Our Seminars & Workshops

Title: Leaders Who Lose It: What Can We Do?

Abstract: This talk will present an ongoing book project (with co-author Guido Friebel, Goethe University Frankfurt). We argue first that the age of the world's political leaders is increasing in ways that pose concerns about their ability to function. We provide worldwide data about political leaders from 1870 to 2015 showing that the main mechanism underlying leader ageing is selective turnover: comparing across countries, circumstances that favor relatively older individuals entering office also make it relatively difficult to replace them. Furthermore, within-country comparisons show an absence of error-correction: increases in age and/or tenure of leaders produce no offsetting increase in the probability of replacing them. Secondly, we argue that recent medical evidence about the impact of dementia on decision making suggests that the damage to meta cognition (leader's ability to understand the extent of their own impairment) is more dangerous than its direct impact on cognitive skills. We set out a theoretical framework that helps to explain these facts, and discuss potential measures that might lower the associated economic, social and security risks.