Article | Open Access
Cursus Honorum: Personal Background, Careers and Experience of Political Leaders in Democracy and Dictatorship—New Data and Analyses
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Abstract: 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.
Keywords: comparative democratisation; democracy and dictatorship; new dataset; personal background; political leaders
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© Alexander Baturo. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.