In this study, Hanna Bäck and Jan Teorell with colleagues engage in the debate about leadership and foreign policy outcomes by focusing on the tenure of foreign ministers. They ask why some foreign ministers stay longer in office than others.
Using a unique data set on over 1,100 foreign ministers in the world’s thirteen great powers from the early modern period to the present, they show that foreign ministers have longer tenure when they have a diplomatic background or when the country experiences an armed conflict resulting in a win or in a compromise agreement. With the publication of the article they also release the dataset on foreign ministers.
Dataset on foreign ministers on stanceatlund.org