Political personalization and personalized politics within and beyond the behavioural arena

Abstract

Our aim is to propose guidelines for the analysis of political personalization and personalized politics in general and for behavioural personalization in particular. The first guideline is based on our understanding that personalization comes at the cost of party politics. It suggests that in order to classify politics as more or less personalized, we must compare it to an alternative party-oriented politics. Based on a synthesis of existing theoretical work, the second guideline suggests three analytical dimensions to clarify the multidimensional concept of personalization: arena, level and character. Arena refers to where personalization takes place; level refers to whose power or independence is changing; and character refers to how personalization is manifested. Furthermore, we present the contributions of this symposium and explain how they follow the two guidelines and advance our understanding and knowledge of behavioural political personalization.