The Alpha Political Male

Mario Francesco Carillo and Marta Reynal-Querol

No 21733, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: The alpha male, associated with traditional masculinity features such as competitiveness, assertiveness, and risk tolerance, embodies a biologically grounded dimension of personality. We construct a novel dataset of political leaders' masculinity — measured by facial width-to-height ratio, an established biological marker for traditional masculine behavior driven by testosterone — for more than 2,000 national leaders across 184 countries over 150 years. Leaders’ masculinity has increased over the past 70 years in both democracies and autocracies, across rich and poor countries, and across all regions. Benchmarking against Olympic athletes, Wikipedia-notable individuals, and U.S. population data, we document that political leaders exhibit systematically higher masculinity than other groups, in both democracies and autocracies. Leaders' masculinity surges during periods of geopolitical uncertainty, such as the World Wars, the Cold War, and recent decades. Two empirical applications show that masculine leaders are related to democratic change and international war, and these links depend on the institutional environment.

Keywords: Institutions; Masculinity; Wars (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07
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