ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a methodological framework designed to assess the role of personalised party leaders. As was noted in Chapter 3, this role has been examined to an extent, for instance in the context of party organisation and leadership, of political communication and campaigning and of clientelism and patronage; above all, party personalisation has been studied recently in connection with what is regarded as a trend towards the “presidentialisation” of the governmental process in parliamentary systems (Poguntke and Webb 2005; Mughan 2000). Many studies focusing on personalisation thus consider from different points of view various important features of contemporary politics: what is still lacking, however, is a wide-ranging framework covering this multi-faceted concept in a comprehensive manner.
