Democracy, Dictatorship, and Term Limits

4. The Costs and Benefits of Leaving Presidential Office

4 The Costs and Benefits of Leaving Presidential Office What explains the success of modern Caesars — incumbent presidents ? In the previous chapter I explored major obstacles for executives contemplating tenure extensions. The strength of a president vis-à-vis his or her own party, legislature and judiciary, the extent of mass collective action, as well as the role of international players, are the key factors that can prevent self-perpetuation in power. In this chapter however I turn not to what restraints presidents — the strength of democracy, institutional checks and balances and other factors — but to what drives them, motivates them to take over their regimes and extend their terms: monetary and personal motives to remain in power, the value of holding office. In chapter 5 I turn to three illustrative cases in order to underline how the costs and benefits of holding office explain the behavior of several presidents when the latter were confronted with term limits. In turn, chapter 6 presents a series of empirical analyses that examine the value of holding office and constitutional compliance. The following example illustrates the intuition behind the argument . In April 2003 Boston University African Presidential Archives and Research Centre held the first-ever roundtable of former African presidents. Six ex-presidents altogether — Soglo of Benin, Masire of Botswana, Rawlings of Ghana, Mwinyi of Tanzania, Ramgoolam of Mauritius and Kaunda of Zambia — attended the gathering.1 This roundtable became possible only in 2003 because, to put it bluntly, there had not been enough former African presidents around to man a roundtable in the past. The presidents had either still been in power, had died during their time in office, or had hidden in exile. Almost half of those who exited from power in Africa in the preceding period 91 92 Democracy, Dictatorship, and Term Limits died or went into prison or exile within one year of their departure from power. In contrast, at the time of the 2003 meeting, their host country, the United States, had five former presidents alive and active in public life. This one country alone could field half the number of former heads of state as the whole continent of Africa. It seems that one of the fathers of the US Constitution, Alexander Hamilton, who worried whether it would bring any good to have “half a dozen men who had had credit enough to be raised to the seat of the supreme magistracy, wandering among the people like discontented ghosts, and sighing for a place which they were destined never more to possess” (1999 [1788], 412), was proved wrong, at least with regard to his own country. The argument that I advance is simple: politicians will try not to part from office not only because they can, but also because they stand something to lose. Earlier in the introduction I used the example of President Milošević to underline that political leaders often attempt to remain in power because of valid concerns over their personal security and over retaining wealth should they have to depart from office. Likewise, there are presidents that choose to step down even when they face similar or even less significant institutional constraints, than those leaders that attempt to remain in office. What goes on in the head of a president who faces the prospect of stepping down? What is at stake? If presidents desire re-election to the extent that they are willing to overturn constitutional clauses pertaining to term limits, what are their rewards of political office, financial or otherwise? Can these rewards, once accumulated, be consumed after leaving office, and can similar rewards be obtained in the private sector? More importantly can different structures of rewards, given existing constraints, explain whether rulers comply with constitutions, or not? These are not trivial questions and, if addressed, will permit us to understand better what it is that makes political actors comply with democratic rules, or not. The argument takes into account the costs and benefits of staying in power in different polities, for individual presidents; a simple framework can be used to explain whether presidents the world over retain their office.2 Throughout I differentiate between political constraints and personal, mainly monetary, motives, in order to explain whether presidents will be able to, or want to, remain in office. Studies exist that distinguish between motives and constraints of political actors (e.g., Decalo 1990). Thus, Brooker (2000) in his study of the genesis of nondemocratic regimes, and building on earlier work by Finer...