Conceptualising and Measuring Leadership Autonomy in Contemporary Party Organisations

At a time when party politics is becoming increasingly personalised, conventional wisdom argues that the party leaders’ power in organisations is on the rise. However, scholarship has not yet provided a thorough and systematic analysis of the role of party leaders that offers theoretical and empirical specification. The aim of this article is to provide an analytical framework for the study of party leadership by examining the concept of leadership autonomy and its components. This new conceptualisation is then applied to a number of different parties across Western Europe, showing how leadership autonomy varies across countries and different party organisations. The conclusion sets out the implications for party change and highlights the importance of placing the leaders’ role at the centre of the empirical analysis of political parties.