The Reelection Issue and the Optimal Duration of Presidential Terms

Abstract

Presidential democratic regimes impose constitutional limits on the duration of the president’s term and on the possible occurrence of subsequent reelections. Term limits and reelection restrictions also exist in the government of corporations and firms for the chairman of the board and for the board members. In this paper, an attempt is made to identify what the major reasons for this limitations and restrictions could be. A related archetypical cost structure, also found in Inventory Theory and Waiting Lines Theory, is identified and modeled to study factors such as the cost of corruption, which are key factors in determining the optimal duration for a government term. A game theoretical consideration of corruption and term limitations strategies is presented at the end of the paper.