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This handbook presents a comprehensive view of the current theory and research surrounding political elites, which is now a pivotal subject for academic study and public discourse. In 40 chapters by leading scholars, it displays the field’s richness and diversity. The handbook is organized in six sections, each introduced by a co-editor, focusing on theories about political elites, methods for studying them, their main structural and behavioral patterns worldwide, the differentiation and integration of political elite sectors, elite attributes and resources, and the dilemmas of political elites in this century. Forty years since Robert Putnam’s landmark Comparative Study of Political Elites, this handbook is an indispensable resource for scholars and students engaged in the study of this vibrant field.
Parties, governments and elites are at the core of the study of democracy. The traditional view is that parties as collective actors play a paramount role in the democratic process. However, this classical perspective has been challenged by political actors, observers of modern democracy as well as political scientists. Modern political parties assume different roles, contemporary leaders can more heavily influence politics, governments face new constraints and new collective bodies continue to form, propose new ways of participation and policy making, and attract citizens and activists. In the light of these observations, the comparative study of democracy faces a number of important and still largely unsolved questions that the present volume will address.
Elites come in many forms and express themselves in an extraordinary variety of ways. This collection reflects just that diversity. From an overview of elites for the relatively uninitiated to comparative studies of elites in individual, national, social and political contexts, this work is both historical and contemporary, and encompasses a variety of case studies of elite individuals as well as elites in a broad range of national and political environments. All this is intended to assist those interested in the study of elites from historical and contemporary theoretical and empirical perspectives. Ultimately, this volume suggests many opportunities for further study and research.
Contemporary Western societies are witnessing ground-breaking social, economic and political changes at an accelerating pace. These changes are challenging the way democracy works and the role that political elites play in this system of government. Using a theoretical and empirical approach, this volume argues that political elites are urged to develop new strategies in order to achieve interest aggregation, to safeguard collective action, and to maintain elite autonomy and stability. The adaptive capacities of political elites are assessed through case studies, comparative and longitudinal analyses of their social structure, their recruitment patterns, and their attitudes. The book includes contributions from reputable scholars in the field of elite research and specialists on individual political systems across Europe and the US. It provides an analytical framework demonstrating that political elites are inevitable and potentially able to respond successfully to varying challenges. The book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political elites, democracy, comparative politics, political participation and European Politics.
This book provides a cross-country study of the consequences of the expansion of intra-party democracy, the trend towards more inclusive methods of selection for party candidates and leaders, and the impact of these on political elites in terms of sociopolitical profile and patterns of careers. It explores the link between political organizations and political elites, by studying the role of parties in parliamentary and political selection and its impact on the political leadership appointed. Putting an emphasis on primary elections, it analyses the party elites that emerge from those selection processes and those democratized organizational settings. It focuses not only on the analysis of the processes through which party elites are selected and the consequences at the level of the party but also at the level of party elites themselves, i.e. what impact party primaries have on the characteristics parties’ candidates and leaders. The book offers a theoretical, comparative, and empirical account of the internal electoral processes of parties and their impact on political recruitment. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political elites, political parties and party systems, electoral politics, democracy, populism, and leadership, and more broadly to comparative politics.
Do political leaders determine whether a polity will receive a democratic future or not? Research and advocates of democracy agree on the significance of political elites for democratization, yet there is a need for a more specific understanding of their role. This book develops a theory of political leadership at the point of nascent statehood to explain the emergence of resilient democracies. It employs four diverse case studies to examine the role of leadership and democratic consolidation. In doing so, the book identifies certain capacities of political leaders at the critical moment of nascent statehood as decisive to the future democratic quality of their state. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, democratization studies, state building, leadership, nationalism, Middle Eastern studies and South Asian studies.
This book explores the ways in which political parties, in contemporary parliamentary democracies, choose their leaders and then subsequently hold them accountable. The authors provide a comprehensive examination of party leadership selection and accountability both through examination of parties and countries in different institutional settings and through a holistic analysis of the role of party leaders and the methods through which they assume, and exit, the office. The collection includes essays on Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Norway and the United Kingdom which have important differences in their party systems, their degree of democratization, the role assigned to party leaders and their methods of leadership selection. Each country examination provides significant data relating to party rules and norms of leadership selection, leadership tenures and leadership contests. The book concludes with a chapter that merges the country data analyses to provide a truly comparative examination of the theoretical questions underlying the volume. This book will be of strong interest to students and scholars of legislative studies, elections, democracy, political parties, party systems, political elites and comparative politics.
Most political regimes, whether authoritarian or democratic, are born in abrupt, brutal, and momentous crises. In this volume, a group of prominent scholars explores how these seminal events affect elites and shape regimes. Combining theoretical and case study chapters, the authors draw from a wide range of historical and contemporary examples to challenge mainstream developmental explanations of political change, which emphasize incremental changes and evolutions stretching over generations.
Citizens living in presidential or parliamentary systems face different political choices as do voters casting votes in elections governed by rules of proportional representation or plurality. Political commentators seem to know how such rules influence political behaviour. They firmly believe, for example, that candidates running in plurality systems are better known and held more accountable to their constituencies than candidates competing in elections governed by proportional representation. However, such assertions rest on shaky ground simply because solid empirical knowledge to evaluate the impact of political institutions on individual political behaviour is still lacking. The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems has collected data on political institutions and on individual political behaviour and scrutinized it carefully. In line with common wisdom results of most analyses presented in this volume confirm that political institutions matter for individual political behaviour but, contrary to what is widely believed, they do not matter much.