Political Leadership, Parties and Citizens: The Personalisation of Leadership

ISBN-13: 9780415547369 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 304 str.

Jean Blondel;Jean-Louis Thiebault

Opis

Social structure may have been of primary importance in accounting for the attitudes and behaviour of many citizens historically, but changes in the social structure has led to the decline of the role played by class and religious affiliation, while the importance of personality in political leadership has become increasingly significant.

This volume explores both theoretically and empirically, the increasingly important role played by the personalisation of leadership. Acknowledging the part played by social cleavages, it focuses on the personal relationships and psychological dimension between citizens and political leaders. It begins by examining the changes which have taken place in the relationship among citizens, the parties which they support and the leaders of these parties in a European context. The authors then assess how far the phenomena of ‘personalised leadership’ differ from country to country and the forms which these differences take, with comparative case studies on Britain and Northern Ireland, France, Italy, Poland, Japan and Thailand.

The book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, comparative politics and political leadership.

Spis treści

Part 1: Personalisation of Leaders and Citizens-Party Relationships  2. The Problems Posed by the ‘Social Cleavages’ Analysis of  Parties  3. Types of Personal Relationships among Leaders, their Parties and the Citizens of these Parties  4. The Psychological Bases of the Relationship between Citizens and Parties and the Role of Leaders  5. Parties and Personalised Leaders: Pre-Existing Parties and New Parties. A Preliminary General Survey  6. A Prospective Methodology for the Analysis of the Links between Leaders, Parties and Citizens  Part 2: Case Studies of Party Personalisation of Leadership  7. Introduction: The Need to Examine Specific Aspects of the Impact of Party Personalisation by Means of Case-Studies  8. Great Britain - Did Party Personalisation of Leadership Save the British Two-Party System?  9. France - The Personalisation of Leadership and French Political Parties  10. Italy  11. Poland  12. Japan - The Personalisation of Politics: Koizumi and Japanese Politics  13. Thailand - The Personalisation of the Party Leader: Thaksin, Parties and Thailand

O autorze

Jean Blondel was Professor and is now Professorial Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at European University Institute, Italy. He founded the Department of Government at the University of Essex in 1964 and co-founded the European Consortium of Political Research. His many publications include (as co-editor) The Nature of Party Government: a comparative European perspective; Cabinets in Eastern Europe; and (as co-author) Political Cultures in Asia and Europe (also published by Routledge). Jean-Louis Thiebault is Professor Emeritus and former director of the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Lille, France. He is a member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Political Research. His many publications include (as co-editor with Jean Blondel) The Profession of Government Minister in Western Europe.