No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Political Leaders and Democratic Elections
... Though subject to intense academic debate (Aarts et al., 2011;Garzia, 2014;Bittner, 2011), it is intuitive that a leader will affect the party's electoral performance. Politics, including electoral politics, is seen as increasingly personalised, where the focus is on the leader, and political organisations are embodied by the leader (Rahat and Kenig, 2018). ...
... Though it is disputed whether leaders have direct effects on party popularity and voting behaviour (Aarts et al., 2011;Bittner, 2011;King, 2002;Pedersen & Schumacher, 2015) there is an acceptance that these indirect effects are important determinants of party support. There are a small number of explanations for change in party support (as opposed to the overall level of party support which might be due to long term structural factors such as cleavages, electoral rules etc.). ...
... Thus, the party leader is commonly seen as crucial to a party's electoral performance (Lobo, 2018). This explains why scholars have recently studied how leaders and leadership changes affect parties' electoral fortunes more systematically (Pedersen and Schumacher, 2015;Murr, 2015;Bittner, 2011) even if leader and party popularity are hard to separate (Aarts et al., 2011). ...
Party leaders are often regarded as crucial to a party’s success. Successful leaders tend to be big personalities who dominate their party’s organisation, policy development, and electoral campaigns. But does that control come with a price? We test to see if such leaders damage their parties in the medium term. This happens because strong leaders might be ceded too much control of the party organisation, policy and electoral strategy. We specifically hypothesise that political parties will go through a period of leadership instability and electoral decline after strong leaders step down. Using a dataset with elections under party leaders in nine countries over a 25-year period, and a qualitative case study, we find some evidence for the theory, which should prompt further research of the question.
... En cuanto a los efectos del liderazgo, estos no solo se explican desde una óptica de racionalidad sino como consecuencia de interacciones psicosociales complejas (Lasswell, 1936;Paige, 1977;Popkin, 1991), viéndose incrementado, desde hace años, su impacto sobre el voto a causa de los fenómenos de personalización (Karvonen, 2010;McAllister, 2007) y de presidencialización (Poguntke y Webb, 2005) de la política contemporánea en la mayoría de democracias occidentales (Aarts et al., 2011). Así, la figura del líder ayuda a la simplificación de las dinámicas políticas y electorales (García-Hípola et al., 2021: 56), siendo no sólo la percepción sobre la capacidad y las cualidades de los líderes políticos lo que tiene efectos sobre la orientación del voto, sino también las reacciones de simpatía, adhesión o rechazo que experimentan los individuos hacia estas figuras de referencia, cuya imagen y concepto sirven para simplificar la oferta política. ...
... Por otro lado, la valoración realizada a los líderes también ha mostrado un gran poder predictivo, tanto cuando ha sido positiva hacia el líder del partido más cercano al elector como cuando ha sido negativa al resto de líderes políticos, validando la tendencia de una importancia creciente del efecto electoral del liderazgo en las democracias occidentales (Aarts et al., 2011). No obstante, es de destacar el hecho de que, para todos los casos, los líderes del resto de formaciones políticas generan lo que la literatura ha denominado efectos negativos del liderazgo, algo que apuntaría a los cada vez más posibles dinámicas polarizadoras que los líderes vienen registrando en nuestro país en torno a sus figuras (Olaz y Ortiz-García, 2021). ...
Resumen: En el presente artículo respondemos a la pregunta «¿qué explica la intención de voto en el escenario postpandemia?» a partir de un modelo logístico binario que identifica los condicionantes del comportamiento electoral de la población española respecto a los principales cuatro partidos de ámbi-to nacional, con datos del Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas. El análisis muestra que, en primer lugar, la juventud-población de 18 a 34 años-resulta una variable importante en la explicación de una mayor probabilidad de votar por Unidas Podemos y de menores probabilidades de votar por PSOE o por Partido Popular, mientras que el factor edad apenas interfiere en el voto a Vox. La otra variable de gran poder predictivo es la valoración realizada a los líderes, tanto positiva hacia el líder del partido más cercano al elector como negativa al resto de líderes políticos. Por otra parte, se muestran signos moderados de voto económico entre los potenciales votantes de Unidas Podemos y de Vox así como una menor probabilidad de voto femenino para ambos, especialmen-te acusada para el partido ultraconservador. La ideología queda en un tercer plano, resultando moderadamente explicativa sólo para el voto al PP. En con-clusión, la juventud y el liderazgo se establecen como los principales factores predictivos del voto en el escenario postpandemia y frente a un nuevo ciclo electoral en 2023.
... In such circumstances, background and identity characteristics (e.g. gender) are relevant or even crucial (Blais, 2011;Celis & Meier, 2006;Mansbridge, 1999). The underlying logic or mechanism is that identity characteristics reflect particular life experiences (Celis & Childs, 2014;Mansbridge, 1999). ...
... Voters form impressions of candidates by inferring character traits (e.g. McGraw, 2003); such traits are cues for future political behaviour (Blais, 2011;McGraw, 2003). In a seminal study by Kinder et al. (1980), respondents had to describe an ideal president and based on the traits they mentioned, two clusters were compiled: competence and trust traits. ...
Fit for Office? The Perception of Female and Male Politicians by Dutch Voters
The underrepresentation of women in politics is a worldwide phenomenon and the Netherlands fit the pattern: about 39% of the Dutch MPs are female. Based on social role incongruity theory, it is expected that female politicians are evaluated more negatively than male politicians since women do not fit the dominant male politician role. However, most research is conducted in the United States, that is, a candidate-centred system where individual characteristics play an important role. This article focuses on the party-centred parliamentary context in which we examine (1) whether gender stereotypes are present among citizens and (2) to what extent these stereotypes influence the evaluation of politicians. We do this by conducting an experimental vignette survey design. We find that at the mass level there is no difference between the evaluation of male and female politicians, although gender stereotypes are present.
... Consequently, voters have become more volatile, losing their connection to a single party, and switching between parties for each election. 5 Rather than party identities and broad ideologies, short-term factors such as the state of the economy (Lewis-Beck, 1988;LewisBeck & Nadeau, 2011), political issues (van derBrug, 2004;Fournier et al., 2003;Walczak & van der Brug, 2012) and the image of the political leader (Aarts, Blais, & Schmitt, 2011;Bittner, 2011) have become more important factors to explain voting behavior. In other words, in order to cope with the loss of affective ties with a political party, voters may search for new emotional connections with leaders and individual politicians instead. ...
... Whereas traditionally voters casted their vote on the basis of their socio-demographic group or party identification, nowadays voters increasingly base their vote on short-term factors such as relevant issues, but also political leaders. A number of studies have indicated that a favorable image of the party leader can lead to electoral gains for the party (Aarts et al., 2011;Bittner, 2011), although others have only found a limited effect (King, 2002). Decentralized, or second-order personalization on the other hand, refers to the role of ordinary candidates in the mind of voters and suggest that candidates other than the party leader (also) increasingly play a role in the voter's electoral decision-making process. ...
... Although the results show signs of increased personalized electoral participation in recent elections, the main conclusion is that candidate influence is neither a new phenomenon nor exclusive to voters without partisan loyalties. This finding aligns with the empirical literature on personalized politics (e.g., Aarts et al., 2011;Karvonen, 2010;King, 2002;Kriesi, 2012) and underscores the need for leader effect studies to pose new questions. Particularly critical is exploring the psychological mechanisms underlying why merely approving a candidate's qualities is often insufficient to mobilize voters, while polarized perceptions consistently drive voter turnout across all voter groups. ...
The personalization thesis claims that leaders’ influence over voters has increased. While research consistently shows that candidates influence party choice, we know little about their effects on the prior decision to turn out in elections. This article represents the first study to examine the relationship between candidate trait evaluations and turnout decisions in the American context and the first longitudinal study of the phenomenon. The study utilizes ANES data to test three hypotheses drawn from theories on electoral participation and personalized politics in U.S. presidential elections between 1980 and 2020. The results show that while trait evaluations of Republican candidates consistently affect turnout, perceptions of Democratic candidates’ competence mobilize voters in specific elections. Moreover, individual polarization promotes turnout, particularly among partisan dealigned voters with different perceptions of the candidates’ competence. The results indicate a personalization of electoral participation that can benefit civic engagement and democratic quality.
... Much of the empirical evidence for leader effects on voting behavior has focused on vote choice (Aarts et al., 2011;Barisione, 2009;Garzia, 2012;Gattermann & de Vreese, 2022). These studies have demonstrated that voters consider leaderrelated calculations when making their electoral choices. ...
Do evaluations of presidential candidates in the US affect the level of voter turnout? Voters’ affections towards presidential candidates, we contend, can either stimulate or inhibit voter inclinations to turnout. Voters are more inclined to turn out when they have positive feelings towards the candidate with which they identify because they want “their” candidate to win. But citizens may also be more likely to vote when they dislike the candidate of the party with which they do not identify. In that case, voters are motivated to prevent the candidate from being elected. Utilizing the American National Election Studies data for 1968–2020, the analysis finds that the likelihood of voting is affected by (a) the degree to which voters’ affections towards the candidate differ from one another (having a clear‐cut choice between options) and (b) the nature of the affections (negative or positive) towards both in‐ and out‐party candidates.
... Hence, a picture emerges of conservative governments associated with sustained growth performance and higher inequality, prevailing in countries with non-inclusive growth where majoritarian systems foster competition between two main political forces while others play a subordinate role. Most interestingly for the hypotheses put forward here, we can observe a tendency in two-party models for political proposals to converge towards moderate and centrist positions (Iversen & Soskice, 2001), corresponding to greater uncertainty with regard to the political programme (Evans & Tilley, 2012) and a stronger personalisation of political leadership (Aarts, Blais, & Schmitt, 2011). All these contextual elements allow us to better appreciate the strategic repositioning of the Democrats and Labour in the transitional phase of the 1990s. ...
... It can also be drawn from the sub-themes above that in any country where these factors are obtainable, democracy will face a serious obstacle that will hinder its success. Many scholars (Diamond et al. 2001;Gunther et al. 2002;Biezen, 2003;Lindberg, 2006;Karz, 2007;Heller & Mershon, 2009;Aarts et al. 2011;Dalton et al. 2011 andMichalik, 2013) argued that the lack of sound parties with an ideological leadership and a principled membership will affect the process of democracy and good governance in a state. The issues from the Nigerian leadership crisis can be seen in line with the views of these scholars. ...
Political parties are the engine wheel and the machinery on which the vehicle of democracy thrives. Democracies require sound parties with focused leadership and a clear ideology for national development on the assumption of power. In Nigeria, the two dominant ruling parties of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) which ruled for sixteen years and the All Progressives Congress (APC) which is currently in its fifth year of ruling are pre-occupied with internal leadership crises which collapsed the former and are threatening to tear the latter today. The inability of the country’s political leaders to establish parties with a dedicated and pragmatic party leadership is affecting the democratic governance in the country despite having the experience of the longest experiment in the history of the country. The research utilised both primary and secondary sources of data. The primary sources of data consist of an in-depth personal interview with some selected stakeholders in the subject matter of study and direct participant observation. The secondary sources are documented materials such as books, journals, internet sources and other related documents. A suitable framework; Game Theory was adopted to support the views presented in the work. The data obtained were discussed, analysed and interpreted using thematic content analysis and statistical modules. The work discovered that the leadership crises in the two dominant parties in Nigeria are affecting democratic delivery and good governance because of the power tussle. The work recommends among others that the parties must develop a culture of internal democracy and ideological focus with a frame for national interest and development.
... Instead, the dependent variable vote choice is measured vis-à-vis a generic party (0: did not vote for this party; 1: voted for this party), repeated as many times per respondent as the number of parties competing on that given election (for a more detailed discussion, see van der Eijk & Franklin, 1996). 4 Because it allows for the consideration of vote choices for any of the political parties and leaders running in an election, stacked data matrix estimation has been widely adopted in cross-national analyses of leader effects on vote choice (see, e.g., Aarts, Blais, & Schmitt, 2011;Curtice & Lisi, 2014;Garzia, 2014). 5 The key covariates in our model are voters' evaluation of party leaders measured by feeling thermometers ranging from 0 (dislike) to 10 (like) 6 and the strength of their closeness to a political party (0: not close to that party; 1: only a sympathizer; 2: fairly close; 3: very close). ...
Leaders without Partisans examines the changing impact of party leader evaluations on voters’ behavior in parliamentary elections. The decline of traditional social cleavages, the pervasive mediatization of the political scene, and the media’s growing tendency to portray politics in “personalistic” terms all led to the hypothesis that leaders matter more for the way individuals vote and, often, the way elections turn out. This study offers the most comprehensive longitudinal assessment of this hypothesis so far. The authors develop a composite theoretical framework – based on currently disconnected strands of research from party, media, and electoral studies – and test it empirically on the most encompassing set of national election study datasets ever assembled. The labor-intensive harmonization effort produces an unprecedented dataset pooling information for a total of 129 parliamentary elections conducted between 1961 and 2018 in 14 West European countries.
The book provides evidence of the longitudinal growth in leader effects on vote choice and on turnout. The process of partisan dealignment and changes in the structure of mass communication in Western societies are identified as the main drivers of personalization in voting behavior.
... Funk, 1996Funk, , 1999Stewart & Clarke, 1992). The comparative literature on this topic suggests that sociodemographic characteristics as well as traits that candidates might strategically project are most salient to voters in countries with singlemember district (SMD) electoral systems (see Aarts et al., 2013;King, 2002). More importantly for our present purposes, a number of recent studies suggest the salience of candidate characteristics is also conditioned by partisan polarization (Buttice & Stone, 2012;Green & Hobolt, 2008;Stone & Simas, 2010). ...
This paper presents the results of a conjoint survey experiment in which Swiss citizens were asked to choose among parliamentary candidates with different class profiles determined by occupation, education, and income. Existing survey‐experimental literature on this topic suggests that respondents are indifferent to the class profiles of candidates or biased against candidates with high‐status occupations and high incomes. We find that respondents are biased against upper middle‐class candidates as well as routine working‐class candidates. While the bias against upper middle‐class candidates is primarily a bias among working‐class individuals, the bias against routine working‐class candidates is most pronounced among middle‐class individuals. Our supplementary analysis of observational data confirms the bias against routine working‐class candidates, but not the bias against upper middle‐class candidates. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
... However, researchers are far from unanimous about whether leaders have a real impact on voters since the former's results depend on what countries (political systems) and time periods they examine and what methodology they apply. Some researchers (Aarts et al., 2011;King, 2002) reach the sceptical conclusion that leader evaluation is not an important factor in voting patterns. In contrast, many studies (Bittner, 2011;Garzia et al., 2020;Lobo and Curtice, 2015) have found that leaders do matter for voter choice when the latter phenomenon is appraised with an appropriate research design and conceptualisation. ...
Recent political developments suggest that political followership has played increasingly vital roles in modern democratic politics. However, scholarship seemingly lacks proper conceptual and methodological tools for analysing why and how citizens follow their leaders, and what the role of this relationship is in personalised politics and political leadership. Addressing the research gap, this article turns to generic leadership studies for help and introduces its follower-centric models into the field of political science. This venture opens with a review and comparison of some of the different perspectives about political followers in the scholarship on political leadership and personalisation, taking account of their limitations. It then moves on to assess follower-centric models and their empirical results, focusing on observers’ perceptions about the characteristics and behaviours of leaders in the attribution of leadership. Based on these models, the article offers a balanced perspective about leader–follower relations. Recommendations for future research directions are presented in the concluding sections.
... Does the local proximity of party leaders affect their popularity among voters from the same region? Previous literature has extensively discussed and examined the importance of leaders' sociodemographic characteristicssuch as gender, age and ethnicityin politics and voting behavior (Sigelman et al., 1995;Banducci and Karp, 2000;Cutler, 2002;Aarts et al., 2011;Lobo and Curtice, 2015;O'Brien, 2019;Sevi, 2020). Given the current trend towards personalization of politics (e.g. ...
The friends-and-neighbors effect, which refers to voters' tendency to support politicians near hometown areas, has not yet been tested systematically for party leaders. Linking a built-for-purpose dataset on 266 leaders to a sample of 380,208 voters from 50 country elections in 19 parliamentary democracies drawn from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project, this article examines the effect of party leaders' local proximity on voters' leader evaluations and voting intentions. I hypothesize that leaders receive more positive evaluations and electoral support from voters in the district where they run for election. The results show that shared district increases voters' sympathy for leaders and their inclination to vote for the party of ‘near’ leaders. While the location of party leaders affects voters in all electoral systems, I find that the friends-and-neighbors effect on leader evaluations and party vote choice is stronger in systems with personalized, preferential and combined ballots.
... In this framework, we account for contextual variation employing election fixed effects. We also control for a respondent's like-dislike rating of the leader's political party -as citizens' party preferences strongly shape their evaluations of party leaders (Aarts et al, 2011). 10 Table 1 details a series of regression models tapping the determinants of leader popularity. ...
Female politicians are assumed to suffer from gender bias in the political arena but existing research finds little evidence of an electoral cost to being a female candidate. Existing studies, however, have focused mostly on candidates, not leaders for top political office. Also, most evidence on this topic comes from a small number of countries. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Integrated Module Dataset, covering 600 leaders in 46 states globally over 20 years, we show that even though female party leaders are, on average, more liked than male leaders, this advantage is limited to experienced politicians. Furthermore, we demonstrate that despite this popularity advantage, parties that have a female leader do not appear to benefit from their leadership electorally.
Key messages
We find that female leaders are, on average, more liked than male leaders.
This popularity advantage of female leaders is limited to experienced politicians.
Citizens are not more likely to vote for a party with a female leader. </ul
... It has reinforced the propensity for individualised campaignseven across party-centred systemspotentially contradicting 'political parties' structural communication strategies' (Enli & Skogerbø, 2013, p. 2). Moreover, particularly in party-centred democracies, short-term factors (such as the individual candidates' evaluation) appear to be weaker predictors of vote choice compared to party popularity itself (Aarts et al., 2013), potentially reinforcing party-centred campaigns. ...
EP elections are widely regarded as the archetypal second-order national election. Although parties’ strategic moves are frequently mediated by traditional media, parties are increasingly using alternative communication strategies, as social media, to communicate directly to their electorate. Social media can be particularly relevant in ‘bridging the gap’ with voters in second-order elections. After 2014, EP elections took place in a context where policy had been, to a non-negligible extent, perceived to have been shaped at the European level. The extent to which Eurozone crisis ‘disrupted’ the second-order model requires further examination. Through the analysis of the activities of political parties in social media, this study seeks to assess the extent to which the Eurozone crisis triggered more intense campaigns while assessing the partisan variables that explain variation in parties’ levels of activities. Overall, social media activity tends to suggest the resilience of the second-order model. This article highlights that the economic downturn has very much forced European issues into the political agendas, unveiling important signs of a disruption of the second-order model. Also, the politicisation of Europe in the first elections after the Eurozone crises (2019) was characterised by higher levels of activities of parties that openly contested the EU.
... While partisanship appears to be weakening in the West, voters develop strong attachments to candidates and leaders who bypass their parties and reach out to people directly. At the age of personalization, observers frequently name governments after dominant prime ministers and presidents like Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, and Ronald Reagan (Aarts et al. 2011;Kostadinova and Levitt 2014;Mainwaring and Torcal 2005;McAllister 2007). ...
This article examines the personalization of Turkish politics during Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s third term as prime minister. While many studies focus on the prime minister’s growing personal domination of the executive branch, we consider how leaders of the opposition reflected and reinforced that trend. To test our hypotheses on this ‘Erdoğanization,’ we employed a content analysis to consider Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and Devlet Bahçeli’s speeches at weekly parliamentary group meetings of the CHP and the MHP. Our findings reveal that, over time, both leaders increasingly referred to the prime minister in proportion to the ruling party. Between the June 2011 parliamentary elections and the August 2014 presidential elections, Kılıçdaroğlu and Bahçeli more frequently targeted Prime Minister Erdoğan with personal insults such as ‘separatist’, ‘dictator’, and ‘thief.’ Specifically, we show that during the PKK Peace Process, the Gezi Park Protests, and the Corruption Scandal, Erdoğanization reached its peak levels. The article’s conceptual framework and empirical findings have implications for the broader literature on the role of opposition in personalized settings.
... See Online Appendix C for a list of such statements, used in our research. 8 For a recent comprehensive comparative collection on political leadership characteristics and democratic elections, seeAarts et al. (2013).Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved. ...
In recent electoral contests, political observers and media outlets increasingly report on the level of “authenticity” of political candidates. However, even though this term has become commonplace in political commentary, it has received little attention in empirical electoral research. In this study, we identify the characteristics that we argue make a politician “authentic”. After theoretically discussing the different dimensions of this trait, we propose a survey battery aimed at measuring perceptions of the authenticity of political candidates. Testing our measure using data sets from different countries, we show that the answers to our items load on one latent concept that we call “authenticity”. Furthermore, perceptions of candidate authenticity seem to correlate strongly with evaluations of political parties and leaders, and with vote intention, while they are empirically distinguishable from other traits. We conclude that candidate authenticity is an important trait that should be taken into account by future research.
... Second, if voters do take class into account, how does it affect their evaluation and choice of candidates? Democratic elections typically present voters with a simultaneous choice among parties, candidates, and policies associated with parties and candidates (Blais 2013). Canonical models of voting behavior emphasize different elements of voters' choice set. ...
This paper presents the results of a conjoint survey experiment in which Swiss citizens were asked to choose among parliamentary candidates distinguished by occupation, education, and income. Existing survey-experimental literature on this topic suggests that voters are indifferent to the class profiles of candidates or biased against candidates with high-status occupations and incomes. We find that the bias against upper middle-class candidates holds only for citizens in the lower half of the education/income distribution and that all voters are biased against routine working-class candidates. We also find that ideological proximity matters greatly to voter preferences for different candidates. Partisan polarization renders the class profile of candidates less salient to voters and might be a source of cross-national variation in descriptive misrepresentation by social class.
... Yet as the number of cases grew, and the analyses became more methodologically sophisticated, the idea that leaders matter has become established. Cumulative evidence gathered over the last two decades clarified that leaders do have a meaningful impact of voting behaviour ( Aarts et al. 2011;Bittner 2011;Clarke et.al. 2004;Garzia 2014;Lobo and Curtice 2015;Mughan 2000;Stewart and Clarke 1992) and the debate moved to the analysis of macro and micro contexts of leader effects ( Barisione 2009;Curtice and Holmberg 2005;Lobo 2008;Lobo and Curtice 2015). ...
This article tests the personalisation thesis in Portugal (2002–2015), as well as its causes, focusing on changes in the level of party identification and perceptions of the economy. Portugal is an interesting example given its recent experience of a harsh economic crisis, as well as a decline in party identification. Results confirm a growing exogenous impact of leader evaluations on voting over the period but not in a linear fashion. During the crisis, the growing trend of leader effects for the incumbent party continues for those voters who have a positive perception of the economy. Conversely, for the main opposition party, leader effects are greater for those who perceive the economy as being worse. Thus the crisis operates as a catalyst for leader effects. The impact of leaders is also greater among the de-aligned, the numbers of which rise considerably during the period under analysis. It is voters with no party identification, who use leaders as proxies to a greater extent. These conclusions may extend to further studies on leader effects in Western democracies and help to shed light on the process through which leaders are becoming more relevant in voting decisions.
... Yet, it also opens up the possibility that members could be even stronger in their reaction to their party leader and cast a defecting vote. This possibility is corroborated by studies on European electoral behaviour that argue for the effects of leadership evaluations on citizens' vote choice (see, e.g., Aarts et al. 2011;Lobo & Curtice 2015). This work argues for the presidentialisation hypothesis in which citizens' views of political leaders have independent effects on people's decision to vote for a party in presidential and parliamentary elections. ...
Party politics and electoral research generally assume that party members are loyal voters. This article first assesses the empirical basis for this assumption before providing individual-level explanations for defection. It combines prominent theories from party politics and electoral behaviour research and argues that internal disagreement and external pressure can each bring about disloyal voting. The hypotheses are motivated with multi-country European survey data and tested on two sets of party-level national surveys. The results show, first, that, on average, 8 per cent of European party members cast a defecting vote in the last election, and second, that dissatisfaction with the leadership is the strongest predictor of defection. Additionally, internal ideological disagreement is associated with higher probabilities of defection, whereas the effects of pull factors in the form of contentious policies are rather limited. These findings emphasise the importance of testing scientific assumptions and the potential significance of party leadership contests.
... Political elites -as the top of the hierarchy of a state and component of the decision matrix in states -have a lot of influence that works through direct as well as indirect channels (Aarts et al . 2011) . Elites are persons, who are able by virtue or authoritative positions in powerful organizations, networks and movements to affect political outcomes at the local or national level regularly and substantially (Hale 2015: 11) . By determining politics, administrations and the economy, they actually hold the fortunes of their societies i ...
Democracy does not guarantee clean and transparent governance at all and data shows that democratic systems are still fighting corruption, even in the European Union that is often seen as free of corruption. Yet, frequent scandals illustrate that corruption is a serious problem in nearly all European Union states and that Europe’s citizens are very concerned about the situation. The majority is highly dissatisfied with the way governments are tackling the corruption risk. Thus, it appears that the disparity between the demands of the citizens and actions of their political leaders requires further research and raises the following question: What are the challenges for the political elite to fight corruption in Europe? Based on qualitative and quantitative secondary data on assessments of corruption, the paper demonstrates that a strong political leadership is essential in anti-corruption policy design and implementation of regulatory governance reforms. It highlights how important transparent, accountable and responsible actions of political leaders are for the reduction of corruption and the building of citizen’s trust in politics. The article shows that the application of better regulation principles in anti-corruption regulations depends greatly on the choices made by politicians and top managers of the ministries and regulatory agencies.
... Political elites -as the top of the hierarchy of a state and component of the decision matrix in states -have a lot of influence that works through direct as well as indirect channels (Aarts et al . 2011) . Elites are persons, who are able by virtue or authoritative positions in powerful organizations, networks and movements to affect political outcomes at the local or national level regularly and substantially (Hale 2015: 11) . By determining politics, administrations and the economy, they actually hold the fortunes of their societies i ...
Parties, governments and elites are at the core of the study of democracy. The traditional view is that parties as collective actors play a paramount role in the democratic process. However, this classical perspective has been challenged by political actors, observers of modern democracy as well as political scientists. Modern political parties assume different roles, contemporary leaders can more heavily influence politics, governments face new constraints and new collective bodies continue to form, propose new ways of participation and policy making, and attract citizens and activists. In the light of these observations, the comparative study of democracy faces a number of important and still largely unsolved questions that the present volume will address.
Contents
Parties and Democracy in Comparative Perspective.- Governments and Democracy in Comparative Perspective.- Elites and Democracy in Comparative Perspective.- Looking Onward: Perspectives of Comparative Political Science
Target Groups
- Researchers and students of comparative political science
- Practitioners of democracy promotion and stabilisation
The Editors
Dr. Philipp Harfst is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Oldenburg, Germany.
Dr. Ina Kubbe is Post-Doctoral Fellow at Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Dr. Thomas Poguntke is Professor of Comparative Politics and Director of the Düsseldorf Party Research Institute (PRuF) at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany.
... Het is pas vanaf midden de jaren '60 van de vorige eeuw dat een hele resem publicaties over politiek leiderschap zijn verschenen. Die focusten aanvankelijk voornamelijk op het electoraal effect dat leiders hebben op het stemgedrag van kiezers (Blais, 2011), maar daarna kwamen o.a. ook de bredere maatschappelijke rol en de rekrutering van leiders uitvoerig aan bod. ...
In this doctoral thesis we want to examine the degree of presidentialization of the mayoralty in Flanders. The presidentialization research, which gained approval during the last decade, is built on the thesis that “regimes are becoming more presidential in their actual practice without, in most cases, changing their formal structure, that is, their regime-type” (Poguntke & Webb, 2005:1). From a classic institutional point of view, municipalities in Flanders are rather unsuited for the observation of presidentialized leadership, since the mayor is nominated by the central government and has rather limited competences. Therefore, Flanders could be considered as a least likely case. On the other hand, previous research shows that the mayor is the figure head of his party and the political leader of the executive (Steyvers, 2010b). Hence it appears that the role of the mayor can be considered as more important than constitutionally described. Poguntke & Webb (2005) distinguish in their analytical framework three domains to observe presidentialization, namely an electoral, executive and party face. The authors expect that political leaders receive more attention during electoral campaigns and that they obtain more preference votes. Furthermore, the weight and the autonomy of these leaders within the executive and the own party has increased. In our research, we translate the indicators of these authors for each of the three faces to the local context. This enables us to investigate the degree in which Flemish mayors pursue a presidentialized role. Besides this aggregated view, we will try to explain differences between the individual mayors. To explore these three faces, we appeal to two methods. The ecological data of the local elections of October 14th 2012 provides us information on the concentration of the preferential votes. To gain insight in the media attention, we calculated the number of mentions for every leading candidate in the local press, using GoPress. Besides that, mayors were questioned about their role perceptions within the three faces through an online survey. The survey was taken within the context of the Political Leaders in European Cities II research in almost thirty countries and had a response rate of 50 percent in Flanders. The results of our research on the electoral face show that the mayor is the most popular politician in eight of the ten municipalities and received a lot of media attention. Furthermore, half of the mayors state that the election shows clear presidential characteristics. Within the executive the answers of the mayors indicate that they feel quite free to enact new policy and communicate about it. The majority of the Flemish mayors thinks in a presidentialized way about his function during elections and his role within the executive. For the party face, the signs of presidentialization are less obvious. Mayors do pay a lot of attention to the opinion of the local party and accredit them a lot of influence. Besides the research on the degree of aggregated presidentialization, we focus on the differences between the individual mayors. Based on their answers from the survey, we can 240 determine for each respondent how presidentialized he looks at his mayoral function. This results in three presidentialization indexes, that enable us to determine which factors account for the individual differences in degree of presidentialization. Moreover, it allows us to look for correlations between the three faces. This research shows that mayors with a strong presidentialized view on the local electoral process, in general also act autonomous within the executive. We presume that a causal relation is hidden behind this positive correlation. Mayors that campaigned in a strong presidential way, will transform this electoral overweight to executive decision power. Between the degree of executive and party presidentialization, we obtain a negative correlation. This unexpected relation may be due to a couple of questions that were differently interpreted by the mayors. In the empirical chapter of this doctoral thesis, we examine the impact of the presidentialization indexes on the leadership and the idea of democracy of the mayors. In other words, we consider the more general consequences of the degree of presidentialization on the mayor’s way of thinking and acting. On theoretical base we can assume that strongly presidentialized mayors will choose for an authoritarian and strategic leadership. Thus, within the leaderschipmodel of Getimis & Hlepas (2006) they will act as a city boss. Bivariate analysis does show a positive correlation between two presidentialization indexes and this type of leadership. However, when we perform a multivariate analysis, the degree of presidentialization seems to have no impact on the leadership of a mayor. Moreover, we see that the presidentialization indexes give us little information about the democracy preference of the mayor. From our research, it turns out that the theory of presidentialization can be applied on local level. We conclude that a part of the mayors thinks in a presidentialized way about their political function, while the impact on their leadership is rather limited. Further research is needed to investigate the evolution over time and the degree of influence on the policy of the mayor.
... Estudos mais recentes têm apontando para o declínio do partidarismo nas democracias mais longevas, detectando distintas configurações na relação entre partidos políticos e eleitores, observando reações e inovações nas estratégias adotadas pelos atores partidários diante da tendência geral de desalinhamento, tais como: multi-speed memberships e lite membership 5 (Wattenberg, 2002;Scarrow, 2000Scarrow, , 2015aScarrow, , 2015bNorris, 2002;Dalton, McAllister e Wattenberg, 2003;Mair, 2003;Blais, 2013;Kosiara-Pedersen, Scarrow e Van Haute, 2015). ...
There are a great number of studies on the Workers' Party (PT), addressing everything from its origin, organization, and internal dynamics to its relationship with the electorate. Over the years, the PT has enjoyed the largest party preference indices vis-à-vis other Brazilian political parties, a phenomenon known as petismo. This article proposes examining the other side of this situation: antipetismo or the rejection that a segment of the electorate has toward the PT. We want to know who the antipetista voter is, based on survey data from the 2014 Brazilian Electoral Study (ESEB). Our main goal is to identify and characterize the profile of the antipetista voter using descriptive statistics and establishing a comparison with the antiparty voter. We then use an adjusted logistic regression model to detect the impact of a set of variables on the probability that a respondent identifies as antipetista. The results show that the negative evaluation of President Dilma Rousseff's government performance and the vote for PSDB candidates in the presidential elections are decisive variables in determining a voter to be antipetista.
... King 2002). 8 In addition, the impact of political leaders may hinge upon the overall strength of partisan loyalties, so that the weaker these loyalties are, the greater is the expected effect of leaders (Blais 2011). But there is also a further matter, on which we focused most of our attention: if in recent decades leaders have become the most prominent and powerful feature of election campaigns (Scarrow, Webb and Farrell 2000), then perhaps they have come increasingly to fashion their parties in their own image, so as to become the prism through which the messages of their parties are communicated (Curtice and Holmberg 2005). ...
The huge success of the Democratic Party at the last European
Parliament (EP) election in Italy has been widely interpreted as due
to the unusual ability of its new leader Matteo Renzi to mobilize
support for his party in an era of candidate-oriented and valence
politics in which political leaders’ personal characteristics are crucial
for vote choices and party performances. Framing the last EP elections
as a sign of the overwhelming importance of personalized
politics and personalized voting, however, does not tell us everything,
there is to know about the role of leaders in voters’ decisions.
According to the literature, in fact, leaders are not only a collection of
personal traits and characteristics exerting short-term effects on voting
behaviour, but also cognitive shortcuts that help decision-making
by simplifying the complexity of the political environment. Within
this framework, we investigate whether leader evaluations, in the
form of confidence ratings, provide information about how Italian
voters perceived the structure of political debate at the 2014 EP
elections. Our results confirm that judgments of leaders imply specific
representations of political competition, of which we try to outline
some general features.
The emergence of new challenger parties calls for a reassessment of the party-model of opinion formation by examining different sources of cues across types of voters and the conditions that make cueing more effective. Although new challenger parties may lack sufficient time to develop identification with groups and distinctive party reputations, they may still provide effective cues and reduce their competitive disadvantage in developing affective social identity ties. This article investigates this argument by assessing the impact of party and leader cues on voters from mainstream and challenger parties and examining how expressive partisanship (partisan social identities) and instrumental partisanship (party competence evaluations) moderate these effects. Utilizing data from a survey experiment conducted in Spain during a period of party system restructuring, we find similar cueing effects across party and leader cues when comparing voters of both mainstream and challenger parties. Additionally, contrary to our expectations, we observe that cueing effects for mainstream party voters combine expressive and instrumental reasoning, while those for new challenger party voters are driven by perceptions of party competence reputation only. These findings challenge the prevailing belief that familiarity and time enhance cueing effects. They also deviate from socio-psychological approaches that emphasize the emotional and identity components of partisanship in strengthening cueing effects.
Recent studies have shown that political information directly associated with a real-world leader tends to generate more (affective) polarization compared to similar information tied to a more impersonal source, such as a political party. The phenomenon is explained by the catalyzing role of leaders in the public’s inclination to maximize distinctiveness with outgroups. Leaders are used as stereotypical yardsticks based on their structural position and external visibility in (negative) campaigns. We link the preceding findings from the source cue literature to the preferential voting literature because a vote for a candidate or the party as a whole also is a source cue proxy. Concretely, we test whether voters casting a preference vote for an electoral leader are more affectively polarized than party voters by relying on the Belgian RepResent panel survey for the last parliamentary elections of 2019. This context provides an adequate electoral setting and adequate indicators to measure affective polarization and to distinguish (centralized) preference voters and party voters. Our findings show that (centralized) preference voters are indeed more affectively polarized and this can primarily be explained by a short(er)-term negative campaigning mechanism.
Personalization refers to a shift over time in attention and/or power from collective actors to individuals. I focus on personalization in voting behavior, measured by the use of preference voting in flexible list-PR systems. I will argue that in a multi-level context this kind of personalization can take place at different policy levels, which could influence each other. In local elections, voters can be attracted by the mayor and/or other local figureheads, but also by the national party leader and/or national politicians figuring on the local list. Therefore, scholars should not only focus on the number and importance of people to which personalization applies (‘person level’ of personalization), but also on how processes at one policy level impact on other policy levels (‘territorial level’ of personalization). By combining literature on intra-party competition and personalization on the one hand, and on electoral patterns in multi-level states on the other, I engage in a conceptual discussion about the nature of personalization. I add empirical evidence to this conceptual discussion by analyzing preference voting patterns in local elections in Flanders (Belgium). As such, we gain more insights in the remarkable decline of preference voting that took place there.
What makes some challenger parties succeed and others fail? Existing research on party‐level factors finds that it is essential for parties to close a representational gap. However, this condition cannot be sufficient. For each successful challenger, there are many others proclaiming a similar message but going unheard. Hence, we argue that, instead of only to the messages, more attention should be paid to parties’ abilities to communicate their messages effectively.
Using an original dataset on 74 challenger parties in five countries in a similar political and economic situation (during the post‐2008 economic crisis), we show that communication is key for electoral success. In particular, we show that challenger parties can win over voters by, on the one hand, harnessing the prominence of a well‐known personality (a locomotive ) and by, on the other hand, establishing a means of contacting voters which bypasses the traditional news media and amplifies their message (like a megaphone ). But this megaphone only works if it amplifies a message that fills a representational gap (here: an anti‐austerity message) – only then do parties benefit. Furthermore, we provide evidence for the widespread but unproven claim that populism helps challenger parties succeed, but this, too, depends on whether parties are able to contact voters on a large scale.
By including three crucial aspects of communication (sender, channel, and message), we can explain a large share of the high variability in challenger party success.
The literature on how the ideology of political parties in power correlates with climate policy outcomes is abundant, but there is no similar literature for the individual characteristics of government leaders. This assessment is the first study of its kind, building on a dataset of government leaders of OECD countries for the period 1992–2017. We find that national presidents or prime ministers with a professional background in business are strongly correlated with bad climate mitigation outcomes. In particular, higher emissions and lower renewable energy deployment are more likely to occur during the tenure of former business people. Our results suggest that voters and pressure groups should pay attention to candidates’ professional backgrounds, in addition to their party’s ideology.
This study is an analysis of the methods Italian parties used to select their leaders from 1946 to 2020. Using an extended database originally based on the Comparative Study of Party Leaders (Cospal) project and collected through a content analysis of the statutes, the study deals with three topics. First, the individual requirements for candidacy are examined; second, the different types of selectorates are reported; third, a cursory test of the conformity between statutes’ provisions and actual leader selections is proposed. The analyses show that both candidacy requirements and se-lectorates have become more inclusive through time; that the diffusion of inclusive—and cumbersome—selectorates has been followed by the adoption of alternative quick methods of selection based on some type of party council to be used under pressure; and that there is a large overlapping between formal and actual selectorates. A result of this work is a quantification so far unavailable of intraparty democracy in Italy on a long period.
Theme of the paper is political leadership in local governments in Latvia. The work uses secondary data analysis and case studies. The aim of the study is to find out what kind of role does the chairperson of the municipality have as a political leader and what kinds of factors are influencing him/her. The results revealed that formally the chairperson of the municipality has no decisive influence on the municipality and that both types of factors (internal and external) interact with each other limiting the political leader’s (chairperson’s of a municipality) freedom of action.
We investigate whether a framework drawn from the field of organizational management can be used by citizens of two countries with different political history and culture to assess character. Drawing on a survey administered two weeks before the 2016 US presidential election, we report that Canadians and Americans are the same in how they evaluate eleven dimensions of character: both considered all dimensions as essential in political leaders. The results also showed an appreciable gap between the perceived importance of the character dimensions and whether respondents believe three national leaders—Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Justin Trudeau—live up to these expectations. However, the two groups differ in their evaluation of the specific dimensions of character among these political leaders. Canadians are less supportive of Trump’s character array than that of Clinton or Trudeau. Also, Canadian Conservatives are less supportive of Trump’s character than are American Republicans.
In the post-modern era, the mobilization of previously large masses has been replaced by micro-groups dominated by new and distinct identities. As a result, the analysis and predictability of electorate behavior have decreased. The political decision-making processes of individuals have therefore been subjected to detailed analyzes. Emotions have become a significant subject of political psychology in terms of their effects on the political decision-making process of individuals. Emotions have also become an important topic in political psychology. Researches revealed that emotions have important effects on thoughts and decision-making processes. In this context, the article primarily aims to draw a rational framework on this subject by including modern “emotion” definitions and the impacts of people’s emotions on political decisions. Afterward, the article investigated the effect of negative emotions on political decision-making. In this context, anxiety, fear and anger are emphasized by using a descriptive approach. The article argues that negative emotions that are anxiety, fear, and anger, in particular, have positive contributions to the political decision-making process of individuals.
The use of preferential voting and the level of intraparty competition have a profound effect on the way politics is played out within a political system. Extant studies often focus on the role of candidate characteristics in explaining electoral success, or analyze voters' inclination to cast preferential votes. These empirical efforts typically control for contextual effects such as the degree of urbanization, as rural settings are believed to represent fertile grounds for stronger candidate-voter relationships. This paper focuses on mechanisms linking urbanization and intraparty competition. In contrast with earlier work which equates urbanization with population density, we operationalize the urban character of an electoral environment using three indicators: (1) population density, (2) population mobility (i.e. citizens moving in and out of the area), (3) population diversity. We analyze the link between these indicators and intraparty competition by focusing on preferential vote patterns on lists for five Lower House elections in Belgium (2003-2019). To this end, we aggregated 584,973 preferential vote scores for candidates-in-municipalities/cantons to a dataset of intraparty competition scores for 5,308 lists-in-cantons (2003-2019). We run hierarchical linear models and control for the presence of 'big fish' on the list: locally rooted political office-holders, and parliamentary/executive incumbents more generally.
Candidate-centric campaigns are most likely to occur when electoral system incentives to personalize do not conflict with party-based incentives. Then it makes sense for candidates to use any campaign mean to improve their chances to win a seat while also helping the party win more seats and increasing their standing within the organization. The Romanian electoral system uniquely combined mechanisms that enabled all three motivations for almost all candidates. Our analysis of the degree and determinants of personalization in the 2012 parliamentary elections illustrates that electoral system incentives were key factors driving campaign personalization as a party-congruent rather than adversarial campaign strategy.
The concept of the personalization of politics has become increasingly popular when studying current political systems. Despite the growing scholarly interest in the personalization of politics in the European Union, the institutional sphere of politics has remained rather neglected. The aim of this article is to evaluate whether there is a personalization of politics at the institutional level of the European Commission (EC). Based on quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the documents that govern the functioning of the EC (since the early 1990s), this article finds that in general, it is possible to observe a tendency towards adopting more personalized reforms in the EC. Moreover, personalized reforms clearly led to enhancing the role of the EC President. This article supplements previous findings by concluding that in many cases, the enhancement of the President’s position has taken place at the expense of the College as a whole.
Drawing from the field of management studies, we explore how a sample of voters in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom use a leader character framework to judge political leadership. We ask, how do voters actually assess the character of their current leaders? And, in light of the populist zeitgeist, do people who hold a populist attitude differ markedly in how they judge the character of political leaders? Our results show that voters generally consider character important. However, voters who lean toward populism believe character matters less in political leadership than individuals who scored low on the populism indicator. This durable difference merits more exploration in a political context marked by populism. Our findings about the factors that influence vote choice contribute to this conversation and to extant research that reports that some voters pay greater attention to leader characteristics than do others.
This introductory chapter outlines the goals of the book, presents the theoretical approach and outlines the methodology used in the subsequent chapters. It focuses on the state of the art and presents in detail the leadership traits to be analyzed in the book. It formulates three hypotheses that will be tested throughout the book and discusses the relevance of the analyses conducted this volume.
Second Order Personalization: Preference Voting in the Netherlands
If the impact of party leaders on the electoral fate of their parties may be called first order personalization, this paper addresses second order personalization: a preference for an individual candidate having to do with that person embedded in a prior choice for the candidate’s party. Using survey data and election results with respect to intraparty preference voting in The Netherlands, this study explores the characteristics of both voters casting a vote for a candidate other than the party leader and candidates receiving preference votes. Given the increase in intraparty preference voting, second order personalization has increased considerably in recent decades. Moreover, the correlates of second order personalization differ from those identified for first order personalization: intraparty preference votes are cast more often by higher educated, politically interested and efficacious female voters. Intraparty preference voting also seems to be a form of expressive rather than instrumental electoral behaviour: female candidates, and to a lesser extent ethnic candidates, receive more preference votes, but such votes are cast predominantly for the highest placed female (or ethnic) candidate on the list – candidates who would be elected on the basis of their position on the party list anyway.
Det brann i skogar och i förorter under valrörelsen 2018. Men en systematisk studie visar att det snarare var regeringsfrågan än sommarens dramatiska skeenden som kom att prägla mediebilden av valkampanjerna. I Kampen om mediebilden-nyhetsjournalistik i valrörelsen 2018 analyseras mediernas nyhetsbevakning av valrörelsen. Resultaten visar vilka partier som gynnades och missgynnades av mediebilden och förklarar vad som ledde till det. Inte minst analyseras i vilken grad nyhetsbevakningen av valrörelsen präglades av så kallad strukturell partiskhet och medialisering respektive politisk partiskhet och politisering. Boken presenterar Medievalsundersökningen 2018 som för vidare två serier med studier av journalistik i valrörelser-den ena inledd redan 1979 vid Göteborgs universitet.
For many years after World War Two, the mass party model dominated Italian politics. High rates of membership and activism were considered to be essential for optimising electoral performance, for optimising organisational resources, and for the legitimacy of the party itself. However, since the 1970s, and in particular since 1989, party-membership linkages have begun to weaken. Taking its point of departure from the recent literature, this article offers a theoretical framework for the examination of three different meanings of membership, associated with changing models of party organisation. Data from national election surveys, and from qualitative research on party activists, support the proposed theoretical framework. The article focuses on three Italian parties – the Democratic Party, the Northern League and the Five-star Movement – discussing the similarities and differences, with implications for cross-national comparative studies.
Democracy does not guarantee clean and transparent governance at all and data shows that democratic systems are still fighting corruption, even in the European Union that is often seen as free of corruption. Yet, frequent scandals illustrate that corruption is a serious problem in nearly all European Union states and that Europe’s citizens are very concerned about the situation. The majority is highly dissatisfied with the way governments are tackling the corruption risk. Thus, it appears that the disparity between the demands of the citizens and actions of their political leaders requires further research and raises the following question: What are the challenges for the political elite to fight corruption in Europe? Based on qualitative and quantitative secondary data on assessments of corruption, the paper demonstrates that a strong political leadership is essential in anti-corruption policy design and implementation of regulatory governance reforms. It highlights how important transparent, accountable and responsible actions of political leaders are for the reduction of corruption and the building of citizen’s trust in politics. The article shows that the application of better regulation principles in anti-corruption regulations depends greatly on the choices made by politicians and top managers of the ministries and regulatory agencies.
The main goal of this study is the verification of a hypothesis/idea of centralized personalization during Polish electoral campaigns. Because of its goal and implemented methodology, such research project is unique among research presented in scientific literature thus far.
The work has a descriptive character; it is congruent with treatments from the field of political communication, combining approaches of communicology and political science, in that it expresses an attempt to include in the analysis the circumstances of election campaign personalization and factors specific to mediacentric and political-scientific perspectives, as well as because of the fact of recognizing media content in political party communication. Election communication research includes six Polish parliamentary elections from the years 1993—2001. Along with an analysis of communiqué contents, published in information media, as well as communiqué prepared by political subjects contending in the elections, basic analysis methods within the study are historical-comparative and statistical data analyses.
The specific objectives of the treatment are:
— Description of circumstances of the political communication personalization thesis on the level of mediatization of politics and political campaign professionalization theories;
— Analysis of the trend occurrence and characteristics of the electoral campaign personalization trend based on empirical research conducted in western-European parliamentary democracies;
— Recognition of conditions of electoral campaign personalization in parliamentary elections in Poland;
— Analysis of the trend occurrence and characteristics of media personalization in Polish electoral campaigns based on opinion-forming press research;
— Analysis of the trend occurrence and characteristics of strategic personalization in Polish electoral campaigns based on political TV advertisement research.
Thanks to the process of the presidentialization of politics, party leaders are gaining a crucial position in legislative and governmental activities. An increasing number of contemporary democracies show the combining of the figures of chief executive and party leaders, as well as in countries with different political histories. Many empirical indicators testify that leader-centered executives are becoming the dominant actors in many countries, and they are gradually expropriating parliamentary chambers of their previous law-making leverage. Yet, while the personalization of politics has strengthened the leader, he may experience more difficulties in conducting and disciplining his own party. In this chapter, both the increasing power of party leaders in the institutional arena as well as data presenting the lack of cohesion of political parties in the legislative arena will be examined.
Algeria has seen the evolution of terrorism since becoming a state
independent of France in the 1960’s. While terrorism has been around since
Algeria’s post-occupation inception, it was in the 1990’s when the terrorist
groups within Algeria affiliated with the main body of al-Qaeda and as a
result stepped up their game resulting in more dynamic and destructive
attacks primarily through the addition of explosives. This article seeks to
explain the Algerian domestic strategy of counter-terrorism, so, in order to
frame Algeria’s counter-terrorism efforts effectively, it is important to look
at how Algeria has gradually shifted from a ‘statism-centric’ towards a
‘population-centric’ strategy. This paper suggests that Algeria’s attempt to
combine both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ approaches in countering radicalism and
terrorism has emerged as the best approach in the long run. In dealing with
terrorism and radicalism, the ‘hard’ approach is defined as measures that
are employed by the state that focus on the function and role of the security
apparatus (primarily the Algerian army and elite forces) and their use of
force, which includes, among other things, tactical raids, arrests, infiltration
and killings. The ‘soft’approach, on the other hand, is seen as the function,
role and activities of the non-security state apparatus (such as the ministry
of education, as well as non-state actors – such as civil society, and zawiyyas),
which do not resort to force. This article will subsequently show that such a
strategy also follows several best practices in handling radicalism and
terrorism that have been developed throughout Algeria’s history.
Keywords: Terrorism, Algeria, strategy, hard approach, soft approach, national reconciliation.
Die voranschreitende Individualisierung und Rationalisierung der BürgerInnen sowie die Medialisierung der Politik haben in jüngster Zeit dazu beigetragen, dass die persönliche Komponente in der politischen Kommunikation an Bedeutung gewonnen hat. Die Personalisierung der Politik ist zu einem Wesensmerkmal liberaler Demokratien geworden. Dies belegt eine Reihe an medieninhaltsanalytischen und rezipientenorientierten Studien. Im Vergleich zu diesen ist der „Angebotsseite“, d. h. der Personalisierung aus der Sicht der betroffenen PolitikerInnen, bislang kaum Beachtung geschenkt worden. Dabei ist anzunehmen, dass die politische Elite zunehmend in ein Spannungsfeld zwischen politikorientierten Erwartungen der politischen Sphäre einerseits und performanzorientierten Bedürfnissen der politischen Öffentlichkeit andererseits gerät. Dies hätte Folgen für die politische Führerschaft, aber auch für das Repräsentationsverhältnis zwischen BürgerInnen und PolitikerInnen. Dieser Annahme wird anhand einer repräsentativen Umfrage unter deutschen und österreichischen Landtagsabgeordneten nachgegangen. Die Befunde unterstreichen, wie komplex das Profil eines „idealen“ Politikers bzw. einer „idealen“ Politikerin aus Sicht der betroffenen AkteurInnen ist. Sie deuten auf eine Verschmelzung von ehemals „rollennahen“, politischen und „rollenfernen“, performativen Eigenschaften.
Over the last few decades, radical right populist (RRP) parties have been electorally successful in different European countries. The success of some of these parties has, however, not been stable. Some RRP parties have indeed been successful at some elections but experienced substantive electoral losses in subsequent elections. The aim of our study is to test the extent to which changes in political attitudes during an electoral cycle relate to the likelihood of voters to switch their voting intentions from any party to a RRP party and from a RRP party to any other party. Taking advantage of Dutch panel data (LISS) collected in 2007, 2010 and 2012 (N = 1,494 for 2007–2010; N = 2,126 for 2010–2012), our binary logistic regression analyses indicate that growing sympathy for the party leader (Geert Wilders) initiates a move to the PVV while decreasing sympathy for Geert Wilders relates to a shift away from the PVV. Changes in attitudes towards immigrants, Euroscepticism and political inefficacy and distrust, do not seem to matter when mean levels for these attitudes are controlled for.
This paper begins with a literature review exploring why image management matters in politics, what branding and brand extensions entail, and what political branding is. The case study reviews the public image of Canadian Liberal leaders Pierre Trudeau and Justin Trudeau, his son. Marketing theory is applied to identify insights about the Trudeau brand specifically and political branding generally. This contributes to knowledge by connecting concepts from a variety of academic fields, including communications, marketing, political science, psychology and sociology. It melds the concepts of ascribed celebrity, brand line extension and political dynasty into the concept of political brand extension which is epitomized by the candidacy of Justin Trudeau.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.