The Presidentialization of Party Leadership? Evaluating Party Leadership and Party Government in the Democratic World

Abstract

In this chapter, we seek to assess the nature of contemporary party leadership across the democratic world. We start by reviewing a number of well-known models of party organization with particular reference to the implications they carry for the relative power of leaders over their parties, noting the very definite tendency of more recent models to emphasize leadership autonomy. We then proceed to examine the clearest assertion of the view that party leaders have generally become more autonomous of their parties, which is the ‘presidentialization’ argument proposed by Poguntke, Webb, and colleagues (Poguntke and Webb 2005a). This entails a recap of the original argument, along with a review of recent additions to the literature and evidence that bear upon the thesis. We conclude by discussing the implications of this argument for the party government model of representative democracy. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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