Assistant Professor of Government Sharon Werning Rivera chaired a panel titled "Political Elites, Hybrid Regimes, and Democratization" at the 2007 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Chicago from August 30 to September 2. She also presented a paper titled "Structure versus Agency in the Postcommunist Transitions: Quantifying the Impact of Leadership," which she co-authored with David W. Rivera, Hamilton government department lecturer.
The paper posed the following question: how large a role have the individuals at the helm of the postcommunist states played in determining the success or failure of their countries' democratic transitions? Due largely to the difficulties involved in incorporating individuals into cross-national analyses of macro-level phenomena, the quantitative literature on postcommunist transitology provides little or no basis to answer this question. This paper introduced a new methodological approach to the study of political leadership that allows for a quantitative assessment of the impact of leaders and a comparison of the relative roles of structure and agency.
In line with previous research, the authors found that the geographical location and natural resource endowments of these states significantly affect their political development. However, they also found that many of the region's leaders have shaped outcomes to an even greater extent than have those structural factors. The paper provides a new and rigorous basis to resolve existing debates over the historical role of some of the region's chief executives.
The paper posed the following question: how large a role have the individuals at the helm of the postcommunist states played in determining the success or failure of their countries' democratic transitions? Due largely to the difficulties involved in incorporating individuals into cross-national analyses of macro-level phenomena, the quantitative literature on postcommunist transitology provides little or no basis to answer this question. This paper introduced a new methodological approach to the study of political leadership that allows for a quantitative assessment of the impact of leaders and a comparison of the relative roles of structure and agency.
In line with previous research, the authors found that the geographical location and natural resource endowments of these states significantly affect their political development. However, they also found that many of the region's leaders have shaped outcomes to an even greater extent than have those structural factors. The paper provides a new and rigorous basis to resolve existing debates over the historical role of some of the region's chief executives.
