Leader natural‑experiments as causal test

Rather than arguing in the abstract, compare comparable cases where leaders experience exogenous shocks (death, sudden incapacity, bereavement, forced absence) to estimate the causal effect of leadership. This treats episodes of leader disruption as quasi‑experimental variation and links political/historical claims to observable outcomes. — If adopted, this method would push political debate from heroic attribution to evidence‑based evaluation and change how voters, boards, and historians judge leaders and institutional design.