Militarized Interstate Disputes and Term Limit Evasions

• In Event: Political Leadership and Conflict

Abstract

When presidents take office they know the institutional rules that constrain the amount of time they are allowed to govern. However, some leaders move to change the rules concerning term limits, extending the amount of time they can rule to make sure they will be allowed to run for reelection. Research in this area has focused primarily on domestic factors that cause TLE attempts and has given scant attention to international explanations. For example, existing scholarly work fails to examine how an existing conflict in a specific country can affect the hearts and minds of the people in terms of presidential term limits. We argue that militarized interstate disputes can be utilized by the leader to create a rally around the flag effect and convince people that changing the rules is necessary so that leadership can remain constant. To test this hypothesis, our paper draws on two datasets: the first is data for 417 presidential terms from 63 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America from 1985 to 2015. The other is the Military Interstate Disputes dataset from Correlates of War. If our hypothesis is correct, we should see a significant and positive effect of MIDs on the probability of a TLE attempt occurring, while also considering other domestic factors known to be related to this phenomenon. This research is one of the first works (known to authors) that informs us about the effects of militarized interstate disputes on successful and unsuccessful term limit evasion attempts.

Authors

• Hilal Sert, Georgia State University

• Anthony James DeMattee, The Carter Center

• David Carroll, Carter Center - Emory University