1.1 New Democratic Ground
Political personalization is one of the most relevant processes of our time, affecting every aspect of contemporary politics. Yet when it occurs in political parties , this is the last place we want to see it happening. In fact, as vehicles of mass participation and as an essential body in representative regimes, parties acted as the main collective player in nineteenth-century politics and survive as a symbol of a bygone age. This may also be the reason why the rise of party leaders has received such limited attention in the field of political science, as it refers to a reality that we are unwilling to face up to and one that seems to forecast a stormy future. It is enough to consider that in the authoritative Handbook of Party Politics edited by Richard Katz and William Crotty , despite the relevance of the process of personalization in transforming political parties, no single chapter is devoted to party leaders. More recently the Oxford Handbook of Political Leadership (Rhodes and tâHart 2014 ) provides a contribution on party and electoral leaders by confirming that «in studies of both party organization and the electoral arena there seems to have been some reticence in recognizing the role of party leaders» (Lobo 2014, 362).
The first reason for a still scarce reflection on party leaders is that parties, and not leaders, have dominated Western democracies over the last few decades. Where Europe is concerned, in particular, the power of parties has increased so much over the last century that expressions such as âparty government â or Parteienstaat 1 have entered common usage. Indeed, the crucial political institutions were directed by political parties and their elites, which, to a large extent, defined policy programs and selected public officials. Today, on the other hand, political parties throughout Europe are set up, or transformed, by popular leaders, who are able to direct their structures while creating personal bonds with citizens. Moreover, when elected to govern, party leaders are often in charge of creating their own political program, for which they receive a popular mandate. It is worth noting that they have greater opportunities than in the past to fill the party apparatus with people they trust and, if they cumulate the office of chief executive, to hire agentsâministers or other administrative officersâto devise implementation of policies (Dowding and Dumont 2009 ; Pilet and Cross 2015 ). Thus, the very rapid transition from the centrality of political parties as a collective body to personalized parties came as a shock to those who were used to reading the political reality through the lens of nineteenth-century categories.
The second reason why inadequate attention has been paid to the theme of party leadership in political science relates to our idea of democracy. Three decades on from Giovanni Sartori âs statement, his judgment is still valid: «the vital role of leadership is frequently acknowledged; nonetheless it obtains only a negligible status within the theory of democracy» (Sartori 1987, 171; Sartori 1968; KörösĂ©nyi 2005 ). Indeed, the concept of leadership itself risks appearing pre-democratic. 2 It is not the case that the main paradigm of modernity was founded on the prevailing of impersonal power. According to the tripartite classification of authority by Max Weber , one of the most influential typologies of modern social theory, legitimate powers proceed in a developmental order. State and modern collective public action stem from the passage from charismatic and traditional authority to a rational-legal authority, an evolution that may be interpreted as a process that goes from personal to impersonal rule. Indeed, in Weber âs terms, when a traditional domination occurs, people believe in the «authority of the eternal yesterday» (Weber 1947 [1922], 78), so that they obey particular figures, such as a patriarch or a monarch, or more rarely an elite, who are called on to embody that tradition. Charismatic power is also an individual one, in that it constitutes «the absolutely personal devotion and personal confidence in revelation, heroism, or other qualities of individual leadership . This is âcharismaticâ domination, as exercised by the prophet or â in the field of politics â by the elected war lord, the plebiscitarian ruler, the great demagogue, or the political party leader » (Ivi 79). In fact this power is especially due to the special and almost extraordinary gift shown by the leader, who is considered able to impress a wide change on social order: it is no coincidence that âcharismaâ is a religious term literally meaning «gift of grace». 3 In the third case, legitimation of obedience is given by belief in the validity of legal statutes and in the rationality of normative systems. Although Weber does not forecast the end of charismatic manifestations in the modern world (Cavalli 1981 ), a classical interpretation of his studies has led authors to associate the most essential institutions of modern sociality, in primis bureaucracy , with the affirmation of the universalistic principles of the law. From this point of view, it may be remembered that according to the medieval historian Marc Bloch, no other combination of words was more widely used or more comprehensive in meaning in the vocabulary of the Middle Ages than the following: «being a man of another man». 4 On the contrary, modernity is characterized by the consolidation of power relations based on abstract rules.
Yet, notwithstanding this general statement, a more general view of Max Weber Studies has shown a non-evolutionary interpretation of his works, thus proving, especially after their diffusion in the United States , that if Weber «on the one hand tends to assume the bureaucratic power as the hegemonic form of the new era, on the other hand he takes great care not to present an unique view on his affirmation» ( Calise 2010, 151). 5 For instance, a very interesting essay by Roth ( 1987 ) showed the internal contradictions of three countries belonging to very different geopolitical areas: in the United States, the emergence of personalism occurred within the framework of an advanced Western democracyâwhat the author calls mixing Weberian categories, «...