TY - JOUR

T1 - How Political Careers affect Prime-Ministerial Performance

T2 - Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

AU - Grotz, Florian

AU - Müller-rommel, Ferdinand

AU - Berz, Jan

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.

PY - 2021/9

Y1 - 2021/9

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Politics

KW - presidents and executive politics

KW - cabinets

KW - East European politics

KW - political parties

KW - quantitative methods

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85118280463&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/0010414021997174

DO - 10.1177/0010414021997174

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 54

SP - 1907

EP - 1938

JO - Comparative Political Studies

JF - Comparative Political Studies

SN - 0010-4140

IS - 11

ER -