Pathways to Power: Political Careers of Chief Executives

Abstract

Elite studies have extensively dealt with the recruitment of politicians at local, regional, national, and supra-national level. Yet these studies have focused predominantly on legislative representatives and ministers, while only a limited attention has been payed to political careers of chief executives. This research gap appears at odds with the centrality of executive leaders as public figures and in the policy-making of any government. The Panel aims to contribute to this discussion, by analyzing career patterns of chief executives on different levels of the political system. Papers on prime ministers, presidents in semipresidential and presidential systems, or heads of government at sub-national level (e.g., regional chief executives and state heads in federal countries) are welcome. The focus should be on different facets of chief executives’ careers, such as social-backgrounds; institutional political experience; party recruitment; and alternative paths to power. We invite papers where the political career of chief executives is treated as independent and/or dependent variable. In the former case, possible research questions may concern the impact of previous career patterns on leadership styles (e.g., how methods of selection and principal-agent relationships affect behaviors in office), or on the performance of chief executive (e.g., public reputation or degree of political strength within cabinet). In the latter case, research may concentrate on those factors that are likely to set and shape political careers of chief executives (e.g., party factors; elite permeability; cultural traditions; chains of delegation). The panel is open to different theoretical approaches, both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Preference is given to research projects that focus on ‘small’ and ‘large’ N comparative analyses.