The Personalisation of Politics

Download or read book The Personalisation of Politics written by Lauri Karvonen and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the media tend to focus more on individual politicians, the idea that party leaders increasingly determine the party choice of voters finds little support in empirical evidence. Most researchers seem to agree that the position of the prime minister has become more dominant. A closer look at comparative evidence results in a more complex picture. There has been a certain tendency to develop the most party-centred electoral systems in a more candidate-centred direction. On the other hand, recent reforms have altered some of the most candidate-centred systems in the opposite direction. Individual candidates seem to mean more to voters in systems where preferential voting has been practiced for a long time. This change is by no means dramatic, nor does it seem to apply to other electoral systems. Karvonen shows that the personalisation thesis, while not completely erroneous, has been overstated not just by the media but in some of the research literature as well.