“The changing content of contemporary political leadership due to the process of Personalization of Politics”

EVANGELIA DETSIOU M.A. Roads to democracy(ies) Matriculation Number:1114755„Lifestyle Politics – New Forms of Political Participation“ Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Sigrid Baringhorst

Term Paper: “The changing content of contemporary political leadership due to the process of Personalization of Politics”

University of Siegen30.12.2014

Contents

1. Introduction 3

2. The changing content of contemporary political

leadership 4

3. What is the Personalization of Politics

5

4. What are the causes of Personalized Politics?

5

5. What are the consequences of Personalized Politics?

7

6. Taking stock of research

8

7. Researching the concept of “political priming” and

media 10

8. What does research tell us about Women, Media and

Political

Personalization? 12

9. Social Media and Personalization of Politics

12

10. Conclusion 14

11. References 15

Introduction This assignment presents some of the most recent

literature on political leadership by focusing on the

causes and consequences of the changing role of

political leaders in the light of the

ongoing personalization of politics. The latter has

become a central concept in discussions on how political news

and election coverage in particular has changed over time.

The general belief is that the focus of news coverage has

shifted from parties and organizations to candidates and

leaders. The specific assignment looks at the personalization

of politics starting with a careful examination of the

evidence that leaders are becoming more important. The role

of media and television in particular, in personalizing

politics is examined, along with institutions and political

leadership giving the reasons and results of the phenomenon

of political personalization which will be also

conceptualized according to many authors. Following that we

will take stock of research in the field of the

personalization of politics stadying also the concept

political priming, the relationship between women political

leaders, media and personalized politics and in the last

portion of the assignment will be discussed the role of

social media in personalizing politics.

The changing content of contemporary

political leadership

This globalised world, with its movement of goods, people,

money, jihads, ideas and ideologies, hopes and fears, poses

radical challenges to the European governments and political

powers of today. At the same time it raises real concerns,

anxieties and insecurities in the average European citizen,

who nowadays lives in fear of impoverishment, a lack of a

future for his children and the loss of his lifestyle. In

consequence, new questions are constantly surfacing,

questions that require a political response.

In the light of the above, European politics is today being

placed under the microscope as never before. This is

happening in different ways in different countries and in

some cases even the underlying structure of party politics,

which has been the main vehicle for democratic process for so

long, is being challenged, changed or even severely

compromised. Leadership has become a crucial element in

contemporary politics. The need for a centralised, all-

encompassing leader springs from the current state of

political and economic uncertainty. At the same time, the

traditional political parties find themselves in a state of

crisis, in terms of how they have operated since the end of

the 19th and for the majority of the 20th century. It is in

this context that leadership assumes such a central position.

In other words, he or she is capable of acknowledging

widespread interests and new concerns and transforming them

into new policy proposals. 

It is in the context of electoral competition that we find

the “personalisation” of politics to be most prevalent.

Political leaders have increasingly gained importance

to both political communication and electoral

competition in contrast to their parties in almost every

Western democracy. Here, the image of the leader and his or

her communication with the populace are central to the

election campaign and the opinions of the electorate and

subsequently politics has become increasingly personalized.

It is now commonplace for governments to be named after their

leader, rather than after the party that holds office,

particularly if the party and its leader have won successive

elections.

This process can entail changes in a number of respects

(Rahat & Sheafer 2007, 66-68, Kaase, 1994, 212-213): Changes

in for instance electoral sytems, nomination rules and the

position of individual representatives may give individual

politicians a sharper profile and more personal leeway than

was the case in earlier times; Moreover electoral campaigns

and mass media may center increasingly on individual

characteristics and qualities of politicians, changing the

way politics is presented to the citizens. The general public

may increasingly perceive of politics as a competition

between individual politicians rather than organized

collective interests; forming political preferences and

choises on the basis of evaluations of individual politicians

actors.The choices citizens make on the basis of their

evaluations of individual candidates and leaders may decide

the outcome of elections and take the control of the power

relationships in politics and society.

What is the Personalization of Politics?

In the last decade, a growing number of studies have

been concentrated on the increasingly tighter

relationship between politicians' personality and the

functioning of representative democracy, and in

particular on the process of   personalization o f

p o l i t i c s . According to Rahat and Shaefer (2007), the

personalization of politics should be seen as “a process, in

which the political weight of the individual actor in the

political process increases over time, while the

centrality of the political group (i.e., political

party) declines” (Rahat& Shaefer, 2007: 65). Similarly,

Karvonen puts at the core of his personalization hypothesis

the notion that “individual political actors have become

more prominent at the expense of parties and collective

identities” (Karvonen, 2010: 4).

Generally speaking, the personalization of politics

could be seen as part of a more widespread process

of individualization of social life on the basis of which

people tend to perceive themselves and others firstly and

foremost as individuals rather than as representatives of

collectivities and groups. This is relevant to

Karvonen’s argument that “the role of individual

politicians and of politicians as individuals determines

how people view politics and how they express their political

preferences” (Karvonen, 2010: 1–2).

What are the causes of Personalized Politics?“As the old politics of class and ideological conflict

declines in Europe, as television becomes the chief

means of political information for the public power

will increasingly become visible to people through

popular leaders and these leaders will be the chief

means of engaging the political interest of publics”

(cited in Poguntke & Webb, 2005: 21).

In connection to these prophetic words we will address the

question of causes of the personalization of politics

stressing the two specific developments that form the causal

background of personalization. Firstly the pervasive changes

in social structures brought about by economic and

technological changes have led to a process of dealignment in

contrast to traditional political and social organizations.

As these organizations reflect structural cleavages that the

citizens can no longer identify with the result is that their

loyalty to those parties and ideologies that represent these

cleavages has been weakened. Instead, citizens increasingly

focus on specific issues and on individual political leaders

and candidates.

Secondly, the media have become the dominant channel of

political information favoring the person over abstract

issues and interests. The electronic media have been seen as

crucial in shaping the way that governments communicate with

voters and seek to convert them; at the same time, party

leaders have exploited their exposure in the electronic media

in order to attract votes. Impressionistic evidence of  this

trend include the substitution of leader images for party

symbols during election campaigns, the media's increasing

propensity to mention candidates rather than the parties they

belong to and the tendency to portray executives in a

personalized fashion -  these being routinely labeled after

the name of their leaders.

Of primary importance is the central role of television which

automatically focuses on persons and personalities being a

personalizing vehicle that brings candidate images into

voters’ homes at all hours of the day and night while

augmenting the mass of information those voters must process.

The dominance of television has forced parties to select

leaders and candidates who make a favorable impression on

television, and this focus on individual politicians has in

turn strongly conditioned the way citizens view politics. An

indication of the profound impact of television on

political leadership comes from the increasing

importance gained by televised leaders' debates during

national election campaigns. Having lasted nearly half a

century, the predominance of television as the central forum

for politics shows few signs of weakening. The advent of new

communications technology has at least not slowed down the

process of personalization; in fact, it may have accelerated

it.

To this point I would like to add the comment that aside from

the candidates, we could consider that the traits and values

of voters have also become decisive for political choice.

That happens because opposing political parties and

coalitions move toward more centrist positions that are

hardly distinctive and subsequently personal characteristics

of both voters and candidates gain salience. Doing so gives

greater weight in orienting their political judgments to both

their own personalities and the personalities of their

leaders.

Following that modern politics become personalized not only

because of the individual characteristics of candidates but

also of voters giving some more reasons for the emergence of

personalized politics in many democracies in the Western

World. First, “political choices are more individualized, as

they depend increasingly on voters’ likes and dislikes and on

judgmental heuristics that guide political decisions more so

than on previously identified categorical variables such as

education, gender, and age. Second, candidates have become

more concerned with conveying favorable personal images and

appealing narratives that please potential voters than with

staunchly promoting a political ideology to voters. Among the

factors contributing to this personalization process are the

following: higher education levels of the electorate and

their broader access to continuously available information;

the decline of the number and diversity of political parties;

the similarity of programs advocated by opposing parties as

they move from diverse ideological positions to more

pragmatic platforms in order to attract moderate followings,

and the complexity of political issues as they encompass

domestic, international, and global short-term and long-term

goals” (Caprara & Zimbardo, 2004: 581).

What are the consequences of Personalized

Politics? It would be wise to study the consequences on three levels.

In other words we should understand how does political

personalization affect electoral politics, democratic

governance and voters’ choice. Starting with electoral

politics we could consider that electoral mobilization and

conversion comes increasingly to be dependent on political

personality rather than party’s program creating scope for

even more electoral volatility.

Following that we should take into account that voters base

their voting decision on the personal profile of contenders

depending on political and institutional structure in which

an election is fought. A number of comparative analyses

show the clear difference in terms of electoral impact

of leaders in presidential systems as compared to

parliamentary ones. More specifically, parliamentary

systems are based on the responsible party government. In

such model, political leaders 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 case

they will win the elections. It is party platforms

rather than party leaders to drive votes. Unlike the

above, “the presidential systems are based on an

executive authority resides with an individual who is

directly elected to the position. In other words

presidential elections encourage focusing on

personalities to a greater degree than do parliamentary

ones”(McAllister, 2007: 575).

After that we could move toward the next level of

consequences concerning the democratic governance. Explaining

that poolitical personalization will lead leaders to enjoy

much greater autonomy in policy-making because of their

personalized mandate; a dramatic recent example was the

commitment of troops to Iraq by Australia and Britain,

largely as a consequence of their respective prime ministers’

personal commitment to the US president, George W. Bush.

In addition we should set on the table the crucial question

how leaders’ personal characteristics are intended to

influence voters’ choice analysing the last level of

consequences. King argues that leaders' personality can

have an impact on voting behavior in two ways:

indirectly and directly. “The indirect 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 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 or she is,

how he or she appears and how he or she publicly

comports him or herself” (King, 2002: 4). All these have

led to a progressive individualization of vote choice

which implies, among other things, “an increased likelihood

to vote differently from one election to another, depending

on the particular person’s competing performance. Voters

tend increasingly to vote for a person and no longer

for a party or a platform”(Manin, 1997: 219).

Taking stock of research Empirical studies carrying the word “personalization” in

their titles started to appear in the 1990s. Today, a fairly

large body of research has addressed the issue, although no

clearly recognizable standard volume seems to have appeared

yet. Given the importance of the ‘personalization thesis’,

the empirical evidence in its support is surprisingly

thin.McAllister (2007: 584), who suggests that there is

‘little doubt that politics has become more personalized over

the past half-century’, provides little systematic evidence

to support his claim. In fact, recent assessments of the

empirical evidence come up with rather mixed conclusions.

Nevertheless for the purposes of this paper I will present

three different main foci in research which involve studies

belonging to the three groups overlap to a considerable

extent (Karvonen, 2007: 5):

Studies with a broad perspective of personalization. These are texts

that see personalization as a pervasive phenomenon

affecting various parts of the political process;

Studies of “presidentialization”. These are studies where the

core concern is the ever more predominant role of Prime

Ministers in parliamentary systems, although these

studies frequently cover a fairly large range of

empirical phenomena.

Studies of party leader effects in elections. This is the most

clearly focused part of the research where focus is on

the difference that voters´ evaluations of party leaders

may make for the electoral success of parties.

Moreover on the basis of an extended research area in relation to

news content we distinguish between two forms of personalization.The

first form of personalization concerns a focus on individual

politicians as central actors in the political arena, including

their ideas, capacities and policies. This type of personalization

is not necessarily in contrast to substantive political news

content, but it does imply a shift in media visibility from

parties to individual politicians, or from government to

individual cabinet members. We therefore label this first

form ‘individualization’. The second form of personalization implies a

shift in media focus from the politician as occupier of a public

role to the politician as a private individual, as a person

distinct from his public role. We label this shift in focus

‘privatization’.

Rahat and Sheafer (2007: 67) define (media) personalization

as a “change in the presen-tation of politics in the media,

as expressed in a heightened focus on individual politicians

and a diminished focus on parties, organizations and

institutions”. This definition matches accurately our first

form of personalization or individualization. However there

is some confusion about what is meant by ‘individual

politicians’. Does this imply all politicians, or rather only

political leaders? Does this mean all candidates

participating in an election or just the main candidates?

The second type of personalization, termed privatization, is

clearly more complex to define and has more diverse

interpretations in previous research. Rahat and Sheafer

define privatization as “a media focus on the personal

characteristics and personal life of individual candidates”

(2007: 68). Although privatization seems the most common

label to define this trend, other concepts are also used. For

instance, Van Zoonen speaks of intimization, which she describes

“as a process whereby values from the private sphere are

transferred to the public sphere” (1991: 223). Moreover

Langer “terms the process politicization of the private persona as an

increased media focus on personal life and personal

qualities, but politicized because personal revelations can

not be divorced from the political” (2010: 61).

Next, I will discuss three research areas that may have an

influence on the degree to which personalized politics can be

researched in given empirical contexts. More specifically, I

will present some concepts and dimensions of the political

personalization in connection to media. Personalization is

reinforced by media which have developed their own logic for

covering politics and subsequently personalization has become

one of the news values pursued by mass media in their

competition for a mass audience. In detailS I will discuss

the concept of “political priming” in connection to media,

how women political leaders are presented my media and how do

they use them and lastly the role of social media (facebook

and twitter) in the emergence of personalized politics.

Researching the concept of “political

priming” and media

Research on political priming has explored the impact of

media coverage on the judgments of politicians and found that

media can prime certain issues and thereby influence the

criteria that people use to evaluate politicians. The

political priming effect has been found in evaluations of

presidential performance and electoral voting intentions.

Also, not only news media but also movies, crime dramas and

talk shows can influence people’s political evaluations.

Therefore political priming is the process by which leaders

are evaluated by voters, based on a leader’s performance on

the issues that are considered to be of importance to voters.

Since voters cannot make an exhaustive evaluation of all

aspects of a leader’s performance, “their evaluations depend

on a modest sample of what they know, and a sample of

convenience at that” (Kinder, 1998: 181).

Television has a central role to play in determining how and

in what way this priming takes place, by shaping how the

issue is framed and presented to the public. It is the

television executives who decide whether or not to focus on a

particular issue or event. Since the range of potential

issues is vast, from moral issues like abortion or

euthanasia, to economic issues involving inflation or general

economic management, television must make a choice on which

ones to concentrate on. What the median decides, and how

often they choose to cover a topic in their news stories,

plays a key role in making an issue politically salient, by

priming voters on it. The decisions that the electronic media

take can even determine whether or not voters are likely to

have a view on the issue in the first place. Television can

imply that a leader is responsible either for creating a

problem in the first place, such as the failure of an

economic policy. If the leader is not responsible for

creating the problem, as in the case of a natural disaster,

then the leader can be held responsible if it is not solved.

Political priming by the media occurs most frequently on

issues of war or peace, or foreign policy, where the options

are clear and where the performance of the leader in handling

the issue is easily understood within the electorate. Priming

is obviously more difficult if the issues are complex,

particularly where they involve economic management, and if

it an issue on which party cues are weak. On the other hand,

the growth in education in the second half of the twentieth

century has provided voters with more cognitive skills with

which to process the necessary information, thus diminishing

uncertainty. Nevertheless, generalized conclusions are

problematic, because of the complexities involved in

evaluating the direct electoral influence of television. What

we can say with certainty is that while television exposure

is a necessary condition to ensure a leader’s electoral

competitiveness, it is not a sufficient condition for his or

her electoral success.

What does research “tell” us about Women,

Media and Political Personalization?Research findings have revealed that a high degree of

peersonalization of politics is not really an advantage for

women political leaders. The way the mediatization of

politics has supported the personal factor has often been

connected with a masculine notion of leadership. Despite the

fact that many women leaders have appeared on TV the last 50

years and they have used the TV propaganda as advertisements

for their electoral campaigns there are not enough of them

who could be considered as leaders “born” on TV. “Just to

give some recent examples: Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene

Royal, the former was regarded as a true TV star while Royal

was associated with new media. Neither the German Cancellor

Angela Merkel nor Hillary Clinton has ever been considered

especially proficient in promoting themselves on TV. More

generally, no woman has been remembered for introducing new

practices in televised political communication, unlike

Charles De Gaulle and Roanald Reagan with their speeches and

Tony Blaire with his press conferences” (Campus, 2013: 24).

Although some women have prooved that are good communicators

applying political marketing techniques successfully, women

political leaders have not been identified that use TV as

primary channel promoting their image.

On the oher hand it should be considered that some scholars

are more positive about the relationship between TV and women

political leaders. They maintain that TV transforms complex

political issues into drmatic narratives and subsequently

women are appropriate for that as they are more talented

storytellers that men. They are also more expressive and use

more face expressions and we could take as example the

candidates’s advertisements where women make more eye contact

and smile than men. In other words women’s body language is

suited more to the dramatic communication style of TV.

Social Media and Personalization of Politics Social media like Facebook (preferred media platform for

marketing purposes) and Twitter (more used for

continuous dialogue) place the focus on the individual

politician rather than the political party, thereby expanding

the political arena for increased   for personalized

campaigning. For example today’s politicians use social

media to communicate a personal image and to post

personalized messages online. Within this framework, the

personalized and dialogical aspects of social media have

over the past few years become integrated into election

campaigning and other forms of political communication

providing new impetus to the personalization of

politics. Their interplay with other media and the

opportunities for creating intimate relations to

voters, add to processes of personalization.

The latter is regarded as characteristic of social and

media developments over the past century with claims on

political candidates to present themselves as multi

dimensional personalities with personal and private sides

as well as public images. Social media such as Facebook

and Twitter fit well into this setting. “They

r e p r e s e n t s e m i - p u b l i c , s e m i - p r i v a t e s p a c e s f o r

s e l f - r e p r e s e n t a t i o n w h e r e borders between

offline personal and online mediated relations are

blurred. T h e y a l l o w p o l i t i c i a n s ( a n d v o t e r s ) t o

s t a g e t h e i r public and private roles, and to shift

between them consciously and strategically” (Gunn,

Skogerbo, 2013: 759). For campaign purposes,

“social media add to the spaces where candidates may

involve voters in personal encounters.These encounters

may serve several purposes, e.g. market their

candidacies, mobilize voters for the upcoming election,

discuss politics or a combination.Personal traits as

well as structural constraints may affect how

candidates apply social media in their campaigns”

(Gunn, Skogerbo, 2013: 759).

Conclusion

To sum up, the personalisation of politics belongs to the

core of contemporary politics and subsequently political

inquiry should investigate the causal background,

functioning, concepts, dimensions, effects of political

personalization and its relationship with mass media.There

can hardly be a more natural starting point for a comparative

study of personalization than to look for possible effects of

institutional variation among countries. Studying also the

effects of various electoral systems would seem a highly

promising research area in this regard. Electoral systems

have a strong bearing on the conditions of political

leadership, campaigns and individual political careers. Three

questions in particular would merit systematic comparative

study giving feedback for critical thinking:

1. Is the degree of personalization greater in

countries with majoritarian electoral systems than in

countries where proportional systems are applied?

2. In countries where list systems are used: is the

degree of personalization higher in countries where the

electoral system allows for preferential voting for

individual candidates than in countries with closed-list

systems?

3. Have changes in electoral institutions entailed

higher/lower levels of personalization?

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