This book provides a thematically organized examination of political party leadership selection. There is widespread agreement that political party leaders are increasingly important in election campaigns, governing and internal party decision making. 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 book provides a 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 ch ... More

This book provides a thematically organized examination of political party leadership selection. There is widespread agreement that political party leaders are increasingly important in election campaigns, governing and internal party decision making. 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 book provides a 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.