Is the party perspective over?

Abstract

For more than 70 years, scholars have taken Schattschneider’s renowned statement that ‘Modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties’ as an axiom. But amid claims of party decline and evidence of political personalization, presidentialization, and the judicialization and digitization of politics, do parties still deserve to be treated as central actors in democratic politics, or are they treated as such because of a conservative bias? If so, should they be abandoned in favor of alternative heroes, or should we stick to the party perspective and continue to foreground parties as the central competitive units within a democratic system? The article starts with identifying the fields in which parties are perceived as central actors in democratic politics. After making the case for focusing on individual politicians as an alternative to the party perspective, it puts the party perspective on trial. It examines the current status of political parties in democracies using three general approaches: functional, sociological, and rational choice. Based on the analysis, it argues that the party perspective should not be abandoned, and that it should continue to respond to change in order to serve as an optimal framework for political analysis.

A recent research project discovered that Israel, together with Italy, experienced the most profound process of political personalization among 26 parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies (Rahat and Kenig, 2018). Despite this, content analysis of a book series on Israeli elections (1969–2021) found no expression of this phenomenon (Friedman and Rahat, 2025). The authors of the chapters in this series of edited books did not, over the years, tend to refer more and more to politicians and less and less to parties. This finding raises a question: should political scientists stick to their old habits and examine politics as an interparty arena, or should they respond to changes and replace their basic unit —the political party —with individual politicians? In short, should we stick to the party perspective -- perceiving parties as the central competitive units within a democratic system -- or replace it with another perspective that offers different competitive units?

The term party perspective is used here to relate to the core competitive unit scholars refer to when they study democratic politics. Parties are perceived as these core units because, first, they are essential to the electoral competition, without which there is no democracy. Second, because they interact with one another and form a party system. The party perspective implies that when studying democratic politics, especially its electoral realm (e.g., participation, competition) and its consequences (e.g., representation, accountability, coalition politics, legislative politics), parties and their interactions should be at the center of analysis. This perspective is arguably what Gauja and Kosiara-Pedersen (2021b: 124) call ‘The European tradition, which places a far greater emphasis on the party as an independent and powerful political organization.’

The first part of the article locates the party perspective in time and space. It starts by examining the historical background of the development of the party perspective and its recent challenges. It continues and ends with identifying the fields in which parties are perceived as central actors (e.g., electoral and democratic politics, but not international relations or political philosophy).

The second part of the article puts the party perspective on trial. It starts by identifying the actors that may be regarded as alternatives to parties and makes the case for focusing on individual politicians as their primary challengers. It continues by examining the current status of political parties vis-à-vis individual politicians in democracies, using three general approaches: functional, sociological, and rational.

Based on the analysis presented in the preceding sections, the article ends with a discussion of the possible paths that can, should, and are taken. It argues that while the party perspective should not be abandoned, it cannot serve its goal as an optimal framework if research does not adapt and respond to change. And indeed, there is evidence that research is adapting to this changing reality, specifically by recognizing the personalization of politics and integrating it into the party perspective.

The party perspective in time and space

This section locates the party perspective -- perceiving parties as the central competitive units within a democratic system -- in time and space. The first part of this section examines the historical background of the development of the party perspective and its recent challenges. The second part identifies the fields and sub-fields in which parties are perceived as central actors in democratic politics.

A very short historical background

Scarrow (2006: 23), looking at the emergence of modern parties in the 19th century, described it as follows: ‘The emergence of party-organized politics was an unanticipated, and even unwanted, side-effect of the liberalization and democratization of politics in that century.’ That is, the creation and development of parties as an intrinsic element of the emerging mass democratic regimes, was perceived as a necessary evil because they answered the electoral and governing needs of these regimes. As unwanted children, they were recognized and studied only after they were perceived as integral and even crucial parts of the modern democratic system.

It was in the 1940s that Schattschneider made his renowned statement that ‘Modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties’ (1942/2004: 1). When he did so, he framed this as a hypothesis he aimed to promote (Pearson, 2004). Since then, however, it has often been treated as an axiom. The importance of party identity, found in American voters’ studies, also helped cement this approach (Campbell et al., 1960). White (2006: 7–8), looking back at the development of political scientists’ perception of parties and democracy, labeled this linkage as the ‘party consensus.’ The notion that democracy is ‘unthinkable save in terms of the parties’ becomes even stronger when we look at the adverse reactions to the development of party politics. It is understood that you can hardly live with parties (indeed, in many public opinion surveys, they are the least popular institution in democracies) but that you cannot (democratically) live without them. Perceiving parties as the unwanted, unpopular but inevitable children of mass politics, especially mass democracy, strengthens the case for their central role in democratic politics. Thus, there was a strong case for adopting the party perspective.

The increase in the legislation of party laws in recent decades (van Biezen, 2011; van Biezen and Borz, 2012) may be perceived as a sign that democratic politics itself, not only its scholars, has come to terms with the necessity of the unwanted yet crucial institution of the political party. Yet, it is also a sign of weakness. First, state legislation necessarily hurts the autonomy and independence of political parties. Once there are laws on how parties should organize and finance, state regulatory bodies and courts get involved, sooner or later, in the parties’ internal affairs. Second, it was party representatives who promoted and adopted these laws. They did so because they thought their parties needed external help with finance, regulation, and blocking the entry of new parties, which were often ‘anti-party parties’ (Poguntke, 1996) in rhetoric and organization. Thus, while legislation recognizes the formal existence of political parties, it does not necessarily enhance their status. Instead, it seeks to protect them in return for a specific payment, that is, in exchange for their autonomy as voluntary organizations.

Thus, for more than 70 years, scholars of democratic politics have taken Schattschneider’s renowned statement as an axiom rather than a hypothesis or a contested claim. Not only party scholars -- who make their living by studying the party entity -- but also scholars of electoral, coalition, and legislative politics, and some additional subfields, treat parties as central political actors. But amid claims of party decline, and evidence of political personalization, presidentialization, judicialization, bureaucratization, and digitization, do parties still deserve to be treated as central actors in democratic politics? Are they treated as central actors because of the conservative bias of the discipline? And if so, should they be abandoned in favor of alternative protagonists, or should we stick to the party perspective because it is still the best option for our needs?

This article focuses on the personalist alternative, on the idea that individual politicians have become the central relevant unit in electoral politics. The processes of political personalization (Frantz et al., 2024; Garzia et al., 2021; Rahat and Kenig, 2018) and presidentialization (Poguntke and Webb, 2005, 2018) suggest the possibility that parties should be replaced with individual politicians as the basic organizing unit of the analysis of democratic politics. It implies that individuals, rather than parties, compete in elections and then cooperate and compete in coalition politics and legislative politics. It may of course be possible to challenge the party perspective from other perspectives as well which would suggest alternative actors as substitutes for parties – for instance, the courts or the bureaucracy as leading actors in policy-making, or the algorithm as the organizing unit of the digital world – but I will restrict myself to the challenge of personalism in this paper, a field in which there is an increasingly rich literature.

The party perspective: Where does it prevail

This section examines which political science subfields the party perspective prevails in. It is obvious that for scholars of party organization, membership, ideology, leadership, and candidate selection, parties are the central actors. Beyond political parties and party systems scholars, parties are seen as central actors mainly in work on democracies and in comparative research on electoral politics and political representation. Parties are also central in the sub-field of coalition politics (and its underdeveloped sibling, opposition politics) and, to a large extent, in legislative politics.

For party scholars (and those who study party systems), it is obvious that parties are the main building blocks of modern democracy. But this does not make the case for the dominance of the party perspective: for example, it is highly probable that scholars of social movements see social movements as primary building blocks of modern democracy, and that scholars of parliaments see parliaments as the central democratic institutions. The party perspective is about seeing them as central actors in scenes where other actors could potentially prevail. And this is the case in electoral politics, not only because elections are typically organized as competitions between parties (and not individuals), but also because party identity is a central element in voting. Parties are also central to many studies of democratic institutions, which could choose other institutions as their main actors: they play a central role in seminal works such as Sartori’s (1976) Parties and Party Systems or Lijphart’s (2012) typology of regime types.

Parties are also perceived as important to scholars of legislative politics. These scholars also focus on legislators as individuals but regard the party as the primary influence on their behavior. Parties are also central to the study of representation, even though, at least in theory, individuals who do not belong to parties may also perform this function (Kölln, 2015). Work on coalitions (see, for example, Bergman et al., 2021) and opposition politics (Tuttnauer, 2018) is also mainly about parties.

Thus, the party perspective is central to scholars of democracy interested in the empirical (not the normative) elements of politics within states. However, even among comparativists of democratic politics, some ignore parties because their focus is on the individual (political psychology) or reduces politics to a game of a few abstract individual entities (rational choice).

Until about a decade ago, the claim was that political theory and party research ‘Don’t Talk to Each Other’ (van Biezen and Saward, 2008). As Katz (2006: 44) puts it: ‘Although the literature of democratic theory is immense, it has developed largely without reference to the richness and complexity of empirical studies of political parties.’ Most party scholars, for their part, did not go far enough into democratic theory to entrench their notion about the linkage between parties and democracy. Yet the last decade has seen a revival of interest among political theorists in parties, many of them (unlike previously) in making the case for their positive contribution to democracy (Bader and Bonotti, 2014; Bonotti and Bader, 2015; Vandamme and Lucardie, forthcoming; White and Ypi, 2016; Wolkenstein, 2016, 2020).

Parties are recognized actors in the field of political communication (Bos, forthcoming; Jarvis, 2017; Slothuus and De Vreesa, 2010). Yet, for the most part, political communication scholars do not treat parties as central actors. ¹ When parties are mentioned, they are usually one of several actors in a realm of activity in which other actors operate (individual politicians, consultants, mass media outlets, digital media types, etc.). Moreover, research increasingly tends to focus on individual actors, which stems mainly from the decline of partisan media, the increase of private media, and the characteristics of TV, with its visual emphasis. The relatively new social media, with its ability to supply unmediated communication between politicians and citizens, is also mainly perceived as a personalized realm (Rahat and Kenig, 2018).

When we leave the boundaries of comparative politics, parties lose ground. In the sub-field of international relations, the leading actors are states and, at times, leaders. Even when one looks at organizations, the focus seems to be on actors such as Transnational Corporations, Non-Governmental Organizations, International Non-Governmental Organizations, and Transnational Social Movement Organizations, rather than on political parties (Lawson, 2006). As Hofmann and Martill (2021: 305) put it: ‘Although there is a strong case that political parties exercise an impact upon foreign policy-making, it is only relatively recently that a substantial (and still disconnected) body of scholarship on party politics has emerged in foreign policy analysis (FPA).’

My focus in this article is on the realms in which parties are perceived as central actors —mainly electoral politics and its consequences (legislative and coalition politics) —and on their current status.

The party perspective on trial: Does it capture the essence of current democratic politics?

This section starts by identifying the actors who may serve as alternatives to parties and makes the case for focusing on individual politicians as their primary challengers. It continues by examining the current status of political parties vis-à-vis individual politicians in democracies, using three general approaches: functional, sociological, and rational choice.

Alternative actors

Which actors can replace parties in performing their roles? If no actor can replace parties, at least in performing a large part of their roles, then parties will remain the default even in the context of crisis or decline. This section justifies the view that individual politicians are the primary candidates to replace political parties.

Several possible actors could step in. These possible alternatives include the mass media (Mancini and Swanson, 1996), interest groups (Farrell and Schmitt-Beck, 2008; Panebianco, 1988), and social movements and promotional groups (Lawson and Merkl, 1988; Richardson, 1995). Some state institutions might also step in, such as the bureaucracy (which brings depoliticization: see Mair, 2013) and the courts (which bring judicialization: see Cichowski and Sweet, 2003; Hirschl, 2008). Moreover, citizens may become increasingly directly involved in decision-making through mechanisms of direct and deliberative democracy (Dalton et al., 2000, 2002; Farrell, 2014; Katz, 1987; Scarrow, 2003). Yet while all these actors can and do fulfill roles that parties used to perform in their heyday, none seem to be able to step in and replace them entirely. I will thus concentrate on the most powerful and elusive challenge, the ‘enemy from within’ - the politicians of which parties are composed.

As expressed in the most common definitions, political personalization is ultimately a zero-sum game (Frantz et al., 2024; Garzia et al., 2021; Rahat and Kenig, 2018). Even if parties may enjoy, in the short run, electoral success thanks to the popularity of their leaders or increased interest in politics (Kruikemeier et al., 2013), ongoing personal control will hollow them out. Indeed, the perception that personalized politics is the opposite of party politics is evident in the seminal work of prominent scholars such as Panebianco (1988: 274), who suggests that politics would be personalized when parties ‘completely lose their own organizational identity and appear to be only convenient tags for independent political entrepreneurs.’

Abandoning the party perspective and replacing it with the personal one implies that individual politicians, not parties, will be perceived as the central competitive units within a democratic system. Abandoning the party perspective does not mean that parties would not matter, or that they would not be studied or identified as political actors. It implies they would be perceived as secondary actors. For example, elections would primarily be analyzed as personal contests between party leaders rather than inter-party competition. Voting behavior would be analyzed first and foremost as an expression of support for a person and his or her world views, not for a party and its ideology. Coalition agreements would be about the relationships and bargaining between leaders, not their parties. Legislation would be seen as an initiative of individuals, as such, not as party representatives.

The analysis of democratic politics would be much less about group organization and inter-organizational behavior (i.e., the institutional approach) and more about individual human behavior. Psychology and rational choice would become central to explaining system-level politics in democracies. Party system analysis would be replaced with an analysis of interpersonal relations. ²

Why (not) parties

Using three approaches, this sub-section examines whether parties these days fulfill their roles. These will be labeled functional (what do parties do?), sociological (are parties still mediators between state and society?), and rational (why parties?). These approaches are not mutually exclusive; they differ in scope and emphasis, potentially allowing us to arrive at different answers. Following the subscription that Kuhn (1962) proposes -- although in the broader scientific context of paradigm shift -- it should be noted that the adherents of the personal politics perspective should carry the main burden of proof. A revolution -- in our case, the replacement of the party perspective with the personal politics perspective -- is justified only if and when the evidence that its time has come is clear-cut.

Functional approach

The functional approach leads us to ask what parties do. In their heyday, parties were a focal point of identity for citizens in democracies; parties represented the interests of the people and aggregated them; parties directly communicated with the public; parties decided on matters of policy; and finally, parties were almost the exclusive path to power, selecting leaders and candidates for public posts.

In contrast, in a personalized polity, these functions are performed by individuals, as Balmas et al. (2014: 47) describes:

Personalization implies a decline in the role of parties –a decline that is likely to be pronounced in some or all of the functions performed by political parties: People identify with personalities rather than with parties; individual politicians, rather than parties, become the representatives of specific policies; interest aggregation occurs more on an ad hoc basis rather than within parties; individuals rather than parties communicate with the public; policy emerges from interaction between individuals in government rather than as a product of debate and deliberation within the party; and, to a certain extent, candidates and leaders select parties rather than the other way round.

From this standpoint, we should decide who is more prominent in performing these functions: parties or individual politicians?

First, do people these days identify more with personalities than with parties? As Rahat and Kenig (2018) demonstrate, the literature on political personalization is divided on this issue. At least until a decade ago, there was even a debate about whether leaders significantly influence voters’ choices, and among those who claimed that leaders matter, there was debate over whether this influence had increased or not (that is, the influence of personalization on voters’ behavior).

Summarizing the findings of a collection of studies on personalization in voters’ behavior, it was found that 13 democracies experienced personalization; in six, there was no change; and in three, there was depersonalization —a decline in personal impact on the vote (Rahat and Kenig, 2018). More recent studies show that the literature remains divided. For example, while Garzia et al. (2021) claim that leaders have become more critical for voting (for both turnout and choice), Quinlan and McAllister (2022) identify no trend and find that parties are generally far more critical for voting decisions.

Reid et al. (Forthcoming) analyze the attempts of local community groups in Australia to run candidates that would operate as alternatives to party candidates. Their verdict is clear: ‘While community independents might be on the rise in Australia, it is unlikely that they will ever replace parties and party government.' For our purpose here, their research may be perceived as an analysis of a decentralized personal challenge to the established parties. The threat of centralized personalism carried by party leaders seems much more serious than the seemingly more democratic ‘threat’ from below.

Second, do individual politicians replace parties in performing interest aggregation and representation? The late writings of Peter Mair (2013) seem to imply that the development of the cartel party model and its spread led to a situation in which parties no longer represent voters (and thus do not truly aggregate and represent their interests). At the same time, however, Dalton et al. (2011) demonstrate that the chain of delegation is still working; that is, voters are represented through parties.

Yet, most research does not directly confront the question above. At best, it proposes a theoretical possibility of a personalized democratic regime. For example, Mair (2002) proposes a personalized, centralized form of what he calls populist democracy. Kölln (2015), drawing on Katz’s (1987) ‘pluralist democracy model,’ demonstrates that it is possible, though likely less efficient, for individuals rather than parties to represent the people. Pakulski and Körösényi (2012) dedicate a whole book to ‘leader democracy’ and argue that, in such a personal, centralized form, the people’s interests might be better represented than by current party democracy.

The few empirical works that confront the party-versus-personal-rule debate focus on American experiences with nonpartisan rule. An early example is Key’s (1949) study of Southern politics, in which one party prevailed (the Democratic Party), and the main question was who within the party would govern. Later work (Masket, 2016) examines attempts to push the parties out of electoral politics through nonpartisan elections. While these works provide much insight into the (predominantly negative) consequences of a nonpartisan arena, they cannot be applied to most cases in which there is a direct potential confrontation between partisan and personal alternatives.

To summarize, we lack empirical research that provides a broad view of partisan versus personal representation. One step towards it would be a direct question in a cross-national comparative survey asking people to declare who represents them directly: the party, the representative, or the party leader they voted for. Without a direct answer and with the pieces of evidence we have, it is impossible to sustain a call for a change in perspective.

Third, do individual politicians communicate more with the public than parties do? The rise of TV as the primary source of political information and knowledge gave individual politicians an advantage over their parties (Mancini and Swanson, 1996). Most of the literature on social media views it as a new personalized realm, mainly because it allows politicians to communicate directly with the public. Yet a large-n comparison of 140 parties across 25 democracies finds that the balance in the production and consumption of social media between parties and politicians does not support this perception (Zamir, 2024). Parties -- who usually outlive their politicians and fit the virtual world as abstract entities by their very nature -- do relatively well in these realms. Moreover, there are claims in research literature that parties have the opportunity to be renewed rather than decline because of digital media (Chadwick and Stromer-Galley, 2016) and that most parties do experience ‘modest overall digitization’ (Gonzalez-Cacheda and Cancela Outeda, 2025: 496).

Fourth, does policy emerge from the interaction between individuals in government (or maybe predominantly from the chief executive) rather than as a product of debate and deliberation within the party? We may argue that party leaders clearly make a difference regarding their party policies: Trump’s tariffs are not classical Republican policies; Merkel’s immigration policy was not a classical Christian Democratic conservative policy. But there is no systematic research that answers this question —for example, one that compares the policy the chief executive prefers with the policy his or her party prefers.

Fifth, are candidates and leaders selecting parties rather than the other way around? There are certainly cases of outsiders taking over parties (Donald Trump being the most prominent example). Yet, as Rahat and Kenig (2018) demonstrate, while party decline is evident in party membership, local and regional politics, linkage with interest groups, and many aspects of voters’ behavior, there is no apparent trend in the party backgrounds of legislators and ministers. As Poguntke et al. (2024: 589) put it, ‘parties still select the personnel at the levels of governance - local, regional, national and supra-national.’

A shift in perspective requires clear-cut evidence of an overall change in the balance of power between parties and politicians in at least most democracies. It should be evident that this change has given the latter the upper hand in most places and for most functions. Following the above discussion, however, we cannot justify a shift in perspective from a functionalist point of view. Yet sticking to old conventions without recognizing that a change has occurred does not seem to serve research either, because it might be insensitive to changes in the functioning of parties in the face of their individual competitors.

Sociological approach

Parties are seen as mediators between the state and society. Even if their location between these two has changed over time (Katz and Mair, 1995), they are expected to mediate, at least to some extent. The decline of various aspects of this linkage has been documented by many scholars (Allern and Bale, 2017; Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000; Mair, 2013; Van Biezen et al., 2012; Van Biezen and Poguntke, 2014; Van Haute and Gauja, 2015). A recent chapter that summarizes the findings of 23 case studies from around the world claims that ‘When we look at parties in a changing environment, it is evident that this is often associated with a decline in social anchorage in Western Europe, while parties tended to be a lot less socially entrenched in other parts of the world, except where strongly rooted in tribal or ethnic loyalties’ (Poguntke et al., 2024: 584).

Rahat and Kenig (2018) presented a comprehensive analysis of parties’ performance as mediators between society and state in 26 parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies. They examined 11 indicators across three dimensions of the society-party linkage: the partisan socialization of elected politicians; parties’ links with potential mediators (membership, local and regional government, interest groups); and parties’ relationships with voters. They found that in most countries (23 of 26), across most indicators (but not those related to party background), parties declined in performance. They also found that political personalization occurred in most countries and regarding most of its expressions in different arenas (institutional, media, and behavioral).

Yet, beyond the general trend, Rahat and Kenig (2018) identify much cross-country variance. Such variance provides ample room for the claim that, in most countries, the rate of decline since the heyday of the mass party – along with moderate-to-low rates of personalization -- could imply (at least in most cases) adaptation rather than a steep collapse. On the other hand, it should be said that this analysis concerns developments up to 2015. There are good reasons to think that, since then, party decline and political personalization have further developed.

That said, a strong case could also be made for party adaptation. Citizens’ linkages with parties may expand beyond membership (Gauja, 2015; Gauja and Gromping, 2020; Kosiara-Pedersen et al., 2026). In the digital age, such linkages may even be of more importance. For example, a citizen who regularly receives party updates on social media may be better informed and more engaged than a passive party member in the ‘good old times.’

Overall, though, if most of the burden for proving that a perspective should be abandoned is on those who propose replacing it, then we must conclude that the time has not come (yet?). Parties’ linkages with society have declined in most countries. But in many cases, this is a moderate decline from a high peak. Many parties, while losing some, have hung on and adapted to a changing environment. But, again, there should be a way to account for developments of party decline and political personalization, even if still within the realm of the existing perspective.

Rational choice approach

This approach is relatively minimal. It focuses on two elements: elections and legislative politics. It holds that parties were created and exist because they are efficient tools for politicians interested in winning elected public positions and promoting policies. Parties serve as heuristics for voters in elections and facilitate coordination in the legislature (Aldrich, 2011). From this perspective, if and when parties fail in fulfilling these tasks, they lose their raison d’être.

However, from the point of view of this approach, the literature does not provide a strong enough reason to abandon the party perspective. When it comes to parties and voting, the jury is still out. While Garzia et al. (2021) demonstrate that party leaders and candidates become more central to voting than parties, Quinlan and McAllister (2022) present evidence that parties remain central to voting choice. Moreover, there are no recent indications of a trend that would make the case that parties are no longer efficient coordinating tools in parliament (Bowler et al., 1999; Cox and McCubbins, 1993).

At the same time, the literature also provides a good reason to think that many parties today are increasingly no more than tools in their leaders’ hands (Rahat, 2024a). When the party is the tool of a leader, cohesion might be kept because of his or her control of the party, and vote may be gained because voters perceived him or her as the party. Thus, even if the verdict from this perspective is to stick with the party’s perspective because there is not enough evidence that a change is needed, something should be done to respond to and adapt to change.

Discussion

There are three possible reactions for scholars to the evident decline in the status of parties in democratic politics. First, no change is needed. While parties are not what they used to be, they remain the main actors in electoral politics and its neighboring realms (i.e., coalition and legislative politics). Second, the notion that parties are central actors, the leading suppliers of the logic of the system’s functioning, should be abandoned in light of their decline and political personalization. Following the personalization challenge selected here, the central focal unit should be the politician, often the party leader. The third possibility, which answers to the need for change without committing a revolution, is adaptation. This is the verdict that is proposed here. The claim is that political parties are declining but, at the same time, are changing enough and adapting to a changing environment to an extent that still justifies sticking to the party perspective. That is, parties can still be seen as the central competitive unit in democracies.

Just as many parties adapt to changing circumstances, scholars must adjust their perspective accordingly. And they do (Gauja and Kosiara-Pedersen, 2021b), for example, when claiming that the party in government became the focal point within parties, compared to the past, when the party on the ground had more weight (Katz and Mair, 1995). This option concerns sensitivity to change and attempts to contain it within the party perspective. Such adaptation is needed for another reason: the changing democratic universe. When the party perspective consolidated, most democracies were parliamentary democracies. Yet since then, with the third wave of democratization (Huntington, 1991), the democratic universe has expanded and changed, encompassing many presidential and semi-presidential democracies. As Samuels and Shugart (2010) note, parties in these systems are often mere vehicles for presidential candidates. If we intend to cover the democratic universe, adaptation is needed in this direction. Moreover, as Poguntke et al. (2024: 585) point out, ‘common trend seems to be that parties tend to be increasingly leader-dominated, even presidentialized.’

This trend already occurs when party scholars examine the balance of power between parties and politicians rather than assuming that the party is leading in any case (Dodeigne and Pilet, 2019; Wauters et al., 2019). Another path is to integrate the trend into the perspective. This adaptation is evident in Harmel et al. (2024: 400) research on party institutionalization, which conceives of ‘personalization as the ‘reverse’ of certain aspects of institutionalization.’ It is also evident in my (Rahat, 2024b) recent typology of parties for the age of personalized politics. In that article I propose five types: a collegial type, two personalized centralized types (leader party and personal party), and two personalized decentralized types (network party and movement party). Sikk and Köker’s (2023) proposal to measure party and party system change by looking at personal changes over time is another proposal sensitive to personal politics of the decentralized personal type. Pedersen and Kjær (Forthcoming) even suggest that party voting may reflect a trend toward centralized personalism in Denmark’s Semi-Open electoral system. And a developing scholarship on digital parties (Gauja and Kosiara-Pedersen, 2021a) and, specifically, the politician-party balance (Pedersen, 2024; Zamir, 2024) addresses the need to explore a relatively new and ever-increasing, potentially personalized realm.