Political personalization and personalized politics within and beyond the behavioural arena

Abstract

Our aim is to propose guidelines for the analysis of political personalization and personalized politics in general and for behavioural personalization in particular. The first guideline is based on our understanding that personalization comes at the cost of party politics. It suggests that in order to classify politics as more or less personalized, we must compare it to an alternative party-oriented politics. Based on a synthesis of existing theoretical work, the second guideline suggests three analytical dimensions to clarify the multidimensional concept of personalization: arena, level and character. Arena refers to where personalization takes place; level refers to whose power or independence is changing; and character refers to how personalization is manifested. Furthermore, we present the contributions of this symposium and explain how they follow the two guidelines and advance our understanding and knowledge of behavioural political personalization.

Personalized politics and weakened parties—an axiom? Evidence from the Israeli case

“…Private member bills—as stated, our focus here—fall into the latter category. This study can thus be classified as a study of decentralized, personalized political representation according to the scheme provided in the introductory article of this symposium (Pedersen and Rahat, 2021).…”

Centralized or decentralized personalization? Measuring intra-party competition in open and flexible list PR systems

“…As very well detailed in the introductory article to this symposium (Pedersen and Rahat, 2021), personalization is a multifaceted concept that needs further conceptual clarification (see also Cross et al, 2018; Karvonen, 2010; Rahat and Kenig, 2018). In this article, we look at one specific aspect of it: the nature of intra-party competition between candidates in list Proportional representation (PR) systems as the result of the candidates’ intra-list electoral contest to attract (preference) votes from the electorate.…”

Leader Effects and Voting for the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe

“…This describes a process through which individual political actors have gained relevance at the expense of collective political organizations such as political parties (Rahat and Sheafer 2007). The concept of personalization is both longitudinal (it assumes an increase in the importance of political actors across time) and multidimensional (it may be present in multiple political arenas, affecting political institutions, the media and individual voting behavior) (Pedersen and Rahat 2019). Within the latter dimension, the literature distinguishes between centralized personalization (which refers to a process taking place at the party leadership level) and decentralized personalization (which relates to the increased relevance of individual politicians aside from the party leader) (Balmas et al 2014).…”