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

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 eleven 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.尽管首相（Prime Ministers, PMs）是议会民主制（parliamentary democracies）中的核心行动主体，但目前鲜有比较研究探究究竟何种因素能让首相在任内取得成功。本文旨在考察首相的政治生涯如何影响其履职绩效。为此，我们采用了一项独一无二的专家调研（expert survey）数据集，该数据集覆盖了1990年至2018年间中东欧11个国家的131届内阁（cabinet）。本次研究将履职绩效界定为首相应履行的二维任务体系：其一，管理内阁、统筹国内事务，这是赋予其职位的核心职责；其二，确保议会与所属政党的支持——这二者作为直接委托人（principals），是其执政权力的来源。研究结果表明，仅具备单纯的政治圈内任职经历并不足以提升首相的履职绩效。相反，曾担任政党领袖的首相，其在任内取得成功的前置条件最为充分。