The wise, the politician, and the strongman: Types of national leaders and quality of governanceJulieta Peveri Journal of Comparative Economics, 2022, vol. 50, issue 4, 849-895 Abstract: This paper assesses how national leaders’ quality of governance varies with their career and education. Using a sample of 1,000 rulers between 1931 and 2010, I identify three types of leaders: military leaders, academics, and politicians. Military leaders are associated with an overall negative performance, while politicians who have held important offices before taking power tend to perform well. Academics have on average non-significant effects. These results are partially driven by differences in policy decisions and in leadership styles. Military leaders spend less in health and education, are more likely to establish a personalistic regime, to disrespect the constitution, and to move towards a non-electoral regime, while the reverse holds for politicians. Additionally, this paper highlights the weakness of using educational attainment as a proxy for politicians’ quality, and of growth as a measure of national leaders’ performance. Keywords: Leader characteristics; Governance quality; Politician; Military rulers (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:50:y:2022:i:4:p:849-895 DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2022.06.001 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Comparative Economics is currently edited by D. Berkowitz and G. Roland More articles in Journal of Comparative Economics from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.