Recent studies in economics have started to provide empirical evidence that national leaders have an effect on the economic growth of their countries (Jones/Olken 2005: 3; Jones 2009: 6). Nonetheless, studies that systematically focus on the impact of political leadership performance on the economic development in both democratic and autocratic contexts are still rather rare.
This workshop aims to address this gap in academic scholarship by analyzing how, to what extent, and why different patterns of political leadership performance impact a country’s economic growth in relation to its political institutional design (democracy vs. autocracy). By focusing on three important regions with different economic histories and trajectories, namely the Gulf, Western Europe, and Southeast Asia, the workshop compares the performance of political leaders both in democratic and autocratic institutional contexts. It aims at explaining the strategies that heads of government and state apply across the various regions with regard to political communication, cultures of public representation, as well as their multifold relations with their respective national economies, both past and present.
Participants
Dr. Alex Baturo (Dublin City University)
Alex Baturo received his PhD in political Science from Trinity College Dublin (2007). His research interests focus on comparative democratization, political leadership, political rhetoric, methodology, as well as post-Soviet and Russian Politics. Specifically, they include various aspects of comparative democratization, particularly presidentialism and personalism across the world and institutions in non-democracies; regime deinstitutionalisation and measurements; the effects of political leaders' background and traits on political and economic outcomes; the influence of institutions and the economy on leaders' behaviour and careers; leader-follower relationships; computerised analyses of political rhetoric, e.g., rhetoric and elite management; as well as latent variable models, i.e., for the estimations of unobserved political influence or analyses of debates in the United Nations General Assembly. Baturo is the author of Democracy, Dictatorship, and Term Limits (University of Michigan Press, 2014).
Professor Claudia Derichs (Philipps University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany)
Claudia Derichs holds the chair for Comparative Politics and International Development Studies at Philipps University of Marburg since March 2010. Previously, Derichs was professor of Political Science at University of Hildesheim and Assistant professor at the University Duisburg-Essen. She studied Japanese and Arabic studies alongside Social Sciences at the Universities of Bonn, Tokyo, and Cairo, and holds a translator diploma for Japanese and Arabic. PhD at the Free University Berlin, Derichs conducted her Habilitation at the University of Duisburg-Essen in 2004. Her research focuses on the politics of the Near and Middle East, East and South East Asia, as well as political Islam, Gender Studies and Japanese politics. Among her recent publications are Constitutional Rights in Multiethnic States — The Case of Malaysia (In: Ehlers, Dirk/Henning Glaser/Kittisak Prokati (eds.); Constitutionalism and Good Governance: Eastern and Western Perspectives. Baden-Baden: Nomos 2014, pp. 255-279); Women’s Movements and Countermovements. The Quest for Gender Equality in Southeast Asia and the Middle East” (ed., Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014); and Dynasties and Female Political Leaders in Asia. Gender, Power and Pedigree (eds., Berlin: LIT, 2013).
Professor Yi Feng (Claremont Graduate University, Los Angeles, USA)
Yi Feng is the Luther Lee Jr. Memorial Chair in Government at Claremont Graduate University where he served as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs (2006-2011) and Dean of School of Politics and Economics (2003-2006). He obtained his MA and PhD in Political Science, preceding an MS in Public Policy Analysis, all at The University of Rochester, New York. His areas of concentration are international political economy, public policy analysis, and quantitative methodology. His professional service includes the General Program Chair, organizing the International Studies Association Annual Conference (Hawaii, 2004-05) and Editor of International Interactions, a premier journal in international studies (2001-2005). Yi Feng’s research focuses on political and economic development. He has published extensively on topics such as economic growth, investment, human capital, international trade, demographic transition, and political regime transitions in various economics and political science peer-reviewed journals. His book, Democracy, Governance and Economic Performance: Theory and Evidence (MIT, 2003, 2005) has been cited as “notable for its broad scope, its thorough grounding in empirical evidence and for the insights it offers into complex social processes. This is interdisciplinary research at its best” (Eirik G. Furubotn 2003). His current research interests include global power shifts, globalization, and regional political, economic, and business development.
Professor Michael Herb (Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA)
Michael Herb’s research interests focus on issues related to the Arab monarchies of the Gulf. He has written on the political consequences of oil wealth, on the relationship between taxation and democracy, and on how monarchism shapes the process of democratization. He maintains the Kuwait Politics Database, the most comprehensive and authoritative source of information on Kuwaiti elections. He is the author of The Wages of Oil: Parliaments and Economic Development in Kuwait and the UAE (Cornell University Press, 2014) and All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies (State University of New York Press, 1999). Herb is Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University and holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of California.
Professor Femke van Esch (Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands)
Femke van Esch works as an assistant professor of European Integration at the Utrecht School of Governance (USG). She holds an expertise in European economic and monetary policy-making, EU leadership, and the method of comparative cognitive mapping (CCM). In her PhD thesis she studied the role of leaders' beliefs in the establishment of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), which was characterised by EU-scholar Desmond Dinan as 'superior in every respect.' Since obtaining her PhD, Van Esch has studied the European response to the current Euro-crisis focusing in particular on the role of leaders' beliefs and national culture. Among other things, she is work-package leader and part of the management board of the Transcrisis Project that is funded by the EU Horizon2020 scheme. The project, which is carried out in an international consortium, focuses on the topic of enhancing the EU's transboundary crisis management capacities. Strategies for multi-level leadership. Over the years, Van Esch has taught numerous courses in European governance, international relations, political science, and qualitative research and has won the USG Best Young Teacher’s Award twice. In addition to her academic work, Femke is a member of the Commission European Integration of the Advisory Council of International Affairs, which advises the Dutch Ministers of Foreign Affairs and European Affairs, and the Minister of Defense.