Leadership Tenure: A Comprehensive Historical Analysis

• In Event: Political Instability and the Deep History of State Making

Abstract

Leader tenure varies enormously across different political systems. Still, no study has comprehensively examined leader tenure globally and historically, as we aim to do in this study. We measure tenure as the number of years a ruler holds office, with principal attention to the top office (which wields executive power). We make use of extant data from Archigos (Goemans, Gleditsch, Chiozza 2009), Historical V-Dem (Knutsen et al. 2018), WorldStatesman.org, and our own ongoing data collection effort. Coverage extends back through ancient history for some polities, and includes most state-like polities from ancient times to the present. With this data, we first examine variation across regions and historical periods in order to ascertain patterns and key trends. Second, we focus on a potential key determinant of leader tenure, namely climatic features; if the security of rule is dependent upon the health and vitality of the land we would expect shorter tenure where adverse climate changes occur. Drawing on data material on relevant climatic conditions alongside our comprehensive leader data, we conduct and discuss a number of tests assessing the hypothesis that adverse climate change leads to shorter leader tenure.

Authors

• John Gerring, University of Texas, Austin

• Carl Henrik Knutsen, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo

• Klas Nilsson, Center for European Studies

• Daniel Smith, University of Maryland

• Jan Teorell, Lund University