Record Details


Field	Value

Title	Replication Data for: Billionaire Politicians: A Global Perspective

Identifier	https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/6P9SUS

Creator	Krcmaric, Daniel

Publisher	Harvard Dataverse

Description	This article introduces an original dataset of formal political participation for over 2,000 individuals included in the Forbes Billionaires List. We find that billionaire politicians are a surprisingly common phenomenon: Over 11% of the world’s billionaires have held or sought political office. Even compared to other elite groups known for producing politicians from their ranks, this is a high rate of political participation. Moreover, billionaires focus their political ambitions on influential positions, have a strong track record of winning elections, and lean to the right ideologically. We also document substantial cross-national variation: A country’s number of billionaire politicians is not simply a product of its total number of billionaires but is instead related to regime type. Indeed, billionaires formally enter the political sphere at a much higher rate in autocracies than in democracies. We conclude by discussing the normative implications of our findings and outlining a new research agenda on billionaire politicians.

Subject	Social Sciences billionaires; Forbes; money in politics; leaders; elites

Date	2023-10-30

Contributor	Krcmaric, Daniel

ICAR Research Data Repository for Knowledge Management