Who’s getting the office? Party dominance and elected executives’ career path

I examine the role of party dominance on elected politicians’ career path. Politicians’ career is divided between political and technical or administrative posts. To examine this relationship, I use data from the Mexican states over the period 2000-2014. The paper exploits the 2008 US financial crisis as a source of exogenous variation in incumbents’ popularity level. Results support theoretical predictions that elected politicians’ profile in states with a dominant party changed more than in competitive states after the financial crisis. I find that after the 2008 US financial crisis, political experience of new elected governors in states with a dominant party decreased by 36 percentage points, on average, compared to states with no dominant party. Results are robust to different measures of political and technical or administrative career path.