Presidential Leadership in the Americas since Independence
Jointly written with Ted Goertzel, our book was first published in 2016 and is now available in paperback from Lexington.
The book provides a broad historical and comparative study of presidents and key leaders in eight countries (US, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela and Mexico) over 200 years.
The book is perhaps the first of its kind to directly compare the experience of presidential leadership in the US with those in Latin America.
We examined the effectiveness of different presidents by looking at the opportunities and constraints they faced and proposed a ranking system to identify the most successful presidents across the whole period.
“This fascinating book gives a sweeping account of nearly 200 years of history to determine which presidents in the US and seven Latin American countries were the most ‘transformational’, for good or for ill. The book identifies and ranks outstanding leaders and justifies those choices with detailed historical and institutional analysis. By focusing primarily on historical moments when great change took place, the authors uncover the first-order impact of presidents and highlight the many ways through which that impact can unfold.”
“Burton and Goertzel approach an old issue in an innovative manner. ....There is much in this book to be commended, especially the conscious effort to bring in historical and political science approaches.”