Abstract
The introductory chapter aims to explain why the main topic of the book, political collective leadership, is worth analyzing and why the book may be an original contribution to the literature in this field. The introduction contains a description of the research design. It begins by stressing the importance of extending the analysis of political leadership beyond the perspective of the single leader at the top of party organizations. In the first part of the book, arguments are presented indicating the need to fill a gap in mainstream political science literature by building a theoretical framework that may take inspiration from contributions in other disciplines, such as organization theory and management studies. Then, the criteria followed in the selection of cases that will be examined in the second part of the book are explained. Finally, the main content of the book is illustrated through a chapter by chapter summary.
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Notes
- 1.
It should be noted that the empirical evidence indicating that elections are influenced by voters’ assessments of party leaders is not uncontroversial. Authors such as King (2002) are skeptical about the decisive influence of leaders’ personalities while others, like Bittner (2011), Garzia (2014), Lobo and Curtice (2015), argue that leaders have an impact on the electoral outcomes. For supporters of the ‘conditionality’ thesis, such as Barisione (2009) and Mughan (2015), research should determine the conditions that influence the extent of leaders’ influence.
- 2.
Actually political personalization is a multidimensional phenomenon that, as explained by Rahat and Kenig (2018), includes at least three facets: institutional personalization, media personalization, behavioral personalization. Reviews of research on electoral campaigns and media coverage can be found in Ohr (2011) and Rahat and Kenig (2018).
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Campus, D., Switek, N., Valbruzzi, M. (2021). Introduction. In: Collective Leadership and Divided Power in West European Parties. Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75255-2_1
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