Petered

Christian Gläßel and Adam Scharpf’s “Making a Career in Dictatorship” introduces “career pressure” as a twist on the Peter Principle: officials promoted to their level of incompetence, rather than stagnating, may take on high-risk, labor-intensive or morally contentious tasks to reestablish their value and keep climbing. Alternatively, they may sabotage superiors through false allegations or leaked secrets to create vacancies above them. The authors argue this dynamic explains how ostensibly incompetent leaders can surpass their competence ceiling and even outpace previously ahead peers. The mechanism matters because it reframes workplace dysfunction as an active, destabilizing force rather than a static plateau, with petered leaders becoming threats to colleagues as they protect their own positions. Watch for further empirical work testing career pressure beyond authoritarian regimes and in conventional corporate hierarchies.