This book studies party leaders from selection to post-presidency. Based on data covering a large set of Western countries, and focusing on the trends of personalisation of politics, the volume is one of the first empirical investigations into how party leaders are elected, how long they stay in office, and whether they enter and guide democratic governments. It also provides novel data on how leaders end their career in a broad and diverse range of business activities. Topics covered include political leaders’ increasing autonomy, their reinforcement of popular legitimation, often through the introduction of direct election by party rank and file, and their grip on party organization. The book will appeal to students and scholars interested in political parties, political leadership, the transformation of democracy, and comparative politics.

Political leadership has made a comeback. It was studied intensively not only by political scientists but also by political sociologists and psychologists, Sovietologists, political anthropologists, and by scholars in comparative and development studies from the 1940s to the 1970s. Thereafter, the field lost its way with the rise of structuralism, neo-institutionalism, and rational choice approaches to the study of politics, government, and governance. Recently, however, students of politics have returned to studying the role of individual leaders and the exercise of leadership to explain political outcomes. The list of topics is nigh endless: elections, conflict management, public policy, government popularity, development, governance networks, and regional integration. In the media age, leaders are presented and stage-managed--spun--DDLas the solution to almost every social problem. Through the mass media and the Internet, citizens and professional observers follow the rise, impact, and fall of senior political officeholders at closer quarters than ever before. This Handbook encapsulates the resurgence by asking, where are we today? It orders the multidisciplinary field by identifying the distinct and distinctive contributions of the disciplines. It meets the urgent need to take stock. It brings together scholars from around the world, encouraging a comparative perspective, to provide a comprehensive coverage of all the major disciplines, methods, and regions. It showcases both the normative and empirical traditions in political leadership studies, and juxtaposes behavioural, institutional, and interpretive approaches. It covers formal, office-based as well as informal, emergent political leadership, and in both democratic and undemocratic polities.

Local political leadership examines the complexities of the concept of leadership, focusing on the intrinsic tension between leadership behaviour and leadership position. It also discusses the key leadership tasks, such as maintaining cohesiveness, developing strategic policy direction, and external relations and task accomplishment.

This book analyses the determinants behind the openings in party leader selection rules (leaders' selectorate) in 10 Western European countries and more than 55 parties between the mid-1980s and the mid-2010s. Presenting a novel and revealing theoretical and empirical framework, it tackles the impact of party change and the personalisation of politics, specifically using data coming from the first expert survey on the personalisation of politics in Western Europe; the PoPES. A quantitative analysis is paired with more in-depth explorations of two Italian parties (the Italian Communist Party - Democratic Party of the Left; the Northern League) and the (missed) opening of their leader selectorate. This book highlights the critical importance of studying party leader selection rules against the backdrop of allegedly declining parties and rising party leaders and concludes by placing its findings in a broader discussion about the future of Western European party leaders. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political parties and party systems, leadership, political elites, elections, democracy, and more widely of Western European politics and comparative politics.

Political parties are nothing without their people and candidates are essential to parties' core functions - contesting elections, filling political offices, and shaping policy. Candidates are the literal 'face' of parties, yet they are not wedded to them permanently: candidates can enter or leave politics, switch parties, move along or stay behind when parties split or merge. Even in parties that look stable, candidate change happens below the surface, ultimately altering what the parties stand for. Inspired by evolutionary theories, Party People: Candidates and Party Evolution conceptualizes candidates as 'party genes' and develops a candidate-based approach to party evolution. Tracking candidates between elections and parties opens up new perspectives on party development in complex and dynamic settings in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and beyond. Based on a new database of 200,000 electoral candidates from over 60 elections across nine CEE democracies, this book presents a groundbreaking study of party evolution using candidate change as an indicator of party change. Allan Sikk and Philipp Köker offer a series of methodological and conceptual advances for the measurement of candidate turnover, party fission and fusion, programmatic change, and party leadership change; the resulting analyses make a significant contribution to the study of CEE party politics as well as to the general scholarship on elections, parties, and political change. Comparative Politics is a series for researchers, teachers, and students of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterized 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.ecprnet.eu. The series is edited by Nicole Bolleyer, Chair of Comparative Political Science, Geschwister Scholl Institut, LMU Munich and Jonathan Slapin, Professor of Political Institutions and European Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Zurich.

How do social movements intersect with the agendas of mainstream political parties? When they are integrated with parties, are they coopted? Or are they more radically transformative? Examining major episodes of contention in American politics – from the Civil War era to the women's rights and civil rights movements to the Tea Party and Trumpism today – Sidney Tarrow tackles these questions and provides a new account of how the interactions between movements and parties have been transformed over the course of American history. He shows that the relationships between movements and parties have been central to American democratization – at times expanding it and at times threatening its future. Today, movement politics have become more widespread as the parties have become weaker. The future of American democracy hangs in the balance.

Leading political innovation activist Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter bring fresh perspective, deep scholarship, and a real and actionable solution, Final Five Voting, to the grand challenge of our broken political and democratic system. Final Five Voting has already been adopted in Alaska and is being advanced in states across the country. The truth is, the American political system is working exactly how it is designed to work, and it isn't designed or optimized today to work for us—for ordinary citizens. Most people believe that our political system is a public institution with high-minded principles and impartial rules derived from the Constitution. In reality, it has become a private industry dominated by a textbook duopoly—the Democrats and the Republicans—and plagued and perverted by unhealthy competition between the players. Tragically, it has therefore become incapable of delivering solutions to America's key economic and social challenges. In fact, there's virtually no connection between our political leaders solving problems and getting reelected. In The Politics Industry, business leader and path-breaking political innovator Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter take a radical new approach. They ingeniously apply the tools of business analysis—and Porter's distinctive Five Forces framework—to show how the political system functions just as every other competitive industry does, and how the duopoly has led to the devastating outcomes we see today. Using this competition lens, Gehl and Porter identify the most powerful lever for change—a strategy comprised of a clear set of choices in two key areas: how our elections work and how we make our laws. Their bracing assessment and practical recommendations cut through the endless debate about various proposed fixes, such as term limits and campaign finance reform. The result: true political innovation. The Politics Industry is an original and completely nonpartisan guide that will open your eyes to the true dynamics and profound challenges of the American political system and provide real solutions for reshaping the system for the benefit of all. THE INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL INNOVATION The authors will donate all royalties from the sale of this book to the Institute for Political Innovation.