Partisan dealignment and the personalisation of politics in West European parliamentary democracies, 1961–2018

Abstract

Partisan dealignment is recurrently presented in the literature as one of the main drivers of the 'personalisation of politics'. Yet, on the one hand, the claim that leader effects on voting behaviour are increasing across time is short on comparative evidence. On the other hand, there is limited empirical evidence that such an increase is due to dealignment. This article explores the longitudinal relationship between partisan dealignment, leader effects and party choice, through a novel dataset pooling 109 national election surveys collected in 14 Western European parliamentary democracies across the last six decades. The results show that leader effects increased over time as a function of the decline of party identification. Additional panel evidence from selected countries shows that partisan dealignment is responsible for increasing leader effects on party choice at the individual level. The longitudinal dimension of this study contributes to the most contested aspect of the personalisation of politics debate.KEYWORDS Dealignment; leader effects; party identification; personalisation of politics; voting behaviourThe centrality of political leaders in contemporary democracies has been sustained by an increasing amount of research in political science. From an institutional point of view, research documents a transformation in the structure and organisation of modern political parties in favour of the leadership position. From the rise of catch-all parties to the emergence of personal parties, contemporary party scholars ascribe a more prominent role to party leaders both within party organisation and as executives in government. This describes a trend towards the presidentialisation of party structures (Passarelli 2015;Poguntke and Webb 2005).

Leader or party? Quantifying and exploring behavioral personalization 1996–2019

“…Finally, perhaps the most significant critique is our reliance on cross-sectional data over the past quarter-century. Some may maintain this explains why we have failed to detect a growth in behavioral personalization, with studies showing this took root earlier than the period under study (e.g., Garzia et al, 2020). Additionally, this focus prevents us from probing the causal determinants more.…”

Personality Goes a Long Way (for Some). An Experimental Investigation Into Candidate Personality Traits, Voters’ Profile, and Perceived Likeability

“…Finally, our article exclusively assesses the role of candidate personality on voters' perceptions and attitudes; with the data at hand, we cannot make claims as to whether the dynamics discussed here also matter for downstream behaviors, such as voting choices or turnout. Nonetheless, given the primacy of candidate evaluation for voting choices (e.g., Garzia et al, 2020), it is rather unlikely that the manner in which respondents perceive the personality of candidates, both directly and as a function of their own personality profile, is completely unconnected to their actual political behavior. Further research that is able to extend the dynamics investigated here to include voting behaviors, for instance by triangulating experimental with observational data, is therefore both recommended and necessary.…”

The Personalization of Politics in Anglo-American Democracies

“…Much has been made in recent years about the role of leaders in the minds of voters (Mughan, 2000;Johnston, 2002;King, 2002;Poguntke and Webb, 2005;Bittner, 2011;Da Silva 2019;De Angelis and Garzia 2016;Garzia et al, 2020). The topic is of increasing interest around the world, and scholars of parliamentary democracy have taken particular notice of the penchant voters have for evaluating party leaders and considering those evaluations when they head to the ballot box (Bean, 1993;McAllister, 1996;Bittner, 2011).…”