Political Selection (original) (raw)
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Political Institutions, Policy Choice and the Survival of Leaders
British Journal of Political Science, 2002
Institutional arrangements influence the type of policies that leaders pursue. We examine two institutional variables: the size of the selectorate (S)--the set of people who have an institutional say in choosing leaders--and the size of the winning coalition (W)--the minimal set of people whose support the incumbent needs in order to remain in power. The larger the winning coalition, the greater the emphasis leaders place on effective public policy. When W is small, leaders focus on providing private goods to their small group of supporters at the expense of the provision of public goods. The size of the selectorate influences how hard leaders work on behalf of their supporters. The greater the size of the selectorate, the more current supporters fear exclusion from future coalitions. This induces a norm of loyalty that enables leaders to reduce their effort and still survive. As a first step towards a theory of endogenous selection of institutions, we characterize the institutional preferences of the different segments of society based on the consequences of these institutions for individual welfare. We conclude by examining the implication of the model for the tenure of leaders, public policy, economic growth, corruption, taxation and ethnic politics. *
Institutions, Outcomes and the Survival of Leaders.¤
2000
Institutional arrangements in°uence the type of policies that leaders pursue. We examine two institutional variables: the size of the selectorate (S){the set of people who have an institutional say in choosing leaders{and the size of the winning coalition (W){the minimal set of people whose support the incumbent needs in order to remain in power. The larger the winning coalition, the greater the emphasis leaders place on e®ective public policy. When W is small, leaders focus on providing private goods to their small group of supporters at the expense of the provision of public goods. The size of the selectorate in°uences how hard leaders work on behalf of their supporters.
2022
The scholarship on political careers and recruitment has increasingly focused on the conditions that foster the emergence of new political elites. However, top politicians in democratic regimes tend to share socio-economic backgrounds and occupy similar political positions before entering office. Career patterns in politics are relatively stable and tend to reproduce themselves over time; this leads to the persistence of core background traits among the members of the political elites. The lack of profiles renewal seems at odds with the claim of democratic theory that democratic competition is open, inclusive, and expansive. Despite its relevance, the causal mechanisms behind career patterns’ stability among political elites have received little systematic attention. This article contributes to fill the gap, by focusing on democratic chief executives. First, it clarifies the core concepts for the study of political elites and careers. Second, it proposes an understanding of the formation and stability of chief executives’ career patterns as functions of path dependent institutional effects. Third, the work uses this theory to investigate persistence and renewal of the background characteristics of all US presidents, from George Washington (1789) to Joe Biden (2021). The analysis contributes to the literature on elite stability, circulation, and renewal in democracy.
Can a democracy attract competent leaders, while attaining broad representation? Economic models suggest that free-riding incentives and lower opportunity costs give the less competent a comparative advantage at entering political life. Moreover, if elites have more human capital, selecting on competence may lead to uneven representation. This paper examines patterns of political selection among the universe of municipal politicians and national legislators in Sweden, using extraordinarily rich data on competence traits and social background for the entire population. We document four new facts that together characterize an "inclusive meritocracy." First, politicians are on average significantly smarter and better leaders than the population they represent. Second, this positive selection is present even when conditioning on family (and hence social) background, suggesting that individual competence is key for selection. Third, the representation of social background, whether measured by parental earnings or occupational social class, is remarkably even. Fourth, there is at best a weak tradeoff in selection between competence and social representation, mainly due to strong positive selection of politicians of low (parental) socioeconomic status. A broad implication of these facts is that it is possible for democracy to generate competent and socially-representative leadership. * We thank the editors Andrei Shleifer and Larry Katz, three anonymous referees, as well as participants in numerous seminars and conferences for their helpful comments. We thank
A MODEL OF POLITICAL SELECTION FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE IN AFRICA
This essay, having identified the failure of political leadership as the bane of economic development and democracy in Africa, has outlined mechanisms for selecting high quality leaders into public office. In the first stage of the screening process, certain elements of costs are imposed on the intending politicians so as to deter the entry of dishonest politicians into politics. This is accomplished via the inverse relationship between the degree of honest and the costs of participation. The unique thing is that separating equilibrium that makes participation costs zero for honest individuals and heavy for their dishonest counterparts could in principle be obtained. Interestingly the mechanisms that generate information about the past of intending politicians also impose heavy costs on groups which supply this information.
Economic growth and political succession: a study of two regions
In the 1960s and 1970s economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa was respectable, and a handful of economies grew extremely rapidly. Growth was not sustained, however, partly because of problems related to leadership succession. Since Africa is again growing rapidly, this Working Paper explores how countries can avoid the succession trap. It does by means of a qualitative comparative analysis of fast-growing countries in Southeast Asia and Africa. Contrary to currently fashionable ideas about ‘inclusive institutions’ and ‘golden threads’, it finds that crucial to combining succession with growth is the embedding of policy-making in strong institutions of two types: 1. A dominant party with a tradition of consensual decision-making and leadership succession, or 2. A strong, organic bureaucracy, effectively insulated from changes in political leadership.
Social Conflict and Gradual Political Succession: An Illustrative Model
Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2006
This paper studies the evolution of political institutions in the face of conflict. We examine institutional reform in a class of pivotal mechanisms-institutions that behave as if the resulting policy were determined by a "pivotal" decision maker drawn from the potential population of citizens and who holds full policy-making authority at the time. A rule-ofsuccession describes the process by which pivotal decision makers in period t + 1 are, themselves, chosen by pivotal decision makers in period t. Two sources of conflict-class conflict, arising from differences in wealth, and ideological conflict, arising from differences in preferences-are examined. In each case, we characterize the unique Markov-perfect equilibrium of the associated dynamic political game, and show that public decision-making authority evolves monotonically downward in wealth and upward in ideological predisposition toward the public good. We then examine rules-of-succession when ideology and wealth exhibit correlation.