Who do parties select as their electoral leaders and why?

• Applicant: Dr. Gregor Zons
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 417940500

In modern parliamentary democracies, it is nowadays common for political parties to feature electoral leaders for upcoming parliamentary elections. For major parties, this makes intuitive sense as they have a clear chance of providing the head of government, but also small parties nominate electoral leaders. Although electoral leaders figure prominently in media coverage of electoral campaigns and influence voting behavior, there are no comparative insights on who parties select for this position. Therefore, this project studies who parties choose as their electoral leaders and why. As a theoretical starting point, I expect that parties face challenges emanating from the processes of personalization and presidentialization and that these challenges find expression in the selection of their electoral leaders and in the career profiles of these individuals. At the party level, the project plans to investigate whether electoral leaders hold any other leadership position(s) and which ones (extra-parliamentary party leader, parliamentary party leader and governmental party leader position). I refer to this distribution of leadership positions as leadership fragmentation. At the level of electoral leaders, the project intends to analyze their past career paths in the party (extra-parliamentary party, party in parliament and party in government) to identify career types leading to this position. Subsequently, I aim to answer why parties opt for different leadership configurations in conjunction with electoral leadership (leadership fragmentation). Besides explanatory factors at the system and party level, I am interested in how career paths of electoral leaders influence the constellations in the party leadership.To pursue these research questions, I will choose a mixed methods approach. At first, I want to build two unique data collections. The first data collection is located at the party level and documents the incumbents of the leadership positions of parties in 20 parliamentary democracies since 1960. The second data collection refers to the level of electoral leaders and captures their past career paths in the party organization. Following this, I plan to apply sequence analysis to the career data in order to identify patterns in the succession and accumulation of different positions held in the party organization. For analyzing leadership constellations in conjunction with electoral leaders, I will rely on bivariate statistics and regression analysis. The findings of the quantitative analyses will then guide the case selection for a comparative case study that will further test and substantiate the influence of career types of electoral leaders on leadership fragmentation at the party level. It will trace the decision-making process for the leadership fragmentation and thereby reveal the calculus of the involved key actors.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants