Historically, both Belgium and the Netherlands are archetypes of ‘consociational democracies’. These are characterized by broad multi-party coalitions, numerous power-sharing devices, and fragile checks and balances in order to ensure due influence for all relevant parties and minority groups. Hence, the overarching logic of these consensus democracies seems to represent an obstacle to a process of presidentialization.
However, we argue that the need for strong leadership resulted in more prominent and powerful positions for the (parliamentary) party leaders and Prime Ministers. We present evidence of a process of presidentialization that gained momentum a decade earlier in the Netherlands (from the 1970s onwards) than it did in Belgium (from the 1980s).
It is interesting to note that the increased autonomy of Prime Ministers is not due to constitutional amendments, but tends to be linked to the increased decision-making role for the inner cabinet, the professionalization of the Prime Minister’s Office, and the growing attention the audiovisual media give to the Prime Minister.
Similarly, parliamentary party leaders in The Netherlands and extra-parliamentary party leaders in Belgium grew stronger through an accumulation of power and resources at the leader’s office, personalized campaigning and a centralization of control over inner party selection procedures, and party leadership selection.
This study departs from the finding that media attention contributed to the electoral success of candidates in the Belgian election campaign of 2003. While the authors do find an impact of media attention on the number of preferential votes for each candidate, in this study they take a closer look at the elements that determine this media attention. Do the media autonomously decide which candidate gets more attention than others or do they follow the hierarchy determined by the parties? In other words: is the media's interest in a politician a consequence of a media logic or of a party logic? As the study's multivariate analysis clearly indicates, both logics are relevant, with the party logic outweighing the media logic. However, the question remains to what extent the parties have already incorporated a media logic in the selection of their political personnel.
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