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The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2011) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

The Leadership Quarterly


j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / l e a q u a

The personalization of politics in Western democracies: Causes and 1

consequences on leader–follower relationships 2

Diego L. Garzia 3

Centre for the Study of Political Change, Universita di Siena, Via Mattioli 10, 53100 Siena, Italy 4
5

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t 87

Available online xxxx The article provides an assessment of the most recent literature on political leadership by 9
10
focusing on its effects on voters' cognition and behavior, in the light of the ongoing 11
Keywords: personalization of politics. The changing role of political leaders in contemporary democracies is 12
22
Party identification assessed through a perspective aimed at linking leadership theory and political science. One of 13
23
Personalization of politics the major consequences of the personalization of politics seems to lie in the changing 24
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Political leadership expectations of voters with respect to the personal profile of their leaders. This is due to the 25
15
Public opinion lowering effects of television and parallel attempts by leaders to appeal voters on the basis of 26
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Voting behavior
perceived similarities. As to the leaders' effect on individual voting behavior, we highlight the 27
17
various reasons that can enhance (or constrain) the role of party leaders' image in the voting 18
calculus. Implications and directions for further research are discussed in the concluding 19
section. 20
© 2011 Published by Elsevier Inc. 21
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28

30

1. Introduction1 31

The field of contemporary “personality and politics” analysis (Greenstein, 1969) origins from Harold Laswell's (1930) 32
Psychopathology and Politics, where the categories of psychology are applied for the first time to the study of political personality. 33
Of particular interest to this early literature is the effect of psychopathology on political behavior. Good examples of the sort are 34
George and George's (1956) analysis of Colonel Edward House's influence on Woodrow Wilson, and the various studies of the 35
authoritarian personality (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950), whose main focus was on Nazism and the 36
psychological characteristics of its leaders. Within political science, the best illustration of this approach is James David Barber's 37
(1977) classification of character structures of the American presidents. Despite many attempts, however, none of these studies 38
has been able to link systematically a specific personality trait or characteristic to the emergence of a successful and effective 39
leadership. 40
The lack of necessary evidence to trace a profile of the leader for all seasons led the research back to Max Weber's (1922) 41
concept of charismatic leadership, which, according to the German sociologists, can exist only as long as it is recognized by 42
followers. This renewed attention to the environmental conditions that facilitate (or constrain) the emergence of a political 43
leadership (Blondel, 1987) gave impetus to a different line of research based on transactional models (Hollander, 1992). In this 44
perspective, the processes of interpersonal influence are not to be interpreted in virtue of objective characteristics of the situation, 45
but instead on the basis of the respective perceptions and expectations of leaders and followers. According to this approach, the 46
crucial requirement for a political leader is not that of effectively possessing certain personal attributes — quite to the contrary, the 47
task is to let followers believe it. 48

E-mail address: garzia3@unisi.it.


1
I would like to thank Jean Blondel for his encouraging feedback to an early version of this paper, and Paolo Bellucci for his insightful suggestions. I would also
like to acknowledge the helpful comments of Michael Mumford and two anonymous referees.

1048-9843/$ – see front matter © 2011 Published by Elsevier Inc.


doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.05.010

Please cite this article as: Garzia, D.L., The personalization of politics in Western democracies: Causes and consequences on
leader–follower r..., The Leadership Quarterly (2011), doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.05.010
2 D.L. Garzia / The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2011) xxx–xxx

This task has become even more important in recent times in the light of the ongoing process of personalization of politics in 49
52
51
50
Western democracies. Leaders have in fact gained center stage with respect to political communication due to the intertwined 53
effect of technological innovations in the media and organizational change within their own parties. This has made in turn political 54
leaders increasingly visible, and therefore subject to constant scrutiny by the public. One of the major consequences of the process 55
lies in the changing ways in which followers (e.g., voters) perceive and evaluate their leaders. As we shall see, media's ubiquitous 56
focus on individual leaders – and on leaders as individuals – have in fact provided the public with the chance to judge them as 57
persons, thus allowing the application of cognitive frameworks usually employed in everyday life to the process of leader appraisal. 58
As a result, there has been a shift from an idealized conception of political leaders to one in which attention is paid first and 59
foremost to the leaders' ability to identify with their own public. In this sense, a symbolic closeness to the masses has become a 60
necessary condition for emergence and electoral success of a political leadership. 61
Another key consequence of the personalization of politics lies indeed in the growing impact of leaders' personality on 62
individuals' vote behavior. The decline of social and partisan alignments occurred in almost every advanced industrial democracy 63
during the last decades, has in fact made way for short-term forces (e.g., candidates, issues, performance evaluations) to influence 64
voting choices to a greater extent than it was the case three or four decades ago — this influence being more pronounced in 65
presidential systems than in parliamentary ones. Once again, the role of technological innovations and party change emerges as 66
crucial in the process — the latter being responsible of an increased personalization of the political and electoral supply, as 67
presented and further amplified by the former. 68
This article is structured as follows: we begin by analyzing the changing content of contemporary political leadership due to the 69
process of personalization common to all advanced industrial democracies (Section 2); then, we will discuss its major effects on 70
voters' political cognition (Section 3) and behavior (Section 4) in turn; implications and directions for further research will be 71
discussed in the concluding section. 72

2. The personalization of politics 73

In the last half century, there is little doubt that political leaders have increasingly gained importance to both political 74
communication and electoral competition vis-à-vis their parties in almost every Western democracy. Impressionistic evidence of 75
this trend include the substitution of leader images for party symbols during election campaigns (McAllister, 1996); the media's 76
increasing propensity to mention candidates rather than the parties they belong to (Dalton, McAllister, & Wattenberg, 2000); and 77
the tendency to portray executives in a personalized fashion — these being routinely labeled after the name of their leaders (Bean 78
& Mughan, 1989). Hypothetically, this should have made in turn more relevant “the role of individual politicians and of politicians 79
as individuals in determining how people view politics and how they express their political preferences” (Karvonen, 2010: 1–2). 80
In 1991, Martin Wattenberg announced the beginning of a new era in politics, referring to it as candidate-centered politics 81
(Wattenberg, 1991). His longitudinal analysis of U.S. presidential elections held between 1952 and 1988 supported empirically the 82
impressionistic evidence, by highlighting a major shift in the electorate's attention from political parties and issues to specific 83
political, and particularly presidential, candidates. Such shift is accompanied by a greater importance of their personal 84
characteristics, as opposed to more political ones, in the eyes of voters. 85
In the last decade, a growing number of studies have concentrated on the increasingly tighter relationship between politicians' 86
personality and the functioning of representative democracy, and in particular on the process of personalization of politics (Caprara 87
& Zimbardo, 2004; Karvonen, 2010; McAllister, 2007; Poguntke & Webb, 2005; Rahat & Shaefer, 2007). According to Rahat and 88
Shaefer (2007), the personalization of politics should be seen as “a process in which the political weight of the individual actor in 89
the political process increases over time, while the centrality of the political group (i.e., political party) declines” (Rahat & Shaefer, 90
2007: 65). Similarly, Karvonen puts at the core of his personalization hypothesis the notion that “individual political actors have 91
become more prominent at the expense of parties and collective identities” (Karvonen, 2010: 4). 92
Generally speaking, the personalization of politics could be seen as part of a more widespread process of individualization of 93
social life (Bauman, 2001), on the basis of which people tend to perceive themselves and others first and foremost as individuals 94
rather than as representatives of collectivities and groups. However, a number of more specific causes have been advanced for 95
increasing personalization in the political process, from both macro-institutional (e.g., institutional arrangements, electoral laws) 96
and micro-behavioral (e.g., distrust in representative institutions) perspectives (for a review, see: McAllister, 2007). Here, we will 97
concentrate on what the literature considers the two most crucial causes of the process: (a) the changing structure of political 98
communication due to the emergence of television; and (b) the erosion of traditional cleavage politics. Already in 1960, Edwin C. 99
Hargrove observed that: 100

“as the old politics of class and ideological conflict declines in Europe, as television becomes the chief means of political 101
information for the public…power will increasingly become visible to people through popular leaders and these leaders 102
will be the chief means of engaging the political interest of publics” (cited in Poguntke & Webb, 2005: 21). 103
104
Fifty years after these ‘prophetic’ words, few would cast doubts over the crucial role exerted by electronic media, and television 105
in particular, in the personalization of contemporary politics. The changing structure of mass communications has been central in 106
emphasizing the role of political leaders at the expense of parties, making the latter “more dependent in their communications 107
with voters on the essentially visual and personality-based medium of television” (Mughan, 2000: 129). As explained by Davis 108
(1990), 109

Please cite this article as: Garzia, D.L., The personalization of politics in Western democracies: Causes and consequences on
leader–follower r..., The Leadership Quarterly (2011), doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.05.010
D.L. Garzia / The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2011) xxx–xxx 3

“[a]verage news consumers prefer to read about other people, not about abstract groups or remote bureaucracies and 110
government agencies. To cater to these preferences, news stories, especially those that appear on television, are routinely 111
framed from the point of view of central actors. News consumers see an individual in action and are given information 112
about his or her feelings and reactions. Personal motives and mistakes are analyzed. Inevitably, stories about groups are 113
transformed into stories about group leaders” (Davis, 1990: 169). 114
115
Personalization has been defined as “the more general, pervasive, and fundamental element in the process of change of 116
electoral campaigns” (Swanson & Mancini, 1996). An indication of the profound impact of television on political leadership comes 117
from the increasing importance gained by televised leaders' debates during national election campaigns. Began as a peculiar 118
feature of presidential campaigns in the U.S. (e.g., the historical Kennedy vs. Nixon debates in 1960), the leaders' debate spread 119
quickly all around the Western world. On forty-five democracies examined in the mid-1990s, only four did not feature a leaders' 120
debate during their last campaign (LeDuc, Niemi, & Norris, 1996). 121
On these premises, it is tempting to see television as the prime mover behind the personalization of politics (McAllister, 2007). 122
Yet it must not be overlooked the key role played by political parties themselves in the process. In the last decades, parties have 123
undergone deep transformations which are at once cause and consequence of personalization. The widespread erosion of social 124
and partisan loyalties encountered in almost every advanced industrial democracy (Dalton & Wattenberg, 2000; Franklin, Mackie, 125
& Valen, 1992) made necessary for class-mass parties to readapt in order to extend their electoral basin beyond the social class to 126
which they usually referred to. This process of transformation into catch-all parties (Kirchheimer, 1966) implies the declining role 127
of ideology at the expense of features more appealing to voters such as the personality of the party leader (Farrell, 1996). In a 128
comparative study of campaign practices among European and Australasian parties in the late 1980s, Bowler and Farrell (1992) 129
demonstrate that in the bulk of cases there was clear evidence of a shift toward party leaders during electoral campaigns. 130
Following this argument, it is organizational changes within parties to ‘blame’ for having ignited the process of personalization 131
(Rahat & Shaefer, 2007), while others (e.g., Katz & Mair, 1994) argue in favor of the thesis by which it is television to have affected 132
the nature of party organizations. However, individuating the prime mover behind the personalization of politics lies beyond the 133
scope of this article. As a point of departure for our discussion, we will rest on the assumption that personalization is due to the 134
interplay of technological innovations and changes in party structures (see Fig. 1). 135
According to this interpretation, the remainder of this article will be devoted to the effects of personalization on citizens' 136
perception of political leaders (Section 3) and the ways in which this eventually affected their behavior as voters (Section 4). 137

3. Voters' perception of leaders' personality 138

How information are mentally processed is the core business of cognitive psychologists. Yet the process of impression formation 139
(Funk, 1996) is one that pertains closely to the study of political leadership as well. When trying to grasp the basis on which 140
political leaders are evaluated by followers–voters, the analyst is always faced with a dilemma: do individuals perceive the world 141
the way it is (e.g., realist approach), or do they create a subjective representation of it in their mind (e.g., constructivist approach)? 142
According to cognitive realism, the cognition of surrounding physical and social reality occurs directly. There is no use of mediating 143

Technological Organizational
Innovations Change of Parties

PERSONALIZATION
OF POLITICS

Cognitive Effects Behavioral Effects

Fig. 1. Causes and consequences of the personalization of politics.

Please cite this article as: Garzia, D.L., The personalization of politics in Western democracies: Causes and consequences on
leader–follower r..., The Leadership Quarterly (2011), doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.05.010
4 D.L. Garzia / The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2011) xxx–xxx

cognitive structures, and thus perceived objects appear in one's mind as they really are (Gibson, 1966). On the contrary, cognitive 148
165
164
163
162
161
160
159
158
157
156
155
154
153
152
151
150
149
constructivism maintains that the process of understating reality occurs through the construction of certain mental images 166
resulting from interpretation and inference of the received stimulation (Neisser, 1967). 167
Evidently, a transactional approach to the study of political leadership requires by necessity the employment of a constructivist 168
perspective. According to perceptual-balance theory, the image of a politician should be defined as the voter's perception “based on 169
both the subjective knowledge possessed…and the messages projected by the candidates” (Nimmo & Savage, 1976: 8). In a more 170
thorough definition, Cwalina, Falkowski, and Newman (2008) argue that 171

“[t]he term candidate image means creating a particular type of representation for a particular purpose (e.g., voting), 172
which, by evoking associations, provides the object with additional values…The values through which the constructed 173
object is enriched may never be reflected in his or her ‘real’ features — it is enough if they have a certain meaning for the 174
receiver” (Cwalina et al., 2008: 19, emphasis added). 175
176
In this sense, the image of a candidate is essentially ‘in the eyes of the beholder’ and thus voter-driven rather than candidate- 177
driven (Hacker, 2004). Incidentally, it may well coincide with the projected image, but what really matters is the way in which it is 178
perceived by voters. 179

3.1. The image of the leader as a sum of traits 180

The number of aspects of a leader's personality on which voters can base their evaluation is extremely vast, in principle. The 181
early literature – as carefully reviewed by Bass (1981) – found more than forty personal (e.g., physical and psychological) 182
characteristics associated in a way or another with a successful political leadership. However empirical analyses have shown that 183
voters develop a mental image of political leaders as persons on the basis of a restricted number of categories. According to Caprara 184
and Zimbardo (2004), “[s]uch simplified perceptions of the personalities of political leaders may derive from a cognitively efficient 185
strategy that voters adopt to cope with the massive amount of daily information to which they are exposed” (585). 186
In this respect, leaders' personality traits have been found to play a crucial role in organizing knowledge and guiding voters' 187
processes of leader perception (Funk, 1999; Pierce, 1993). Traits are in fact “a basic component of our images of other persons of all 188
kinds whether family member, acquaintance, or public figure” (Funk, 1996: 98). In psychology, personality traits are defined as 189
habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion (Kassin, 2003). According to this perspective, traits are (a) relatively stable 190
over time, (b) different among individuals, and (c) they influence behavior (Matthews, Deary, & Whiteman, 2003). Therefore 191
candidates' personality traits are of crucial importance to voters, for they offer an appealing shortcut to infer what sort of leader 192
that candidate will eventually be. 193
A number of empirical studies have shown that the kind of traits used to evaluate political figures are rather limited in number 194
and tend to fall into a few broad categories. The first systematic effort in this direction is Miller and Miller's (1976) analysis of 195
open-ended responses on candidate likes and dislikes in the ANES (American National Election Study) surveys. By means of factor 196
analysis, the authors reduced the thirty-four separate characteristics mentioned in the 1972 survey for each of the presidential 197
candidates into five basic dimensions, which the authors label as: competence (highest factor loadings: experience and ability); 198
trust (honesty and integrity); reliability (responsibility, decisiveness and stability); leadership appeal (inspiring, communicative, 199
warm and likable); and personal appearance (age, health and other demographic features). Ten years after, a longitudinal study 200
covering all the U.S. presidential elections held between 1952 and 1984 finds that a five-dimensional solution provides once again 201
the best fit to the data, thus reinforcing the conclusion that “people think about presidential candidates in terms of a limited 202
number of broad categories rather than in terms of a multitude of discrete traits” (Miller, Wattenberg, & Malanchuk, 1986: 528). 203
A different, more straightforward approach to the matter consists in asking respondents to evaluate presidential candidates on 204
a finite number of trait terms (close-ended response categories). It is the case of Kinder (1986), who developed the categories 205
employed in the American National Election Studies from that year on: namely, competence (subsuming qualities such as 206
intelligent and knowledgeable), leadership (inspiring and providing a strong leadership), integrity (moral and honest) and 207
empathy (compassionate and caring). Confirmation for the appropriateness of the categories chosen by Kinder comes from a 208
comparative analysis by Pancer, Brown, and Barr (1999), whose research demonstrates that both in Britain, Canada, and the 209
United States the dimensions of judgment with reference to political leaders are relatively few in number, and that “a common set 210
of traits robustly summarizes the bases for political judgment” (Pancer et al., 1999: 362). 211

3.2. The ‘ideal’ leader 212

Starting in the 1960s, an important stream of empirical research has investigated which of these traits is most important for an 213
ideal political leader. According to the data collected by Roberta Sigel (1964), around 80% of the American electorate considered 214
honesty as the most essential characteristic for a president. Two decades later, a group of American scholars demonstrated that, in 215
the eyes of voters, a presidential prototype should be first and foremost honest — this answer being provided by more than 90% of 216
the respondents (Kinder, Peters, Abelson, & Fiske, 1980). Not dissimilar data is presented in the more recent literature dealing with 217
both established and newer parliamentary democracies, such as Australia (McAllister, 2000), Germany (Brettschneider & Gabriel, 218
2002), Italy (Barisione, 2006), Poland and Romania (Cwalina et al., 2008). 219

Please cite this article as: Garzia, D.L., The personalization of politics in Western democracies: Causes and consequences on
leader–follower r..., The Leadership Quarterly (2011), doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.05.010
D.L. Garzia / The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2011) xxx–xxx 5

From a normative point of view, voters' perception of the leader as an honest and trustworthy person would thus seem a 220
necessary condition for electoral success. The reason is clear: politicians do in fact their job in a place and manner that are, for the 221
wide majority of voters, hard to observe and difficult to interpret correctly. Because of these conditions, it is to be hoped that voters 222
will take into account those personal characteristics related to the chances that such politician will act, when in office, in a honest 223
and disinterested manner (McCurley & Mondak, 1995). It is nothing more than the basilar Burkean assumption of representative 224
democracy: namely, that of voters looking for “representatives whom [they] can trust” (Mondak, 1995: 1045). Yet, as explained by 225
Kinder et al. (1980), 226

“[i]t is one thing to demonstrate that people possess prototypic conceptions of an ideal president. It is quite another to 227
show that the elements of character and performance citizens emphasize in their thinking about an ideal president carry 228
special weight in their preferences toward real presidential contenders” (Kinder et al., 1980: 321). 229
230
As underlined by Rokeach (1973), and in the face of this apparent primacy of moral values, U.S. presidential elections seem to 231
demonstrate quite another thing. In 1972 for example, the winning candidate (e.g., Richard Nixon) succeeded in spite of the 232
widespread perception of his dishonesty. Similar conclusions are reached by studies conducted in two European parliamentary 233
democracies: Germany (Brettschneider & Gabriel, 2002) and Italy (Barisione, 2006). In two pre-electoral surveys conducted in 234
these countries (the German in 1997, the Italian in 2001) a wide majority of the sample regarded honesty as the characteristic to 235
possess. Nonetheless, the winners in the subsequent elections were respectively Gerard Schroeder and Silvio Berlusconi — both 236
candidates scoring lower than their counterpart in terms of perceived honesty. 237

3.3. Disentangling the real and the ideal: the ‘everyman’ leader 238

A tentative explanation for this discrepancy between the public's idealized conception of a political leader and the actual 239
characteristics of elected politicians draws on Nisbett and Wilson's (1977) argument. In telling us about an ideal president, the 240
authors argue, respondents rely primarily upon the cultural mythology of the presidency. In other words, a conception of the ideal 241
president reveals what the culture honors, not what voters consult in their judgment of a real candidate. As made clear in the 242
previous section, the ubiquitous focus on individual leaders by contemporary mass media (and television in particular) has moved 243
the public's attention from their role of politicians to that of persons. The power of television to restructure the social space is a 244
recurring theme in sociology of communication (Thompson, 1995). Meyrowitz (1985) describe accurately the relationship 245
between television and political leaders, and in particular what he calls the lowering effect of the former on the latter. Through 246
television we see “too much” of our politicians; as “the camera minimizes the distance between audience and performer…it 247
lowers politicians to the level of their audience” (Meyrowitz, 1985: 271), thus stripping them of the aura of greatness that 248
characterizes any ideal conception of a political leader. From here the paradox of candidates for the presidential nomination 249
competing to look as unpresidential as possible, and of presidential (or prime ministerial) candidates chosen on the basis of their 250
communicational, expressive, and relational capacities — qualities defined by Greenstein (2001) as ‘proficiency as public 251
communicator’ and ‘emotional intelligence’. In this sense, leaders like Bill Clinton, Silvio Berlusconi, Tony Blair, and Nicolas Sarkozy 252
stand as paradigmatic examples. 253
The possibility that voters' evaluative criteria with respect to their leaders have been affected by the changing ways in which 254
these are presented in the media is widely corroborated by empirical evidence. According to Rahn, Aldrich, Borgida, and Sullivan 255
(1990), people have come to evaluate politicians in the same way they evaluate ordinary people, because relying on the 256
personality of a candidate (as opposed to his ideology, or issue positioning, and in virtue of its increased visibility) allows 257
individuals to apply inferential strategies that are constantly employed in everyday life. In this way, voters are able to arrive at an 258
overall judgment of a certain politician without exerting the effort to monitor everything he says or does. A suggestive hypothesis 259
is that advanced by Sullivan, Aldrich, Borgida, and Rahn (1990), whose analysis explores the possibility that voters “make their 260
comparative candidate judgments within the context of their perceptions of everyday people” (Sullivan et al., 1990: 463). It is the 261
authors' assumption that “voters' belief about human nature might provide a normative baseline against which candidates can be 262
measured” (ibid., 464). If voters do make use of their intuitions about human nature when they compare presidential candidates, 263
they might do so in different ways. On the one hand, they could apply an expectation that candidates should be supermen: that is, 264
men whose honesty, strength and competence rise above the limitations imposed upon them by human nature. On the other hand, 265
voters could use their assumptions about human nature to support candidates who best typify their conception of the average 266
human being: an everyman whose personal attributes score relatively close to their own. Sullivan and colleagues tested these 267
models in the context of the 1984 U.S. presidential election, in which the incumbent Ronald Reagan was challenged by Democratic 268
nominee Walter Mondale. As they found out, a wide majority of voters tended to evaluate Reagan within the everyman framework 269
— people liked him and supported him because he was perceived as good as the majority of ordinary Americans. On the contrary, 270
Mondale was measured against the more demanding superman prototype. If he came out well in the comparison, voters would 271
have voted for him. However, “such a situation occurred quite rarely, and Reagan won the elections” (Cwalina et al., 2008: 41). 272

3.4. Leader–voters similarities in the age of manufactured images 273

The above discussion has led us to a crucial aspect of contemporary leadership. It is in fact becoming commonplace for political 274
leaders to draw their authority “not by being beyond people”, but “by being of and like them” (Renshon, 1995: 201). In an 275

Please cite this article as: Garzia, D.L., The personalization of politics in Western democracies: Causes and consequences on
leader–follower r..., The Leadership Quarterly (2011), doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.05.010
6 D.L. Garzia / The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2011) xxx–xxx

evocatively titled essay on the Reagan presidency, D'Souza (1997) showed How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader, 276
arguing – in line with the empirical findings of Sullivan et al. (1990) – that the key of his success lied exactly in his (appearing?) 277
ordinariness. As president he demonstrated extraordinary abilities in identifying with his own public (Campus, 2007). In this 278
respect, Ronald Reagan was among the first politicians to fully understand the emergent demand of identification between leaders 279
and followers in contemporary democracies (Mény & Surel, 1999). What matters the most, his presidency gave birth to a tendency 280
now widespread among political leaders: namely, that of trying to appear, for as much as possible, as an ordinary Joe. Paradigmatic 281
in this respect is the case of Bill Clinton's diminished presidencies of the 1990 s, in which, according to Denton (2005), the distance 282
between the president and the public ‘evaporated’ perhaps forever. 283
Indeed, it would seem that the leader's symbolic closeness to the masses has become a crucial requirement of modern 284
democratic leadership (Barisione, 2009a). Why should this be the case? According to some, this requirement “entails the image of 285
a candidate who the people feel is able to listen and understand, on the basis of a similarity that is perceived as the promise of 286
trustworthy and responsive leadership” (ibid., 48). The perceived leader–voters similarity lies thus at the core of contemporary 287
electorates' search for leaders able to ‘stand for them’ — this being a crucial feature in the theory of symbolic representation (Pitkin 288
1967). 289
A substantial amount of research in the field of personality psychology has already corroborated the hypothesis that individuals 290
are most attracted to others who they perceive as similar to themselves (Byrne 1971; Newcomb 1961). More recently, the 291
similarity-attraction paradigm has been applied by Caprara and Zimbardo (2004) to the study of political behavior. Their empirical 292
model of leader–voters congruency moves from the assumption that 293

“[w]e want to trust competent leaders, but we also want to like them personally, and this is easier when they are perceived 294
as essentially similar to us. The extent to which voters perceive their leaders' personalities as similar to their own is critical 295
in humanizing abstract icons and endorsing politicians' efforts and claims” (Caprara & Zimbardo, 2004: 590). 296
297
As the authors find out, people tend to like better those politicians whose personality traits match more closely their own traits. 298
But to what extent this leader is in fact similar, as a person, to those voters attracted by him on the basis of perceived congruency? 299
Although an unequivocal answer lies beyond the scope of this article, the question brings nonetheless our attention to the ways in 300
which politicians attempt to manipulate the public's perception of their personality, and in particular to the role played by 301
professionals from the field of political marketing (e.g., image crafters, campaign consultants, and so on) in the packaging of 302
candidates according to the desires of voters. 303
Nowadays, it is routinely argued that “winning parliamentary or presidential elections without marketing is nearly impossible” 304
(Cwalina et al., 2008: 1). The widespread diffusion of marketing techniques as applied to political campaigns has led Bruce 305
Newman to announce the entrance of politics in the age of manufactured images (Newman, 1999). In this perspective the political 306
spectacle consists, first and foremost, in the construction of leadership (Edelman, 1988). Pre-campaign market research (e.g., 307
opinion polls, focus groups) helps to understand “what type of leadership is most in demand by those segments of the electorate 308
that are also potential constituencies” (Campus, 2010: 4). Once their image is packaged according to the demands of voters, 309
politicians are eventually sold on the (electoral) market by means of advertisement; empirical research on political advertisement 310
has demonstrated its strong impact on voters' perceptions of the candidates (Kaid & Chanslor, 1995; Kaid & Holtz-Bacha, 1995). 311
It would thus seem that the crucial task of an aspirant political leader in contemporary democracies has become that of shaping 312
(or better, having shaped) his image in a way that appeals to the largest possible number of voters (Louw, 2005). Huge efforts, in 313
terms of time and money, are invested in the process of image crafting. Such an emphasis on the right image represents a clear hint 314
of politicians' expectation that their image matters to voters. But is it really the case? Are voters increasingly basing their vote 315
choice on a comparative evaluation of the personality of the candidates, as they perceive it? To these questions is devoted the next 316
section of this article. 317

4. Leader effects on voters' behavior 318

Voting on the basis of personality has often been seen as ‘irrational’ (Converse, 1964), for the popular cynical view of candidates 319
is that “they are affectively packaged commodities devised by image makers who manipulate the public's perceptions by 320
emphasizing traits with special appeal to the voters” (Dalton & Wattenberg, 1993: 208). As Carmines and Stimson (1980) have put 321
it: “[t]he common – indeed, universal – view has been that voting choices based on policy concerns are superior to those based on 322
party loyalty or candidate images. Only the former represent clearly sophisticated behavior” (Carmines & Stimson, 1980: 79). 323
Recently, however, a very different approach has emerged. According to some, gathering information about party leaders is part of 324
a rational voting strategy (Bean, 1993; Ohr & Oscarsson, 2003; Page, 1978). As said above, voters tend to evaluate party leaders on 325
the basis of a finite number of categories (e.g., integrity, reliability, and competence) and such evaluative criteria appear as “hardly 326
irrational” (Dalton & Wattenberg, 1993: 209). Quite to the contrary, it seems that “candidate assessments actually concentrate on 327
instrumental concerns about the manner in which a candidate would conduct governmental affairs” (Miller et al., 1986: 536). 328
Empirical research demonstrates that the impact of leaders' personality is directly proportional to the level of political 329
sophistication of who evaluates it (Glass, 1985). Moreover, the best educated citizens emerge as the most likely to be concerned 330
with the personality traits of leaders when choosing who to vote for (Kroh, 2004; contra: Evans & Andersen, 2005 for the UK; 331
Barisione, 2007 for Italy). 332

Please cite this article as: Garzia, D.L., The personalization of politics in Western democracies: Causes and consequences on
leader–follower r..., The Leadership Quarterly (2011), doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.05.010
D.L. Garzia / The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2011) xxx–xxx 7

One of the most crucial consequences of personalization lies (or at least, should lie) in the increasing centrality of perceived 333
leaders' personality in the individual voting calculus. Previous research has shown the declining role of sociological (Franklin et al., 334
1992) and long-term psychological factors (Dalton, 1988) in structuring individuals' voting behavior. This has led to a progressive 335
individualization of vote choice (Bellucci & Whiteley, 2006), which implies, among other things, an increased likelihood to “vote 336
differently from one election to another, depending on the particular persons competing…Voters tend increasingly to vote for a 337
person and no longer for a party or a platform” (Manin, 1997: 219). 338
Before moving to an assessment of leader effects on individual voting behavior in democratic elections, we must first define 339
what do we mean by that. The crucial question is how leaders' personal characteristic are intended to influence voters' choice. King 340
(2002) argues that leaders' personality can have an impact on voting behavior in two ways: indirectly and directly. The indirect 341
leader effect consists in the influence that a leader exerts on voters “not as a result of anything he or she is, but as a result of things 342
that he or she does…while…by direct effects is meant the influence that a leader or candidate exerts on voters by virtue of who he 343
or she is, how he or she appears and how he or she publicly comports him or herself” (King, 2002: 4). 344
Here, we will concentrate on the most relevant studies that have attempted to assess the direct leader effect on voters' behavior 345
in both presidential (e.g., United States) and parliamentary (e.g., Britain, Germany, and Italy) systems. As it will be shown, leader 346
effects are comparatively smaller in the latter because of the institutional arrangement and a somewhat stronger role of partisan 347
affiliations in these systems. Nonetheless, a number of conditions make party leaders especially important in the voting calculus of 348
citizens, regardless of the political system in which the election takes place: to this is devoted the last subsection. 349

4.1. Leader effects in presidential systems 350

How far voters will base their voting decision on the personal profile of the contenders depends heavily on the political and 351
institutional structure in which an election is fought. Presidential elections encourage to focus on personalities to a greater 352
degree than do parliamentary ones (McAllister, 1996). This is because the executive authority in presidential systems “resides 353
with an individual who is [directly] elected to the position…In addition, party discipline is often weak in presidential systems, 354
since the president's political survival does not depend on the unity of the governing party” (McAllister, 2007: 575). Evidently, 355
the electoral system employed is fostering the personalization of the office to a great extent: voters in majoritarian systems are 356
in fact asked to vote for a person. A number of comparative analyses show the clear difference in terms of electoral impact of 357
leaders in presidential systems as compared to parliamentary ones (Curtice, 2003; Curtice & Holmerg, 2005; Holmberg & 358
Oscarsson, 2004). 359
With respect to the American case (the most analyzed so far in the literature) it has been repeatedly shown that the perceived 360
attributes of political leaders are at the core of Americans' voting behavior. According to the already cited study by Miller and 361
Miller (1976), “candidate-related attributes are short-term forces that have sharply affected the individual vote decision in the 362
national presidential elections between 1952 and 1972” (833). This emerges clearly in the first empirical contribution entirely 363
devoted to the impact of party leaders' personality on individual vote behavior. On the basis of his multivariate analysis of ANES 364
data from the period 1952–1964, Stokes (1966) concludes that favorable attitudes toward a presidential candidate's personality 365
produce without exceptions a significant gain (in terms of votes) for the candidate's party net of the effect exerted by individuals' 366
partisan affiliations, issue opinions and economic evaluations. This is particularly the case in the 1952 and 1956 elections, where 367
Eisenhower's widely appreciated personality brought an advantage of four to eight points respectively to the Republican Party. On 368
the contrary, the 1964 election showed how a ‘weak’ (in terms of perceived personal image) candidate as Goldwater could cost the 369
Grand Old Party as much as five percentage points, giving the way to Johnson's victory. 370
The study of leader effects in U.S. presidential elections flourished in the 1970s. As it appeared, the decline of traditional social 371
and partisan alignments made election outcomes regularly determined by voters' evaluation of presidential candidates. It is the 372
case of 1972 election, when a popular negative perception of his personal image cost George McGovern the victory (Popkin, 373
Gorman, & Phillips, 1976). The same explanation has been provided for Jimmy Carter's defeat in 1980 (Markus, 1982). By the 374
1980s, there has been even more room for individualized vote choices. A survey by Sabato (1988) showed that 92% of Americans 375 Q1
were in agreement with the sentence ‘I always vote for the person who I think is best, regardless of what party they belong to’ 376
(quoted in Dalton & Wattenberg, 1993: 203). What matters the most, as argued by Wattenberg (1991), is that American voters 377
“have not only increasingly said that they vote for the man rather than the party; they have actually done so with great frequency” 378
(158). In one recent instance, public perception of presidential candidates' personality might have been even decisive for the 379
electoral outcome. An analysis of the hardly contested victory of George W. Bush in 2000 by Bartels (2002) suggests that this 380
election might have been decided by the voters' evaluation of personality-related characteristics of the candidates. According to 381
this study, Bush's ability to be perceived as a stronger leader (as compared to his opponent, Al Gore, and once every other possible 382
influence on individual voting behavior is taken into account) has gained him a tiny, yet perhaps crucial, 0.4% of the votes (probit 383
analysis estimate). 384

4.2. Leader effects in parliamentary systems 385

Parliamentary systems are based on the responsible party government model (APSA, 1950). In such model, political leaders 386 Q2
are not supposed to play much of a role. Parties compete on the basis of a number of policies they promise to enact in the 387
case they will win elections. It is party platforms then, rather than party leaders, to drive votes (McAllister, 1996). This 388
model suggests two different reasons why leader effects in parliamentary systems can be thought to be negligible: (a) the 389

Please cite this article as: Garzia, D.L., The personalization of politics in Western democracies: Causes and consequences on
leader–follower r..., The Leadership Quarterly (2011), doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.05.010
8 D.L. Garzia / The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2011) xxx–xxx

comparatively stronger role of long-term partisan affiliations within parliamentary democracies, which is due to the 390
dominant role of parties in the political system, and (b) the structural and institutional constraints common to all 391
parliamentary systems. 392
Parties are central actors of democratic politics, so almost all political phenomena can be evaluated within a partisan 393
framework (Miller, 1976). It is for this reason that, since its introduction in the mid-1950s, the concept of party identification 394
has been central to the evolution of electoral behavior studies on both sides of the Atlantic (Bartle & Bellucci, 2009; Budge, 395
Crewe, & Farlie, 1976; Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960; Miller & Shanks, 1996). In its original formulation, party 396
identification is conceived as a “psychological identification, which can persist without legal recognition or evidence of formal 397
membership and even without a consistent record of party support” (Campbell et al., 1960: 121). The social–psychological 398
view holds that party identifications act to filter individuals' views of the political world, providing them not only with a 399
means for making voting decisions, but also with a means for interpreting issues and candidates. For this reason, some have 400
come to define partisanship as the ‘ultimate cost-saving device’ (Fiorina, 1990). Partisanship offers in fact a vital cue to 401
partisans: because of such psychological sense of identification, “the individual tends to see what is favorable to his partisan 402
orientation” (Campbell et al., 1960: 133) — this being either policies or leaders. Accordingly, partisans are inclined to favor a 403
particular policy just because is proposed or adopted by the party they identify with, while they are likely to oppose to the 404
very same policy if it was proposed by a different party. By the same token, “they would tend to like a party leader, 405
irrespective of their personal qualities, if that leader were the leader of their own party, and to dislike them if they were 406
leading a different party” (Curtice, 2003: 4). Therefore leader images differ from voter to voter depending on the voter's 407
particular belief (Feldman & Conover, 1983). In other words, party identification theory postulates leader evaluations as a mere 408
consequence of a pre-existing partisan affiliations, being party leaders evaluated through the perceptual filter of partisanship. 409
Hence, one likes the party leader because is partisan, and not the other way around. 410
Such an interpretation of voters' behavior leaves little room for party leaders (as well as other short-term forces, such as issue 411
opinions, and performance evaluations) to exert an independent effect on individual vote choices. The electoral impact of leaders 412
is further constrained by the legislative nature of parliamentary elections. Voters face in fact “a structural situation where the 413
crucial choice is between parties rather than the personal stands and qualities of prime ministerial candidates” (Dalton et al., 2000: 414
51), and even though the identity of the potential candidates to the premiership is well-known by the public, a number of 415
problems, both theoretical and methodological, makes extremely difficult to isolate a vote for a leader to a vote for his party (or 416
coalition). For this reason pure leader effects are, as a rule, ‘barely detectable’ (Barisione, 2009b; see also the various chapters in 417
King, 2002). However, some recent studies show that, if any, countries with majoritarian elections display stronger leader effects 418
as compared to countries where PR systems are used (Holmberg & Oscarsson, 2004; contra: Curtice & Blais, 2001). Also, there is 419
some evidence that “leader evaluations may be a little more important when voters are deciding whether to vote for one of the two 420
big parties” (Curtice, 2003: 15; see also: Kroh, 2004), or at any rate where “the two largest parties are the pivots of alternating 421
majority governments” (Barisione, 2009b: 477) — as it is the case, for instance, in Britain, Germany, and the Second Italian 422
Republic. 423

4.2.1. Great Britain 424


The academic interest in the effect of leaders' personalities on British voting behavior dates as early as the pioneering 425
research by Butler and Stokes (1974). Although these authors do not exclude in principle the possibility that leaders' personal 426
characteristics might affect individuals' voting behavior, they also highlight the fact that in early 1970 s “attitudes towards the 427
parties were a better guide to voting behavior than were attitudes towards the leaders” (Butler & Stokes, 1974: 367). The most 428
celebrated article by Bean and Mughan (1989) does not alter these conclusions substantially. If on the one hand they show 429
that in the British election of 1983 leaders' personality traits did have an impact on vote choice net of other factors, it must be 430
noted as well that once party identification is included in their regression model “leadership qualities can be seen to 431
contribute between four and five percentage points to the explained variance” (Bean & Mughan, 1989: 1172; similar results 432
are reported by Graetz & McAllister, 1987). Stewart and Clarke (1992) are more confident in the personalization hypothesis, 433
concluding that in 1987 “leader images, net of pre-campaign party identification, had large effects” (Stewart & Clarke, 1992: 434
467). The same view is shared by Mughan (2000) with respect to the Conservative's thin-sized victory of 1992, when, 435
according to the author's calculations, widely positive evaluations of John Major made the difference “between the formation 436
of a majority Conservative government and a hung Parliament” (Mughan, 2000: 114). On the contrary, the evidence presented 437
by Bartle and Crewe (2002) with regard to the 1997 election underlines the rather insignificant effect of party leaders image 438
on voting choice, once pre-existing political orientations are included in the regression model. According to these authors, 439
positive evaluations of Tony Blair won in that occasion a mere 1.7% of the votes to Labor. As they conclude, “[g]iven our 440
information about a voter's social background, partisan predispositions, policy preferences, and evaluations of national 441
conditions, their assessment of the attributes of party leaders added very little to our ability to predict how they voted” (Bartle 442
& Crewe, 2002: 93). In their analysis of the British election of 2001, Clarke, Sanders, Stewart, and Whiteley (2004) test 443
different rival models of voting choice, concluding that “all of the models have something to say [but] some models have much 444
more to say than others. The party leader and party identification models provide the strongest explanation” (Clarke et al., 445
2004: 124). Yet they also observe that, regardless of the electoral choice model investigated, Labor won first and foremost 446
because of their “commanding lead in party identifiers” (ibid.: 123). To sum up, British party leaders have mattered and still 447
matter (but not more than before) in Britons' voting decision. However, their net effect gets regularly downsized once 448
individuals' political predispositions, such as their partisan affiliations, are introduced in the analytical model. 449

Please cite this article as: Garzia, D.L., The personalization of politics in Western democracies: Causes and consequences on
leader–follower r..., The Leadership Quarterly (2011), doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.05.010
D.L. Garzia / The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2011) xxx–xxx 9

4.2.2. Germany 450


Political parties have had such a substantial role in the Federal Republic that post-war Germany has rightly been defined a 451
parteienstaat (Arzheimer, 2006). For this reason, the relative importance of party identifications vis-à-vis leader evaluations on 452
individuals' vote choice is even more accentuated in the German context. In his analysis of eight federal elections held between 453
1961 and 1987, Kaase (1994) concluded that “[n]ot only is the short-term (issue and candidate) component of the voting intention 454
in comparison to partisanship insubstantial (in terms of explained variance); it also does not systematically increase in importance 455
over time, as a personalization concept would require” (Kaase, 1994: 226; contra: Schmitt & Ohr, 2000). Similar findings are 456
reported in a more recent study by Brettschneider and Gabriel (2002). As their empirical analysis of 1997 Federal election shows, 457
“the influence of competing party leaders is strongly mediated by such situational factors as the strength as well as the direction of 458
partisan affiliation” (Brettschneider & Gabriel, 2002: 153). 459

4.2.3. Italy 460


During the First Republic (1946–1994), Italian elections used to be more an expressive than an instrumental act of political 461
participation (Bellucci, 2007). In this context electoral mobility was highly constrained by traditional sources of electoral 462
stabilization such as ideology, religion, and social class, thus leaving little space for voters' evaluation of individual politicians to 463
affect their vote choice. If personas appeared already on the political scene during the 1980s (Pasquino, 1990), the academic 464
interest in their effects on voting behavior flourished with the emergence of the Second Republic and its new patterns of political 465
competition. The first attempt to appraise the role of party leader images on Italians' voting behavior is to be found in an article by 466
Venturino (2000). His study of the 1996 election revealed however that the strongest determinant of voting for a party was the 467
voters' evaluation of it rather than that of its leader — and this conclusion holds for every party under analysis. The picture is 468
somehow mixed with respect to the following election of 2001, won by Silvio Berlusconi's center-right coalition. According to Sani 469
(2002) party leaders played in that occasion a significant role even net of other effects — and this was especially the case for the 470
figure of Berlusconi (what the author calls the B Factor). However, different conclusions are reached by Grasso (2005) in her 471
analysis of the same election. According to this author, what mattered the most in individuals' voting decision were indeed their 472
pre-existing feelings of political belonging (e.g., party identification). A study by Barisione (2007) on 2004 voting intentions brings 473
a more convincing portrait of the role of party leaders in attracting votes to their parties in virtue of how they are evaluated as 474
persons. However his analysis of open-ended survey questions about the respondents' main reason to vote as such, show that this 475
effect is limited to the major parties on the center-right (for a tentative explanation, see below), and even there the magnitude of 476
the effect is significant (e.g., 5–6 percentage points) but not spectacular. 477

4.3. Conditions under which political leaders' personality can be especially important 478

There are a number of factors that can sharply affect the role of party leaders as determinants of individual vote behavior in 479
democratic elections. Some are epiphenomenal, based on the peculiar context in which a particular election takes place; others are 480
more general, and relate to socio-political trends common to all advanced industrial democracies. 481
A first factor consists in the presence (or absence) of a dominant climate of opinion. According to Barisione (2009b) the 482
probability for party leaders to be influential declines in presence of a pervasive climate of opinion with respect to the incumbent 483
government activity, being it either favorable or adverse (e.g., the time for change phenomenon). In other words, a first condition 484
for party leaders to be influential (or at least, not to be trivial) lies in the absence of a widespread climate of opinion. Its presence 485
can indeed have an effect also on the specific characteristics required by the electorate. Telling examples, in this respect, are the 486
U.S. presidential elections of 1976 and 2004. As to the former, it was held shortly after the Watergate scandal, and therefore took 487
place in an opinion climate widely skewed in favor of candidates characterized by honesty and moral integrity in the eyes of the 488
public; in the latter, on the contrary, the post 9/11 opinion climate favored the candidate scoring higher on leadership strength. In 489
both cases, the electoral outcome matched with the dominant climate of opinion. 490
Also a situation of systemic crisis of the political system can boost significantly the role of political leaders in vote conversion. 491
Contrary to the ‘climate of opinion’ factor however, in this case it is the presence of a situation of crisis to ignite personalization — a 492
systemic crisis being a fundamental pre-requisite for the emergence of a charismatic leadership (Weber, 1922). Clear examples of 493
the sort come from the 1990s transitions in Italy and Russia, in the light of the fundamental role exerted by key political figures 494
(e.g., Silvio Berlusconi and Boris Yeltsin, respectively) in the process. 495
A further contextual factor favoring the role of political leaders is the closeness of the electoral outcome itself. According to King 496
(2002), “the impact of leaders' characteristics will be at its greatest, and is most likely to be decisive, when the outcome of the 497
election under consideration would in any case have been extremely close” (42). A number of examples: the English elections of 498
1964, February 1974, and 1992; the German election of 1972; and the American presidential election of 2000 (see Section 4.1). 499
Each of the aforementioned factors can (and did) affect the outcome of a particular election. Yet there is a more general and 500
pervasive trend that makes reasonable to hypothesize an increased importance of party leaders regardless of the specific electoral 501
context. We refer to the process of partisan dealignment (Dalton, 1984) among Western electorates. As hypothesized by King 502
(2002), “the impact of leaders' personalities and other personal characteristics will be greatest when voters' emotional ties to 503
parties are at their weakest” (41). With regard to the widespread partisan dealignment occurred across all advanced industrial 504
democracies in the past several decades, it has been described as the most profound change in voting behavior since the 1920 s 505
(Dalton & Wattenberg, 2000). Accordingly, one might argue that in times of weakening partisan bonds among the public, “how 506
voters view their leaders will also change significantly as a result…In the absence of party cues, voters will rely more heavily on the 507

Please cite this article as: Garzia, D.L., The personalization of politics in Western democracies: Causes and consequences on
leader–follower r..., The Leadership Quarterly (2011), doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.05.010
10 D.L. Garzia / The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2011) xxx–xxx

appeal of the personalities of the leaders in order to decide their vote” (McAllister, 2007: 582). Very few studies have tested 508
empirically this proposition. Among the exception, it is worth mentioning a comparative study of 15 countries by Curtice and Blais 509
(2001). However, in their analysis of CSES (Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Project) data, the authors find no evidence to 510
support the claim that voters are more likely to vote on the basis of leader evaluations in countries where levels of party 511
identification are comparatively lower — a rather unexpected conclusion, that cries for more empirical testing. 512
What does seem to really matter – in spite of the political and electoral system in which the election takes place – is indeed the 513
ideological orientation of voters. The literature seems to concur in identifying right-wing voters as comparatively more likely to cast 514
their vote on the basis of leader personalities. A number of studies conducted in varied settings such as Portugal, Italy, and the 515
Netherlands, have demonstrated that leader effects are especially pronounced for right-wing parties (Barisione, 2007; Lobo, 2006; 516
Van der Brug & Mughan, 2007), and these conclusions are further supported by a comparative analysis of six European 517
parliamentary democracies (Lobo, 2008). 518

5. Discussion and avenues for further research 519

As outlined in our introduction, the classic studies of political leadership were characterized by their primary focus on the 520
personality of leaders themselves, while few or no attention was paid to the part played by followers in the emergence, 521
maintenance, and decline of a leadership. The spread of democratic practices and the emergence of survey research in the second 522
half of the last century have however brought the attention to the crucial role of followers (voters) in the process. Because of the 523
fact that democratic leadership entails the voters' consent, it slowly became clear that perceptions, desires, and expectations of 524
followers must be taken into account in every study concerned with political leadership. Based on transactional models 525
(Hollander, 1992), the more recent literature on political leadership, as reviewed in this article, provides us with the means to 526
interpret the rise and fall of individual politicians to leadership positions, thus shedding light on the dynamics of contemporary 527
political leadership in advanced industrial democracies. 528
In recent times, political leaders have become increasingly visible to mass publics due to the ongoing process of personalization 529
of politics in Western democracies. This is a complex phenomenon, caused as we have seen by the dynamic interplay of two 530
factors: technological innovations in the media sphere, on the one hand, and organizational changes within political parties, on the 531
other hand (see Fig. 1). As a result individual politicians, and party leaders in particular, have become central to political 532
communication. 533
One of the consequences of the personalization of politics seems to lie in the changing expectations of voters with respect to the 534
personal profile of their leaders. As explained above, political leaders are evaluated on the basis of a restricted number of 535
categories, such as competence and integrity (Miller et al., 1986), and these categories are at the core of the public's idealized 536
conception of a political leader (Kinder et al., 1980). However, it has been also shown that this idealized image does not affect 537
(anymore) the ways in which voters weigh up actual candidates. A tentative explanation based on the literature reviewed here can 538
rely on Meyrowitz's (1985) argument about the lowering effect of television that has ‘reduced’ leaders to the level of their public. 539
This effect is further reinforced by leaders themselves, that are increasingly likely to draw their authority “not by being beyond 540
people”, but “by being of and like them” (Renshon, 1995: 201). Accordingly, the inner dynamics of political leaders' evaluation by 541
followers have been affected to a great extent. A number of important studies demonstrate that nowadays voters evaluate 542
politicians using the same framework employed in everyday life (Rahn et al., 1990) and thus “make their comparative candidate 543
judgments within the context of their perceptions of everyday people” (Sullivan et al., 1990: 463). 544
It is in the light of this that the constant struggle of contemporary political leaders to appear, for as much as possible, as an 545
ordinary Joe must be interpreted. As well explained by Caprara and Zimbardo (2004), “[w]e want to trust competent leaders, but 546
we also want to like them personally, and this is easier when they are perceived as essentially similar to us” (590). However, it 547
must be kept in mind that the perception of such similarities occurs, for the greatest part, in the sphere of image and 548
communication. In this respect, the role of professionals from the field of political marketing emerges as crucial in the process. 549
Enormous campaign resources (e.g., money and time) are invested by politicians in shaping their image in a way that appeals to 550
the largest possible number of voters, and this is done in the expectation that a likeable image is what really matters to them. 551
However, the above discussion of leaders'direct effect in parliamentary elections has shown that a particularly appealing party 552
leader does not affect to a substantial extent the fortunes of his party. Voters are in fact supposed to evaluate politics (as well as 553
politicians) within a partisan framework (Miller, 1976) and therefore base their choice on long-term political affiliations (e.g., 554
party identification). Here, we will briefly provide an alternative point of view on the subject matter, in the hope that it will be of 555
help for further analyses of the role of party leaders in democratic elections. 556
Our argument is based on the often overlooked (in the literature) role of party leaders in shaping individuals' partisan 557
attachments. Already in 1968, and against the orthodox assumptions of party identification concept set forth by Campbell et al. 558
(1960), V. O. Key anticipated a later, cognitive psychological view of partisanship, hypothesizing that “[l]ike or dislike of a political 559
personality…bring shifts in party identification” (1968; quoted in Clarke et al., 2004). It is the case, for instance, of the so-called 560
Reagan Democrats, conquered to the Republican cause by the appeal of former U.S. President (Greenberg, 1996). A number of 561
empirical analyses demonstrate indeed that the assessment of party leaders' personality by the voter can bear a significant effect 562
on his long-standing attitudes towards the party (see, for instance: Page & Jones, 1979 for the U.S.; Venturino, 2000 for Italy). A 563
study of Italian voters' attitudes by the present author provides further confirmation of this hint, showing that one's evaluation of a 564
party leader has become in the last decade the strongest determinant of alignment (or dealignment, if poorly evaluated) with the 565
party itself (Garzia, 2009). According to this interpretation, then, the electoral effect of an attractive leader needs not to be found in 566

Please cite this article as: Garzia, D.L., The personalization of politics in Western democracies: Causes and consequences on
leader–follower r..., The Leadership Quarterly (2011), doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.05.010
D.L. Garzia / The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2011) xxx–xxx 11

Voters’
Personality
direct effect
Leader
VOTE
Evaluation

Leaders’ Partisanship
Personality

indirect effect

Fig. 2. The act of voting in the age of personalization.

the net gain of votes due to his/her strictly personal appeal — that is, independently of the party (King, 2002). Rather, the leader 586
585
584
583
582
581
580
579
578
577
576
575
574
573
572
571
570
569
effect should lie in the improved image in voters' mind of the party he leads and personifies (Barisione, 2006; Curtice, 2003; Webb, 587
2004). In this sense, leaders can be thought to affect voting choices through partisanship (see Fig. 2). 588
Of course, the basic diagram proposed in Fig. 2 does not intend to capture all the numerous factors that might affect a voter's 589
choice (e.g., ideological orientations, economic evaluations, issue positioning, and so on). Rather, its more modest aim is that of 590
providing political leadership scholars with a synthetic account of the crucial role gained by contemporary leaders as primary 591
objects of political cognition for voters, as well as major cause (and not anymore mere reflection) of partisan affiliations and vote 592
choices in turn. 593
It is no doubt that “huge empirical and statistical obstacles [must] be vanquished” (Mitbø, 1997: 152) in order to disentangle 594
conclusively the role of leaders from that of their parties as determinant of voters' choice. In this respect, the spread of primary 595
elections around the Western world (Hazan, 2002) represents a great opportunity for leadership scholars to assess the role of 596
personality in electoral contexts in which partisanship represents a constant rather than a variable. 597
In all probability, supporters of the social–psychological interpretation of voting behavior will disagree with the position 598
assigned to party leaders in our revised funnel of causality. Hopefully, this will call leadership scholars to further analytical efforts 599
on the changing, increasingly central role of political leaders in the ever more personalized polities of the third millennium. 600

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