Changing Career Profiles: From Party-Agents to Party-Principals

This chapter examines the development of prime ministers’ career profiles over time. Based on a factor analysis, we identify two primary types of career profiles: party-agents and party-principals. Overall, the analysis shows that prime ministers with a party-principal career profile have become more common than prime ministers with a party-agent career profile. In fact, the party-principal profile became the dominant career profile in the 1990s, following the decline of party government and the increase of the presidentialization of politics. The chapter’s sections examine several additional relevant factors that may affect career profiles, including the form of government, electoral volatility, prime ministers’ formal agenda-setting power, party family membership, and gender. Our empirical findings suggest that all five factors affect prime ministers’ career profile, albeit in different directions.