This handbook provides the first comparative account of the people who govern from the heart of the executive branch: executive politicians, advisers, and senior bureaucrats, together understood as the ‘Executive Triangle’ of modern political systems.
Utilising a unique dataset of over 7,000 individual career profiles from more than 700 executive institutions, including ministries, prime ministerial, presidential and government offices, across 34 political systems worldwide, it explores patterns of elite recruitment, gender representation, educational attainment and expertise, career advancement, and politicisation within the executive triangle. In doing so, the book sheds light on several important themes, including gender distribution in politico-administrative elite positions, the competence and expertise of executive elites, their career trajectories, and how politicised they are. These questions are especially pressing in an age of complex ‘polycrisis’ and a global trend of democratic recession that demands responsive, resilient and effective executive leadership.
The book will serve as an authoritative guide for scholars and students of public administration and comparative politics, as well as a valuable resource for practitioners and policymakers.

Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling is Sir Francis Hill Professor of Political Science at the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, UK.
Tom Bellens is Postdoctoral Fellow in Computational Political Science at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. 
Anne Bellon is Associate Professor of Political Sociology at École Polytechnique, IP Paris, France. 
Levent Demirelli is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Istanbul Beykent University, Türkiye.  
Pierre Squevin is Assistant Professor at the European School of Political and Social Sciences (ESPOL), Université Catholique de Lille, France.
Fanni Tóth is Career Development Fellow in Comparative Politics at the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, UK.
Sylvia Veit is Professor of Public Administration and Digital Government at Helmut Schmidt University, Germany.
Kutsal Yeşilkagit is Professor of International Governance at the Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University, the Netherlands.