What Are Personalist Parties?

Abstract

Abstract This chapter lays out what personalist parties are. It posits that personalism in political parties can be captured by the extent to which the party organization is a vehicle to advance the leader’s personal political career such that the leader has more control over the party than do other senior party elites. Next, it details the book’s approach to measuring ruling party personalism and the original data collection effort underlying it. It highlights how this measure of ruling party personalism incorporates information that predates the leader’s assumption to power, such that it is not endogenous to incumbent leaders’ behaviours once in office. This means that party personalism is measured exogenously to the outcome studied in the book, namely democratic backsliding. The chapter then reviews related concepts and measures, paying particular attention to populism, before offering basic facts and features of personalist parties. It shows that ruling party personalism has risen globally but finds little evidence that increasing political polarization or declining public support for democracy explain its rise.