Presidents’ Political Career: How political professionalism or non-involvement in politics relate to Democracy and Autocracy

Abstract

Literature on MPs' path to power ( i.e. Squire 1993; Searing 1994; Norris 1997; Saalfeld 1997; Best & Cotta 2000; Shabad and Slomczynski 2002; Borcher 2003; Cairney, 2007; Koop and Bittner, 2011; Siavelis & Morgenstern 2012, Heuwieser, 2018; Allen 2018; Ohmura et al. 2018 ) is wide and consolidate as well as that on cabinet ministers (i.e. Dogan 1989; Müller & Philipp 1991; Nichols 1991; Berlinsky et.al. 2007; Kaiser & Fischer 2009; Kerby 2009; Dowding & Dumond 2009; Atkins et al. 2013; Silveira 2016; Martocchia Diodati & Verzichelli 2017; Codato & Franz 2018; Gonzalez-Bustamante & Garrido-Vergara 2018; Camerlo & Martinez-Gallard 2018) both considering country single-case and comparative studies. However very few works put an eye exclusively on presidents’ socio-economic background and career paths (see Steinberg 2001; Musella 2015, Alcantara & Barragan 2016, and Jalalzai 2016 as exceptions). On the one hand, presidential careers have been investigated with a biographic or an historical perspective, especially in the US (i.e. Kneeland 2011; Stoermer 2012; Kaufmann 2015). On the other hand, when it comes to comparative works, presidents’ careers are often analysed together with those of PMs (i.e. Gwynn & Melinda 2010; Jalalzai 2014; Skard 2015; Baturo & Gray 2018). As a consequence, this lack of specificity hinders any attempts to understand whether or not and to what extent executive careers differ from those of head of state. In addition, most of these comparative works (i.e. Thompson 2007; Gwynn & Melinda 2010; Jalalzai 2014, 2016; Skard 2015; Baturo & Gray 2018) but even certain single-case studies (i.e. Kamwendo & Kamwendo 2015; Lee 2017) adopted a gender perspective. Consequently, the ironic outcome is that we know more on female presidents’ career paths in comparison to their male counterparts. The aim of this panel is to shed light on presidential career paths and socioeconomic background to fill a gap in literature and to understand if there are differences or similarities with other politicians' curricula. We are looking for papers that can contribute both theoretically and empirically to this theme. In particular, we are looking for both comparative and single case studies, which focus on - Presidents’ party careers - Presidents’ institutional careers, focused mainly on the national/federal level (namely in Parliament and Cabinet) - Presidents’ institutional career with a multilevel perspective (namely focused both on national/federal and local, regional/state levels); - Presidents’ pre- and post- careers We are looking for papers who tries to understand if and to what extent specific presidential career paths or outsiderness from politics may have a link with transitional regimes, democracies and even autocracies. In other words, are presidential career paths similar irrespective to the type of regime they operate? Both qualitative and quantitave methodologies are welcomed to investigate the above mentioned topics.

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