The Politics of Party Leadership ─ A Cross-national Perspective

Making use of a unique data set that includes more than 1000 leadership elections from over 100 parties in 14 countries over an almost 50 year period, this volume provides the first comprehensive, comparative examination of how parties choose their leaders and the impact of the different decisions they make in this regard. Among the issues examined are how leaders are chosen, the factors that result in parties changing their selection rules, how the rules affect the competitiveness of leadership elections, the types of leaders chosen, the impact of leadership transition on electoral outcomes, the factors affecting the length of leadership tenures, and how leadership tenures come to an end.

This volume is situated in the literature on intra-party decision making and party organizational reform and makes unique and important contributions to our understanding of these areas. The analysis includes parties in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Norway, and the United Kingdom.

Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu.

William Cross is Professor and Bell Chair in Parliamentary Democracy at Carleton University in Ottawa Canada. His research focuses on questions relating to democratic institutions and particularly party organization and intra-party democracy. Recent publications include The Challenges of Intra-party Democracy with Richard Katz (Oxford 2013) andPolitics at the Centre: the Selection of Party Leaders in the Anglo Parliamentary Democracies with Andre Blais (Oxford 2012), the latter of which received theDonald Smiley Prize from the Canadian PSA for best book in the area of Canadian government and politics.

Jean-Benoit Pilet is Professor in political science at Universite libre de Bruxelles (ULB). His work focuses mostly on elections, electoral systems, political parties, and Belgian politics. He has recently co-edited with William CrossThe Selection of Political Party Leaders in Contemporary Democracies (Routledge, 2014). Jean-Benoit Pilet is also the author or co-author of several articles published in journals such asElectoral Studies, Party Politics, European Journal of Political Research,Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, Representation,West European Politics or Comparative European Politics.