Regular Turnover Details
For many theories of international relations, the foundational actor, the mover, the decision-maker, the site of causal mechanisms, is the country leader. Testing the insights of these theories requires data about these people, over time, across space, and with enough detail to trust that our measures actually tap the intended concepts.
The largest working dataset on leader survival, Archigos 4.1 (Goemans, Gleditsch, & Chiozza, 2009), focuses on the violent, dramatic means by which leaders may “exit” office. This information is vital for many research questions and its collection constitutes a valuable public good for the community. Yet, it provides an incomplete picture of the political rise and fall of world leaders. The burgeoning study of leaders using survival analysis requires a fine-grained understanding of not just when, but why and how leaders exit our datasets. We cannot, for example, conclude that a leader’s exit implies a successful application of international pressure if her removal stems from pre-set constitutional laws and the immediate successor has long been considered the heir apparent. The Regular Turnover Details dataset remedies this problem, as well as others. Two principle variables, Means and Successor, report information about the manner of each leader’s exit and the relationship between outgoing and incoming leaders. Together with supporting information about political pressure and apolitical figures this data allows analysts to arbiter between exits that suggest political failure and those that do not, identify nonpolitical leaders (such as interim and technocratic executives), and determine whether leaders constitute heirs to power or challengers thereof.
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