Upcoming AGU Leadership Elections

AGU announces the full slate of leadership candidates. Voting will open at the end of September.

Does It Pay Off? The Effects of Party Leadership Elections on Parties’ Trustworthiness and Appeal to Voters

In the last few decades, political parties in several Western countries have opened up the process of leadership selection to all party members. So far, research has mainly focused on the drivers of this development, taking into account both internal factors (reducing power of middle-level party elites) and external factors (increasing the party’s attractiveness). Only few studies have tested the effects of these external arguments. In this study, we investigate whether parties that select their leader inclusively (1) exhibit higher levels of trustworthiness, and are more appealing to (2) voters and (3) potential members. Based on the procedural fairness argument, we expect a positive effect of inclusive procedures. We conduct a vignette experiment with fictional parties and find that inclusive selection procedures do not strengthen citizens’ perceptions of trustworthiness. Moreover, citizens are not more willing to vote or join parties with inclusive selection procedures.

Electing a Leader

A person normally becomes Prime Minister either after winning a General Election, or after the Government party has elected a new leader to succeed a Prime Minister. Leadership of one of the main political parties is therefore a prerequisite for entering Number 10 Downing Street. This chapter examines exactly how the main parties have elected their leaders since 1902, setting the processes in their historical contexts, and explaining why the systems have been changed down the years. The Conservative Party did not have a formal system until after a major crisis in 1963; Labour has always elected its leader; but the systems which have been used have been altered for political reasons. Recent leadership elections, e.g. of Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Jeremy Corbyn, are examined. The chapter also explains the ways in which an opposition party can get rid of a leader who doesn’t want to quit.

Party organizational change and leader effects on voting behavior: Linking the electoral and party faces of presidentialization

Changes in electoral markets in the late 20th century have forced political parties to adapt. Having lost much support and facing growing disaffection, parties often resorted to organizational structure reforms as means to reengage with a debased electorate. This article explores the impact of two changes in party organization—democratization of leadership selection procedures and increasing leadership power—on the extent to which leaders have an effect on voting behavior. In doing so, it analyzes the understudied interconnection between the electoral and the party faces of the presidentialization of politics thesis. The results provide mixed evidence regarding the relationship between both dimensions of presidentialization: more leadership power boosts leader effects, but only non-divisive direct leadership elections favor leader effects. This is a comparative study on Western democracies, combining individual-level data from the Comparative of Study of Electoral Systems with contextual data from the Political Party Database Project.

May succession will increase chance of no-deal Brexit

Significance Conservative leadership elections are notoriously difficult to predict and early frontrunners often falter. However, it is increasingly likely that a hard-line Brexiteer will replace May, especially after the Conservatives lost substantial support to the Brexit Party in the European Parliament (EP) elections. Impacts The United Kingdom and the EU will be more prepared for a no-deal on October 31 than they were on March 29. Some Conservative Remain MPs will likely leave the party if a no-deal Brexit happens. MPs cannot directly prevent a no-deal but could hold a no-confidence vote in the government which would potentially trigger a snap election. Remain candidates to replace May will look to gain party support by saying a hard-line leader would make such an election more likely.

Choosing the Leader

This book attempts to fill the gap in the understanding of how congressional leaders are chosen. It offers the first systematic analysis of party leadership elections in Congress since the 1970s, looking in particular at how election campaigns unfold and the factors driving lawmakers' vote choice when vacancies occur or challenges erupt against sitting leaders. This chapter begins with a brief review of the House's major elected party leadership positions. It then discusses the common wisdom about congressional leadership elections and the limits of early research on the topic. Next, it introduces a new theory of leadership selection and explain how candidates, campaigns, and political context contribute to the factors that shape legislators' vote choice for a leader. It then introduces the empirical data used in this study, describes the testing methodology, and outlines the chapters that follow.

Conclusion

This chapter reviews the examination of the factors behind candidate emergence and the analyses of vote choice in fourteen contested leadership elections in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1965. It then discusses additional possible explanations of vote choice, how applicable the present findings may be to other legislative settings, and how the politics of leadership races has changed in the past and may change in the years ahead. The chapter concludes that we may see more ethnically diverse leadership candidates than in the past, with voters, interest groups, and new media playing more significant roles in shaping lawmakers' vote choice. However, so long as the central elements shaping the House's leadership elections—the size of the chamber, the service orientation of party leaders, committees and states as the bases for professional connections—do not change, professional connections and salient goals will remain fundamental to how the rank-and-file decide who will lead them.