Political Life Cycles

We develop and test a formal model of leader political life cycle effects within a selectorate framework. The model leads to novel hypotheses about the provision of public goods, private goods, and freedoms over a leader’s tenure in power. The analyses show, as hypothesized, that the total provision of benefits as well as the provision of public goods and freedoms decrease significantly the longer a leader is in power, whereas the proportion of rewards in the form of private goods (such as corruption opportunities) increases.