Replication Data for: Dominant Personality and Politically Inexperienced Presidents Challenge Term Limits

Research has found that the context in which presidents govern explains the relaxation of term limits. However, presidents have strong motivations to retain power and a minority of leaders from different world regions have actively attempted to overstay in office. I propose that the individual differences of the presidents explain why some of them challenge their term limits. Building on semi-structured interviews with former presidents, I hypothesize that leaders who have a dominant personality and are politically inexperienced are more likely to attempt to overstay in office. Using a novel dataset, I conduct discrete-time duration models that test the hypotheses for the 1945-2012 period in Latin America. The results confirm the expectations, suggesting that we need to consider both the context and the personal characteristics of chief executives to understand term extensions. More broadly, the results encourage further examination of the impact that leaders have on executive governance.

研究表明，总统执政的制度环境是导致任期限制放宽的重要原因。然而，总统普遍具有强烈的掌权动机，全球不同地区均有少数领导人试图通过主动行动实现超期任职。本文提出，总统的个体差异是部分领导人挑战任期限制的核心解释变量。基于对前总统的半结构化访谈，本文假设：具有支配型人格且政治经验匮乏的领导人更倾向于尝试超期任职。借助全新数据集，本文采用离散时间持续期模型，对1945-2012年拉丁美洲地区的相关假设进行了实证检验。研究结果验证了预期假设，表明理解任期延长现象需同时考虑行政首脑所处的制度环境及其个人特征。从更广泛的视角来看，本研究结果为深入探讨领导人对行政治理的影响提供了方向。