The Personalisation of Politics' Effects on Political Elites' Policy-Making, Features, and Evaluation

Abstract

In the past few decades, more and more studies have focused on the alleged increase in the relevance of the personalisation of politics in Western Europe. This phenomenon has been investigated in several fields of research: voting behaviour, leaders’ control of party organisations, parliamentarians’ attitudes, political communication, etc. Moreover, the study of political elites has been undergoing a new youth, thanks to several contributions based on robust evidence and long term analyses of their transformations. Is it possible to connect these two flourishing fields of research? This panel aims at exploring this link, thanks to the use of data derived from fresh pieces of research on the personalisation of politics in Europe between the mid-1980s and today. In particular, the discussion will move from the early elaborations following the first expert survey of the personalisation of politics (PoPES – Personalisation of Politics Expert Survey) and it will be extended to other recent projects. This exploration will allow to in-depth investigate the effects that different faces of the personalisation of politics have on political elites. For instance, the availability of data on the autonomy of leaders in defining the policy-making agenda of the most important parties could allow studying the changing impact of leaders on the outcomes of negotiations among legislative and governmental ruling classes. Moreover, the presence of data related to the ability of party leaders to drive consensus towards their parties in general elections could be connected to their evaluation both within and outside the party or the legislative arenas. Finally, also the autonomy of party leaders in selecting candidates for general elections could be easily connected to parliamentary elites’ behaviour, features, autonomy, and re-candidacy or re-selection chances. All in all, this panel aims at contributing to the renewal of studies on political elites in several ways. First, by analysing the role of the personalisation of politics and of its faces thanks to a new dataset that allows for diachronic and synchronic comparisons for the most important European parties in the past three decades; second, by separately – or conjointly – analysing the impact of the different faces of personalised politics on diverse political elites’ features and behaviours. The panel welcomes theoretical contributions as well as empirical papers based on comparative datasets analysing the changing political realities in Europe.