Who do parties select as their electoral leaders and why?
Final Report Abstract
The overarching question of the project was who parties choose as their electoral leaders in parliamentary elections. A key insight behind this question is that leadership within party organizations comprises multiple positions, not just a single party leader. Most comparative research on leadership positions in parties is concerned with party leaders at the top, especially with their selection and the corresponding consequences. However, there are no stand-alone comparative studies on electoral leaders. Although party leaders do often act as electoral leaders, this is not always the case. This lack of insights into the choosing of electoral leaders is notable given that electoral leaders play a crucial role in election campaigns and for voting behaviour. To address whom parties choose as their electoral leaders, the project adopted two different perspectives. The first explored the leadership levels of parties, noting that multiple leadership positions raise the question of their allocation. Specifically, parties might award the electoral leader role to someone already holding top positions or to someone outside of the existing leadership circle. This allocation represents the first research gap the project investigated, focusing on systematic differences in leadership arrangements surrounding electoral leaders across countries and parties. The second perspective focused on the political careers of electoral leaders, acknowledging that politicians can hold multiple positions at once within party structures. Starting from this multidimensional nature of political careers, the project analysed which career types exist among electoral leaders and the differences in their occurrence across parties and countries. Empirically, the project analysed the career types of electoral leaders and the combination of the electoral leader role with other leadership roles at the German subnational level and across 18 parliamentary democracies at the international level. A core part of the project was the creation of four datasets, each dedicated to one of the two research subjects at both of these levels of examination. The analyses for the German subnational level revealed the existence of distinct political career types among electoral leaders and showed how these types vary across different parties in their occurrence. Differences among parties also emerged in how often they assign the electoral leader role to those already in leadership positions. Overall, these differences were linked to various party characteristics. The full analysis for the 18 parliamentary democracies at the international level could not be completed by the end of the project and will be completed in the succeeding period.
