# Why are maximum age restrictions so rare?

As per Are there countries with upper age limits for voters or candidates? only Uganda has age restrictions for Presidential candidates. The Netherlands have a limit for mayors and some US states have a limit for judges.

But _why_ are these restrictions so rare? Surely younger politicians would push for a limit to increase their chance of obtaining power before they are senile? And likewise (as evidenced by both Trump and Biden recently) voters don't want to see 80+ year olds running their country. Have there been any studies on this subject in political science?

Here is your problem:

> Surely younger politicians would push for a limit to increase their chance of obtaining power

The people who would benefit from this aren't in office. The people that this would negatively impact are in office. What do you think they would vote for? The people in office would make government positions "for life, and maybe a little bit longer" if they thought that they could. That is the nature of politics.

Its kinda like expecting politicians to vote for a pay cut. While it has occasionally happened, it doesn't happen very often, and it's usually quietly removed soon after.

Or how CEOs layoff people instead of doing a C-Staff paycut. Generally speaking, people behave selfishly.

I guess it's a combination of the following:

  * Where would you reasonably draw that line?
  * While not causally related age correlates with experience
  * If they are young and successful they stick until they are old...
  * Old people know the game and have the networks. Know the powerful people, as the people older then them dropped out, while their generational peers are the one in power and they know them better either personally or what events shaped them...
  * ... Which can be used actively (by themselves) and passively ("Hey could YOU talk to them about this proposal"), but either way makes them stay.
  * As politicians they are able to make the rules, so given they are old why would they restrict themselves
  * Old people have build a reputation for themselves, which might exceed themselves. So they might remain as figureheads and straw man for other individuals, groups and movements.
  * The thing is the image of what a person is like doesn't update if you don't see them regularly or only see them in staged events, so they can maintain an image for much longer than they would reasonably be able to do in real life and some people might depend on that and facilitate it because of that.
  * That's really not a novel thing, "senate" is literally derived from "council of old people".
  * The thing is statistical arguments about the development of people are not perfect, but when it comes to the human development the stages into adulthood are usually a lot more similar than the paths of life you take afterwards and in consequences the paths in which you decay. There are people who decay early, while others stay fit for a long time, in some cases the body takes a toll but the mind is still sharp, while in other cases the body might stay healthy but the mind is slowly fading. And that can be a slower or faster process and is subject to individual parameters. So one line to catch them all is difficult.



Also if you were to set one down, you'd need to adjust that with life expectancy and advances in medicine and in general unless they are so mentally unfit that they need a legal and medical guidance, removing their active and passive voting right **IS A HUGE VIOLATION OF THEIR HUMAN RIGHT AND CITIZEN RIGHTS**. Seriously don't take that lightly with an ever increasing population you would essentially form a growing group of second class citizens. That also applies to young people but usually the voting right is granted around the age where they'd realize they're getting screwed out of it.

As another example, the Kingdom of Denmark (Europe) has a maximum age for judges and shorter validity of drivers licenses above about 70 years old. For driver licenses, old drivers just need to get regularly updated signatures from a doctor that they are still physically and mentally fit to drive (not blind or senile), doctors are supposed to examine the driver before signing that. For judges, the constitution specifies "A judge who has completed his 65. year may, however, be retired, but without loss of income up to the time when he is due for retirement on account of age" (that ordinary retirement age for judges is about 70). There is (for the reasons discussed in other answers) no maximum age for other high offices, nor for the ability to vote or stand in elections, in fact the election law has special provisions to facilitate voting by people who are blind or confined to an institution, unless under a conservatorship .

Simply because the life expectancy has increased a lot since various constitutions originally written and the issue of age and people in the 80+ age bracket holding office wasn't an issue.

Even if you only go back to 1860 the life expectancy has almost doubled from almost 40 to almost 80

Life expectancy (from birth) in the United States, from 1860 to 2020*

In the case of Uganda it was written in 1995 which means that modern life expectancy was likely taken into account.