In this article, using our original data on party leadership succession in 23 parliamentary democracies, we investigate the determinants of a party leader’s survival rate: how long he/she remains in office. Unlike previous studies, which focus on institutional settings of leadership selection or on situational (political, economic and international) conditions at the time of succession, we prop...

This Report was put together by a working group consisting of: Simona Milio (Project Leader), London School of Economics and Political Science; Riccardo Lattanzi (Project Coordinator), New York University Langone Medical Center; Francesca Casadio, Art Institute of Chicago; Nicola Crosta, UN Capital Development Fund; Mario Raviglione, World Health Organization; Paul Ricci, École Polytechnique Fé...

A distinction in reasons and motives for choosing a particular political leader establishes the key difference between older and young democracy. The former is based on electoral history, while the latter is based on feelings and personal attitude. Besides, a comparatively abundant number of political figures (persons or parties and associations) is specific for young democracies. The problem o...

There has been an established myth of stereotype traits which good political leaders must possess, but which unfortunately as interpreted by many, are generally lacking in a typical engineer, making him unfit for such positions. In this paper, reflections and justifications why engineers are fit for leadership positions were made. It discusses some of the engineering potentials like creativity,...

Money is an everyday object, something we take for granted, and yet every image on money is innately political. One of the earliest policies put in place by the new Libyan government was to recall banknotes of the Gaddafi era and to replace outdated imagery where necessary. While the focus here is on money, it must be remembered that imagery of Gaddafi was systematically destroyed throughout th...

Strengthening executive constraints is one of the key means of improving political governance. This paper examines how such reforms are related to threats to the tenure of ruling political incumbents. We formalize this idea theoretically and test it empirically, using data on leaders since 1875. Specifically, we distinguish leaders with different degrees of resilience as leaders who die from na...

Venezuelan Evangelicals’ responses to candidates in that country’s 1998 presidential election seem to confirm the view that their political culture is inconsistent, contradictory, and paradoxical. Not only were Evangelicals just as likely as the larger population to support nationalist former coup leader Hugo Chávez, they rejected Venezuela’s one Evangelical party after it made a clientalist pa...