest that partisanship should exert a large effect over voter behavior, we offer an alternative theory explaining why the president’s unique informational advantage following a crisis will mute partisanship’s effect on audience costs. We argue that the president’s justification for why he backed down, however, will have a large effect on audience costs. Using a series of original survey experiments, we find strong support for our theoretical argument. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the role of partisanship, framing, and the audience costs literature more broadly.
We investigate how constituents interpret information about political leaders in the course of forming judgments about them. More specifically, we are interested in the intentionality attributed to ...the actions and decisions taken by political leaders – whether they are perceived as designed to benefit the politician’s own interests, or the interests of the public. In two field studies, we show that the political orientation of constituents plays a central role in driving constituents’ judgments about political leaders and their actions (in terms of beneficiary attributions), reflecting an identity-motivated reasoning process. Political leaders of the ingroup are perceived more favorably than political leaders of the outgroup, in terms of trust and a desire to see that leader represent the country in the international arena. More interestingly, constituents are likely to attribute the actions of ingroup leaders as intended to benefit the country (national interests), and the actions of outgroup leaders as intended to benefit the political leaders themselves (egoistic interests).
It's a commonplace that citizens in Western democracies are disaffected with their political leaders and traditional democratic institutions. But in Democratic Legitimacy, Pierre Rosanvallon, one of ...today's leading political thinkers, argues that this crisis of confidence is partly a crisis of understanding. He makes the case that the sources of democratic legitimacy have shifted and multiplied over the past thirty years and that we need to comprehend and make better use of these new sources of legitimacy in order to strengthen our political self-belief and commitment to democracy.
Papers in the burgeoning empirical literature on distributive politics often focus their analysis on the pattern of distribution of a single patronage good—for example, cash transfers, roads, ...education spending, electrification, or targeted grants. Yet because governments can favor constituencies through the targeting of multiple public and private goods, drawing general conclusions about distributive politics by investigating just one (or even a few) good(s) can be misleading. We demonstrate the severity of this problem by investigating a particular manifestation of distributive politics—ethnic favoritism—in a particular setting—Africa—and show that the conclusions one draws about who benefits from government allocation decisions can vary markedly depending on the outcome one happens to study. Our findings suggest the need for caution in making general claims about who benefits from distributive politics and raise questions about extant theoretical conclusions that are based on empirical work that focuses on a single distributive outcome. The findings also provide a foundation for a new research agenda aimed at identifying the reasons why political leaders choose to favor their supporters with some public and private goods rather than others.
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