How Political Careers affect Prime-Ministerial Performance: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

Florian Grotz; Ferdinand Müller-rommel; Jan Berz; Corinna Kroeber; Marko Kukec

doi:10.1177/0010414021997174

How Political Careers affect Prime-Ministerial Performance: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

Florian Grotz^*
, Ferdinand Müller-rommel
, Jan Berz
, Corinna Kroeber
, Marko Kukec

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

15 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Even though Prime Ministers (PMs) are the central actors in parliamentary democracies, little comparative research explores what makes them perform successfully in office. This article investigates how the political careers of PMs affect their performance. For this purpose, we make use of a unique expert survey covering 131 cabinets in 11 Central and Eastern European countries between 1990 and 2018. Performance is defined as a two-dimensional set of tasks PMs ought to fulfill: first, managing the cabinet and directing domestic affairs as tasks delegated to their office, second, ensuring support of parliament and their own party, who constitute the direct principals. The findings indicate that a simple political insider career is not sufficient to enhance prime-ministerial performance. Rather, PMs who served as party leaders have the best preconditions to succeed in office.

Original language	English
Journal	Comparative Political Studies
Volume	54
Issue number	11
Pages (from-to)	1907-1938
Number of pages	32
ISSN	0010-4140
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414021997174
Publication status	Published - 09.2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research for this article was generously supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (Grants GR3311/3-1 and MU618/18-1).

Funding Information:
We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers, Despina Alexiadou, Kaare Str?m, Eoin O?Malley, the participants, and audiences of the panel ?Legislatures and Leaders: New Perspectives on Political Institutions? at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Washington, D.C. and the panel ?Performance and Political Elites? at the 2019 General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research in Wroc?aw. We would like to express our gratitude to J?nis Ikstens, Daniel Kovarek, Alenka Kra?ovec, Darina Malov?, Zdenka Mansfeldov?, Dario Niki? ?akar, Vello Pettai, Lukas Pukelis, Laurentiu Stefan, Radostina Sharenkova, Maria Spirova, and Anna Sroka, who helped us in identifying and contacting the experts. We also thank the experts for the time and effort they put into responding to the questionnaire. The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research for this article was generously supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (Grants GR3311/3-1 and MU618/18-1).

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.

Research areas and keywords

Politics
presidents and executive politics
cabinets
East European politics
political parties
quantitative methods

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

Sociology and Political Science

Access to Document

10.1177/0010414021997174Licence: CC BY

DownloadFinal published version, 9.52 MBLicence: CC BY

1 Finished

Career patterns and political performance of Prime Ministers in Central East European Democracies
Müller-Rommel, F. (Project manager, academic)
German Research Foundation
01.02.18 → 30.06.20
Project: Research

15 Citations
1 Book

Prime Ministers in Europe: Changing Career Experiences and Profiles
Müller-Rommel, F., Vercesi, M. & Berz, J., 01.07.2022, 1 ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 231 p. (Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership)
Research output: Books and anthologies › Book

Expert survey on prime-ministerial performance in Central-Eastern Europe
Grotz, F. (Creator), Müller-Rommel, F. (Creator), Berz, J. (Creator), Kukec, M. (Creator) & Kroeber, C. (Creator), GESIS Data Archive for the Social Sciences, 2020
DOI: 10.7802/1998, https://search.gesis.org/research_data/SDN-10.7802-1998?doi=10.7802/1998
Dataset
Replication Data for: How Political Careers affect Prime-Ministerial Performance: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe
Grotz, F. (Creator), Müller-Rommel, F. (Creator), Berz, J. (Creator), Kroeber, C. (Creator) & Kukec, M. (Creator), Harvard Dataverse, 08.01.2021
DOI: 10.7910/dvn/s3lp6o, https://dataverse.harvard.edu/citation?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/S3LP6O
Dataset
How Political Careers affect Prime-Ministerial Performance: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe
Grotz, F. (Creator), Müller-Rommel, F. (Creator), Berz, J. (Creator), Kroeber, C. (Creator) & Kukec, M. (Creator), SAGE Publications Inc., 09.03.2021
DOI: 10.1177/0010414021997174
Dataset

Cite this

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abstract = "Even though Prime Ministers (PMs) are the central actors in parliamentary democracies, little comparative research explores what makes them perform successfully in office. This article investigates how the political careers of PMs affect their performance. For this purpose, we make use of a unique expert survey covering 131 cabinets in 11 Central and Eastern European countries between 1990 and 2018. Performance is defined as a two-dimensional set of tasks PMs ought to fulfill: first, managing the cabinet and directing domestic affairs as tasks delegated to their office, second, ensuring support of parliament and their own party, who constitute the direct principals. The findings indicate that a simple political insider career is not sufficient to enhance prime-ministerial performance. Rather, PMs who served as party leaders have the best preconditions to succeed in office.",

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AU - Kroeber, Corinna

AU - Kukec, Marko

N1 - Funding Information: The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research for this article was generously supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (Grants GR3311/3-1 and MU618/18-1). Funding Information: We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers, Despina Alexiadou, Kaare Str?m, Eoin O?Malley, the participants, and audiences of the panel ?Legislatures and Leaders: New Perspectives on Political Institutions? at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Washington, D.C. and the panel ?Performance and Political Elites? at the 2019 General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research in Wroc?aw. We would like to express our gratitude to J?nis Ikstens, Daniel Kovarek, Alenka Kra?ovec, Darina Malov?, Zdenka Mansfeldov?, Dario Niki? ?akar, Vello Pettai, Lukas Pukelis, Laurentiu Stefan, Radostina Sharenkova, Maria Spirova, and Anna Sroka, who helped us in identifying and contacting the experts. We also thank the experts for the time and effort they put into responding to the questionnaire. The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research for this article was generously supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (Grants GR3311/3-1 and MU618/18-1). Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2021.

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KW - political parties

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ER -

How Political Careers affect Prime-Ministerial Performance: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Research areas and keywords

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

Access to Document

Fingerprint

Projects

Career patterns and political performance of Prime Ministers in Central East European Democracies

Research output

Prime Ministers in Europe: Changing Career Experiences and Profiles

Datasets

Expert survey on prime-ministerial performance in Central-Eastern Europe

Replication Data for: How Political Careers affect Prime-Ministerial Performance: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

How Political Careers affect Prime-Ministerial Performance: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

Cite this