Abstract
Democracies in general and political parties in particular have undergone political personalization in recent decades. The power balance between politicians (one or many) and the team (the party as a collegial entity) has changed, and existing party typologies are no longer suited to the analysis of today’s democratic politics. Although some new personalized party types have been added, what is missing is a systematic attempt to contrast them with the collegial option. This article proposes a new classification of political parties to fill the lacuna. It includes five ideal types of parties: two personalized-decentralized types, referring to collections of separated autonomous activists or to separated autonomous individual politicians (plural); a collegial type, which is about the centrality of the team and is based mainly on collective authorities and collective decision making; and two personalized-centralized types, referring to the centrality of an individual politician in her capacity as the party leader or that of a specific individual who “owns” the party.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 213-228 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Perspectives on Politics |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 22 Mar 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by the ISARELI SCIENCE FOUNDATION (Grant no. 1835/19). I would like to thank Noam Gidron, Reuven Hazan, Ofer Kenig, Helene Helboe Pedersen, and the four anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Political Science Association.