Candidate Ambition and Advancement Under Term Limits

In this paper, I present a model of candidate entry into a two-tiered hierarchy of political positons with the objective of exploring the extent to which term limits at lower level political positions alter the average quality of office-seekers for higher level political positions. In addition, this paper analyzes whether improvement in quality in upper level office holders comes at the expense of lower level political positions. The results suggest that term limits on lower level elected offices reduce the expected quality of officeholders at the lower level without guaranteeing an improvement in quality at the upper level.