Torun Dewan

The Qualities of Leadership: Direction, Communication, and Obfuscation

Party activists wish to (i) advocate the best policy and yet (ii) unify behind a common party line. An activist`s understanding of his environment is based on the speeches of party leaders. A leader`s influence, measured by the weight placed on her speech, increases with her judgement on policy (sense of direction) and her ability to convey ideas (clarity of communication). A leader with perfect clarity of communication enjoys greater influence than one with a perfect sense of direction. Activists can choose how much attention to pay to leaders. A necessary condition for a leader to monopolize the agenda is that she is the most coherent communicator. Sometimes leaders attract more attention by obfuscating their messages. A concern for party unity mitigates this incentive; when activists emphasize following the party line, they learn more about their environment.

The Length of Ministerial Tenure in the United Kingdom, 1945–97

We analyse the determinants of ministerial hazard rates in Britain from 1945 to 1997. We focus on three sets of attributes (i) personal characteristics of the minister; (ii) political characteristics of the minister; and (iii) characteristics pertaining to the government in which the minister serves. We find that educational background increases ministers’ capacity to survive, that female ministers have lower hazard rates and older ministers have higher hazard rates. Experienced ministers have higher hazard rates than newly appointed ministers. Ministerial rank increases a minister’s capacity to survive, with full cabinet members having the lowest hazard rates in our sample. We use different strategies to control for the characteristics of the government the minister serves in. Our results are robust to any of these controls. In the British political system, where policy making is the primary function of departments, rising to ministerial office represents the height of ambition for most backbenchers. Yet we know little about what determines which ministers are successful. James Alt begins his essay on continuity and turnover in the British cabinet with the words: ‘It is perhaps more difficult to place this study in the context of the academic literature than to show that it covers a topic of some importance.’ 1 Over a quarter of a century later, with the exception of the study by Alt, the literature on ministers in the British cabinet still lacks systematic analysis. Blondel’s comment a decade later remains pertinent: the ‘study of ministers and ministerial careers is in its infancy’. 2

Strategic Opposition and Government Cohesion in Westminster Democracies

Cohesive government-versus-opposition voting is a robust empirical regularity in Westminster democracies. Using new data from the modern Scottish Parliament, we show that this pattern cannot be explained by similarity of preferences within or between the government and opposition ranks. We look at differences in the way that parties operate in Westminster and Holyrood, and use roll call records to show that the observed behavior is unlikely to be determined by preferences on any underlying issue dimension. Using a simple variant of the agenda-setting model—in which members of parliament can commit to their voting strategies—we show that the procedural rules for reaching collective decisions in Westminster systems can explain this phenomenon: in the equilibrium, on some bills, members of the opposition vote against the government irrespective of the proposal. Such strategic opposition can reinforce government cohesiveness and have a moderating effect on policy outcomes. We introduce new data from the House of Lords, the Welsh Assembly, and the Northern Ireland Assembly to distinguish our claims from competing accounts of the data.

Scandal, protection, and recovery in the cabinet

Empirical evidence suggests that a prime minister benefits from firing ministers who are involved in political scandals. We explore a model in which scandals are positively related to policy activism, so that a prime minister may wish to protect a minister from resignation calls. We find that protection can sometimes discourage activism: it enhances the value of a ministers career and hence encourages him to “sit tight” by moderating his activities. On the other hand, an exogenous increase in exposure to scandals may lead a minister to “live for today” by pursuing controversial policies. The prime ministers ability to protect ministers is limited by her short-term incentive to fire. She may, however, enhance her credibility by building a collective reputation with the cabinet; the heterogeneity of cabinet membership plays an important role.

The Impact of Individual and Collective Performance on Ministerial Tenure

Government ministers in Parliamentary democracies are career politicians for whom public service is an important source of motivation. The length of their tenure is controlled by the Prime Minister. We test a simple Principal-Agent model of parliamentary government in which the Prime Minister evaluates her ministers according to information available to her that is related to their performance. We study the effects of individual and collective ministerial performance on the length of time a minister serves in British government over the period 1945–97. We use the number of resignation calls for a minister as an individual performance indicator and the cumulative number of such calls as an indicator of government performance. A minister’s hazard rate increases sharply after the first individual call for resignation and is decreasing in the cumulative number of resignation calls. These results are consistent with the Principal-Agent model and with the use of relative performance evaluation by the Prime Minister.

On the rhetorical strategies of leaders: Speaking clearly, standing back, and stepping down

Followers wish to coordinate their actions in an uncertain environment. A follower would like his action to be close to some ideal (but unknown) target; to reflect his own idiosyncratic preferences; and to be close to the actions of others. He learns about his world by listening to leaders. Followers fail to internalize the full benefits of coordination and so place insufficient emphasis on the focal views of relatively clear leaders. A leader sometimes stands back, by restricting what she says, and so creates space for others to be heard; in particular, a benevolent leader with outstanding judgement gives way to a clearer communicator in an attempt to encourage unity amongst her followers. Sometimes a leader receives no attention from followers, and sometimes she steps down (says nothing); hence a leadership elite emerges from the endogenous choices of leaders and followers.

The Political Consequences of Franchise Extension: Evidence from the Second Reform Act

We use evidence from the Second Reform Act, introduced in the United Kingdom in 1867, to analyze the impact on electoral outcomes of extending the vote to the unskilled urban population. Exploiting the sharp change in the electorate caused by franchise extension, we separate the effect of reform from that of underlying constituency level traits correlated with the voting population. Although we find that the franchise affected electoral competition and candidate selection, there is no evidence relating Liberal electoral support to changes in the franchise rules. Our results are robust to various sources of endogeneity.

The Elements of Political Persuasion: Content, Charisma and Cue

Political campaigns employ complex strategies to persuade voters to support them. We analyse the contributions of elements of these strategies using data from a field experiment that randomly assigned canvassers to districts, as well as messaging and endorsement conditions. We find evidence for a strong overall campaign effect and show effects for both message-based and endorsement-based campaigns. However, we find little evidence that canvassers varied according to their persuasive ability or that endorser identity matters. Overall the results suggest a surprisingly muted role for idiosyncratic features of prospective persuaders.

Electoral competition, control and learning

This article explores an agency model in which voters learn about both an incumbent and an opponent. They observe the incumbent’s policy record and update their beliefs about his opponent via a campaign. Although the former is relatively more informative, it can be costly for the voter to learn about the incumbent from her policy record. This is because policy reforms, which allow a voter to learn an incumbent’s ability, are risky and can leave the voter worse off. Then the voter may prefer the incumbent to take safer actions. The efficient level of reform – the one preferred by the voter – balances the value of learning with the expected policy costs/benefits. In a world where the opponent’s campaign is uninformative, reform can be too low due to the incumbent’s fear of failure. Or it can be too high: the incumbent may gamble on success. This article shows that the presence of an opponent who can reveal information via a campaign exacerbates these inefficiencies. An incumbent who anticipates the effect of an opponent’s campaign on voter beliefs is more likely to make inefficient policy choices. Further, such campaigns can lead to an overall welfare loss when they reveal little about the opponent’s ability and yet have an impact on the incumbent’s policy choice.

Dynamic Government Performance: Honeymoons and Crises of Confidence

We use a formal theoretical framework to explore the interplay between a governments longevity and its performance. Ministers perform well when their careers are valuable; this is so when the governments duration is expected to be long; the governments survival depends on its popularity; and, finally, that popularity depends on its ministers’ performance. The feedback loop between performance and longevity means that multiple rational-expectations equilibria can arise: Ministers work hard for a popular government, but divert efforts elsewhere if they believe the government is doomed; these alternatives are both self-fulfilling prophecies. However, the presence of (perhaps small) random events that buffet the performance and popularity of a government is sufficient to pin down a unique equilibrium. We explore the dynamics that arise: A crisis of confidence involving the rapid collapse of a governments performance is sparked when a sequence of negative shocks push the popularity of the government below a unique critical threshold.