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Political Ambition in 14 Presidential Democracies
Author(s) -
Kernecker Theresa
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
legislative studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.728
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1939-9162
pISSN - 0362-9805
DOI - 10.1111/lsq.12131
Subject(s) - presidency , loyalty , ideology , politics , presidential system , competition (biology) , political science , political economy , context (archaeology) , latin americans , party platform , polarization (electrochemistry) , public administration , sociology , law , democracy , ecology , paleontology , biology , chemistry
This article captures the nature of legislators' ambitions and explores to what extent their career paths within a context of party competition lead to progressive versus static ambition. The findings show that their previous career path and retrospective loyalty towards the party influences which offices they seek. Progressively ambitious legislators also seek offices in less competitive environments, but this finding holds for the regional executive branch or the presidency. An additional robust finding shows that ideologically conservative legislators tend to be statically ambitious. This is a first step towards mapping out ambitions in Latin America by drawing on cross‐national data.