Constrainers vs Enablers? : Fiscal Deficits and the Political Survival of Finance Ministers Across Regime Types

We investigate how fiscal deficits affect the political survival of finance ministers in democracies and autocracies. While finance ministers occupy formally similar roles across regimes, we argue they serve fundamentally different political functions. Drawing on regime-specific incentives and the distinct constraints on public borrowing, we hypothesize that fiscal deficits increase the likelihood of ministerial removal in democracies but not in autocracies. Using global data on finance ministers from 1981 to 2021, we find robust support for our argument. Higher deficits predict an increased risk of ministerial exit, but only in democracies. This speaks to broader debates on economic policy-making, accountability, and elite politics. More broadly, we show that similar institutions operate under diverging logics depending on regime type. This highlights the need for comparative research to take seriously the context-dependent meaning of institutional performance—and to develop theories that reflect variation in how policymakers are constrained and evaluated.