Campaign organizers and the media appear to agree that voters' perceptions of party leaders have an important impact in elections: considerable effort is made to ensure that leaders look good, speak well, and that they are up in the polls. In contrast, the academic literature is much more divided. Some suggest that leaders play an important role in the vote calculus, while others argue that in comparison to other factors, perceptions of leaders have only a minimal impact. This study incorporates data from thirty-five election studies across seven countries with varying institutional environments, and takes both a broad and in-depth look at the role of leaders. A few noteworthy conclusions emerge. First, voters evaluate leaders' traits in terms of two main dimensions, character and competence. Second, voters perceive leaders within the framework of a partisan stereotype in which the party label of the leader imbues meaning; more specifically, leaders of Conservative parties are seen to be more competent while Left leaders are seen to have more character. Third, and most importantly, leaders matter: they affect voters' decisions and have a discernible effect on the distribution of votes in an election. Fourth, there are consistent differences in the perception of party leaders according to voters' level of political sophistication. While all voters evaluate party leaders and consider leaders in their vote calculus, the more sophisticated do so the most. This book argues that personality plays an important role in elections, and that in a healthy democracy, so it should. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr The Comparative Politics Series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia, and Professor Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Institute of Political Science, Philipps University, Marburg.

Campaign organizers and the media appear to agree that voters' perceptions of party leaders have an important impact in elections. This book examines voters' evaluations of party leaders in elections around the world and finds that leaders have an unmistakeable and consistent impact on voters' decisions at the ballot box.

In a democracy, we generally assume that voters know the policies they prefer and elect like-minded officials who are responsible for carrying them out. We also assume that voters consider candidates' competence, honesty, and other performance-related traits. But does this actually happen? Do voters consider candidates’ policy positions when deciding for whom to vote? And how do politicians’ performances in office factor into the voting decision? In Follow the Leader?, Gabriel S. Lenz sheds light on these central questions of democratic thought. Lenz looks at citizens’ views of candidates both before and after periods of political upheaval, including campaigns, wars, natural disasters, and episodes of economic boom and bust. Noting important shifts in voters’ knowledge and preferences as a result of these events, he finds that, while citizens do assess politicians based on their performance, their policy positions actually matter much less. Even when a policy issue becomes highly prominent, voters rarely shift their votes to the politician whose position best agrees with their own. In fact, Lenz shows, the reverse often takes place: citizens first pick a politician and then adopt that politician’s policy views. In other words, they follow the leader. Based on data drawn from multiple countries, Follow the Leader? is the most definitive treatment to date of when and why policy and performance matter at the voting booth, and it will break new ground in the debates about democracy.

Whether you're a seasoned CEO, experienced corporate executive, aspiring leader or budding entrepreneur, you will find the information in this book valuable. It is 30 years of real life consulting experience in hundreds of corporations written as precisely as possible. It is deliberately short on theory and long on practicality. After reading this book you should have a sharper eye to size up potential leaders and a keener sense of what's behind the leadership behavior of both yourself and others. You should be able to understand, relate to and engage your colleagues and employees with greater insight, clarity and precision.

This book explains how deep-seated personality traits shape citizens' attitudes toward economic redistribution, and what it means for American democracy. It will be of interest to researchers from across the social sciences, as well as citizens, pundits, political observers, and commentators from across the political spectrum.

Thank you for checking out this book by Theophania Publishing. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you soon. We have thousands of titles available, and we invite you to search for us by name, contact us via our website, or download our most recent catalogues. THOSE who have been active of late in measuring intelligence have made great progress in the development of measuring scales but very slight progress in the actual definition of intelligence. In dealing with the elusive term "Personality" we may well expect still less satisfactory clarity of definition, no matter what success we have in its measurement. In the measurement of intelligence we have at least the advantage of scales of performance in various mental functions standardized into age or point scale groups. We have, in other words, a means of comparing an individual with his fellows in certain abilities, even though we may not be so bold as to term those abilities intelligence. We may seek, moreover, for a person's mental level in his relative success of adjustment, either to the problems of the school curriculum or to the general problems of life. In this manner a quantitative statement of at least an hypothetical intelligence may be obtained. The measurement of personality, however, embraces none of these advantages. Individual differences are so great and personal traits so vaguely related to the solution of problems that the notion of an age scale in personality has no significance. Moreover, personalities of divers sorts succeed equally well in the general adaptation to situations of practical life. It may be added that differences of personality are of a qualitative rather than a quantitative sort. These difficulties stand in the way of the development of a personality measurement based. on the correlation between tests and familiar objective criteria such as those of intelligence. We must strive toward a descriptive treatment rather than quantitative. Our aim is personality study and description rather than personality testing.