The Selection and Tenure of Foreign Ministers Around the World

This Element focuses on foreign ministers, making an empirical contribution by presenting an original dataset on the personal and professional background of foreign ministers, spanning 13 countries and more than 200 years. The authors use data to answer three questions: who are they; why are they with features appointed; and why do some of them have longer tenure than others? They tend to be highly educated men of politics in their 50s and leave mostly by force by the head of government. They are appointed both based on their affinity to and to complement the experiences of the head of government. They stay longer in office when they are expected or observed to be high performing, but they are more at risk of losing their posts to deflect criticism from foreign policy failures.