In some places they can have little real power in their own party. Australia in the time of where they might well trigger a ballot to sack the leader over just about anything would be in that category. Othrs not so much. Where does your country lie on that spectrum?
I also expect different parties in the same country will be on different points of the spectrum.
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Danish parties are notoriously top-down, usually led from the parliamentary group, and usually with the elected party leader (or appointed political leader) as a somewhat uncontested figure. The only real exception to this, is the Red-Green Alliance (_Enhedslisten_,) a left-wing, socialist, party, though it is also moving in that direction. It has traditionally been controlled by the party board, and has, nominally, collective leadership. It has often led to conflict between the parliamentarians and the board, and a faction of the party wants to “modernise” it, and try to model it closer to the other parties.
But in most parties, the party leader is somewhat an incontestable figure, though there are exception, and other politicians might take over. Notably in the large and old agrarian Liberal Party, _Venstre_, where Jakob Ellemann-Jensen has been a notoriously weak leader, more of a compromise candidate when elected, and the leadership in reality has fallen on the shoulders of Troels Lund Poulsen, a politician who has always preferred to be a kind of back-stage man.
That’s entirely up to the individual party. Some parties are more or less controlled by its party leader or its party council.
The Sweden democrats are an example of a party extremely controlled by its Party leader and its party council, and it extends its control to its youth party too.
While say the Social Democrats are a lot more controlled by its members through representatives. The party council and the party leader however still has a lot of room to move with but it isn’t even close to say the Sweden democrats.
As an example the SocDem youth party gets to elects its own leader while the Sweden democrat youth party gets its leader appointed by the party leader and party council of the main party.
In Germany it really depends on the party.
Angela Merkel was pretty dominant as leader of the CDU for 18 years or so and implemented many policies that were highly unpopular in her own party but since she brought in good election results and had high popularity in the population, nobody really questioned her leadership. Her successors (3 so far) have a much weaker position.
At the moment I’d say the liberal party FDP and the Bavarian sister of the CDU, the CSU, have very dominant party leaders.
While the SPD, greens, left and afd don’t have very strong party leaders.
In the SPD, chancellor Olaf Scholz is the most powerful figure but he is not the party leader (in fact he lost the leadership election a few years ago). The greens have a tradition of sharing power between many different actors so nobody becomes too dominant. Left party and afd are notoriously chaotic and disorganised. It’s even unclear whether the left will survive the coming months. While the afd is strong in the polls, it’s probably not because of its strong and charismatic leadership but because of the unpopularity of all the other established parties.
The party leader (and his small group) is usually in charge of the actual politics and parties change a lot when their leadership changes, so in this sense they hold almost all political power BUT the people (actual voters) rarely interact with any party leaders but rather with local officials like mayors. This gives other party members leverage over the leadership and if they are not satisfied with what they are given from the government they might opt to change the leadership. This is also the reason why clientelism is so strong in Romania.
Really depends on the party, and how long the leader has been in position. Mark Rutte, the Dutch PM, pretty much *is* the VVD, as he has been in power for the last 13 years. Same with Geert Wilders, as he does not allow members to join his party, the PVV. The SP has the Marijnissen-dynasty, where father and daughter have ruled the party for a long time. There are a few other parties based around a single person, most of them are small: BBB, BVNL, JA21. While others have a tradition of long leadership, like the SGP. But most of the traditional parties have normal leadership, where the leader is just the figurehead of a party.
The leader of the political party who wins a General Election tends to become the Prime Minister in the UK. As you may have seen recently, May, Johnson and Truss were all forced out after losing the support of the party.
They can also be subjected to a vote of no confidence (but only once every 12 – 18 months, IIRC).
Of course, for every PM, there will also be pro-Boris and anti-Boris politicians in the wider Government, for example. So the leader may wish to appoint ‘pro’ politicians to their Cabinet.
Opposition Party leaders will often be quoted in the news about major stories, or their plans for Government in the run up to elections.
In both cases Party leaders will be voted in by members of the Party – leadership races become headline news for weeks.
Depends a lot on the party, but in general the general leadership of a party has control of it through the agenda and affairs. The agenda is set by the party congress which will meet at least once a year to vote over cases, elect candidates to the board and set the agenda, including matters intern of the party like dealing with problematic members. How strong the board or different committees are is varying between parties, their structures and not least their history, traditions and culture. The Labour Party is much more top down and strict than say the Green Party, not to mention that the Labour Party also has to please the largest union group. How strong a party leader is is also a question about the person in position, some have tight fists while others are less able to keep it all together.
The party leader *is* the party here in Serbia, and that’s how things have always worked since parties first appeared in 1880s. When a bunch of people within a party disagree with the leader, they secede and form their own party which has its own absolute leader too. And no, it actually has nothing to do with being left-wing or right-wing, all parties work like this.
The two biggest parties:
– PSOE: Our current PM was literally kicked by the other members of the party, decided to make a comeback tour and the affiliated population voted him back in, make your own conclusions.
– PP: the party has all the power. Current leader is probably going to get backstabbed in the near future if he doesn’t support to become PM.
I’d say it depends on the party: if you look at the rightwing parties, they’re often an emanation of their leader (Meloni, Salvini and Berlusconi before he died). They are very compact around their leader and it’s rare to see internal discussions and criticism.
On the other side, the PD (the biggest centre-left party) is (in)famous for having its own MPs often starting to criticize their own leaders even a few months after they’re elected. While for sure there’s much more internal debate and democracy than in other parties, some could argue it’s a point of weakness because sometimes it gives the idea of being a party in a perennial internal discussion.
Ever since Mani Pulite and Berlusconi’s rise, parties don’t really have any power over their leaders: they might squabble and fight over what should be done, but “party lines” are pretty much dead.
You could say that Forza Italia is/was the party with the strongest element of “Party Personslism”, but we will have to see how it will go for them in the next elections whether that keeps up or not.
M5S has tried to leave the internal party choices to the electors themselves, but that didn’t pan out too well, and at this point I’m tempted to say it’s a loose anarchic coalition of mayors and politicians with limited positions in common.
Rest are of the “the party automatically follows the leader? Well, better try to get the position then ASAP” persuasion. With predictable results.
It depends on two factors: how popular is the party and how popular is their party leader. If the party itself is popular, the party leader has much more to say what to do and what not. Of course they can’t change the whole party program on their own but they definitely can’t emphasize and undermine their party agenda. Popular party leader tends to keep their power even if the party itself won’t succeed as well.
If the party suffers a big election loss, especially if their party leader is unpopular, it’s very likely that they have to leave their position sooner than later. So while the party leader is definitely the face of the party and dictate how things are run, they are not indisposable.
Depends on the party:
* Fidesz: Orbán has very strong control over his party
* DK: essentially a one-man party of former PM Ferenc Gyurcsány
* Jobbik: leaders are changed frequently as the party is trying to find its way
* MSZP: I don’t even remember who their leader is
* Momentum: its founder abdicated after losing the opposition primary
* Mi Hazánk: radical offshoot of Jobbik, its leader, Toroczkai, is probably one of the stronger party leaders
* Párbeszéd: only prominent politician is its leader, Gergely Karácsony, mayor of Budapest
* MMN: only prominent politician is its leader, Péter Márki-Zay, former opposition PM candidate
In Poland, most parties are dictatorial: the leader of the party has the power to chose who stands for elections and controls the party purse strings, so Kaczyński has very strong control over PiS and Tusk has very strong control over PO. They are limited only by the threat of a large section of the party seceding away and reducing the main party’s electoral chances.
Donald Tusk is the face of KO (the opposition party), Szymon Kotłownia is the face of Trzecia Droga (the edgy opposition party), Jarosław Kaczyński is the evil mastermind behind PiS (the ruling party), Konfederacja (the far-right party) is, as the name implies, more loose.
Donald Tusk in particular basically saved his party from losing its status as “the opposition party” – before he returned from Brussels, it was falling in the polls and crumbling. That’s how Polska 2050, Hołownia’s party, came to be – he took some of KO’s members to make a new opposition party. Then Tusk returned and the project’s been in limbo ever since. But he refuses to admit it and didn’t join the joint lists of the opposition, creating an alliance with PSL (“we’ll ally with you if it means we’ll remain relevant” party) to create Trzecia Droga (literally Third Way, as if there is a middle ground between anti-democratic PiS and pro-democratic opposition).
They are quite strong with the current system. Erdoğan brought back party system which allows him to be head of his party as well as being a president. You had to resign from one of the positions. I think the main problem is same goes for opposition parties. They are now like a cult and follow one person instead of ideologies of the party they represent. If you like to butt lick enough to not do your job but satisfy the head, you will be in top levels without not trouble. People nows see being a party member as some sort of income house.
Depends of the party. The more you go to the far right and far left spectrum, the more the cult of the personnality toward their ruler is real. Meanwhile more traditional and moderate parties are more collegial with a healthy turnover of their leaders.
The current party in charge is a big exception and anomaly since it’s kind of a “center” party that was made up by Macron for his presidential run who gathered a lot of people from the historical right and left parties, destroying both of them and paving the way for the far right/left
Generally not very strong because it’s all very decentralised and bottom-up. But sometimes, one or two strong personalities can define a party for decades. The leadership of a party is incompatible with the office of Federal Councillor and the FC are also supposed to “stand above” the parties and when speaking in public only to favour the entire FC’s opinion, and not their personal one.
However, in the 90s, Christoph Blocher managed to turn the moderately right SVP, a party of small-business and farmers into a populist-nationalist anti-EU, anti-immigrant, anti-progress, anti-left party that ober 25% of the population seems to love (and it’s the biggest party now) while the other 75% pretty much hate it. During his run as FC, the SVP used his persona as argument to mobilize voters “Make Blocher stronger, vote SVP!” in the 2007 elections which was very un-Swiss.
He was not re-elected by the Parliament, however. Instead Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf was, under protest of the rest of the party. Yet she declared to accept the election. The SVP kicked her out, along with the party section of her canton.
That kicked-out part formed a new party together with other ex-SVPs who did not agree with that overly populist course of the party. This new BDP existed for a few years, and because their party leaders were as bland as American toast bread and had no real line except for “we’re conservative, but in a friendly way; also Widmer-Schlumpf is making a decent job” they merged with the Centrist party shortly after Widmer-Schlumpf ended her political carreer.
The Green-Liberal party leadership, on the other hand, built up a party around that same time around 2007 almost from scratch, recruited economy-friendly Greens and environmentalist Liberals and together with the Greens they aced the parliament election 4 years ago and have now a serious claim for representation in the FC, if they can mobilise their voters again.
Practically all parties are top-down in Russia, defined more by their (gerontocratic) leadership than by anything else. Well, the Presidential Administration is the real puppeteer, designing which parties are needed and which are not.
ANO, the currently strongest opposition party, is pretty much owned by it’s leader, who created and paid for it, and has a fetish for micromanagement. It will be interesting to watch what will happen to them once he retires.
The second opposition party, SPD (do not confuse with german SPD) is even more leader-centrist. The party exists purely to support him. Without him, they would crumble.
On the opposite, the leader of ODS, the currently strongest government party, who is also the current PM, is pretty much just a puppet of the real rulers of ODS, who sit at less exposed positions and only pull the strings.
Not very strong over all in Ireland, Granted it depends on the person they elected to be party leader at the time. For example Leo Varadkar would have relatively low sway over decisions of its party FG. This isn’t helped with hid countless controversies or that he got in 5th of 5 seats in his area. Where as Enda Kenny the previous FG leader tended to have a lot more power.
However I would say in Ireland is that there is atleast a correlation with how popular a party leader is the country in general with how much power they have over their party. Leo Varadkar and Michael Martin both rank low in popularity polls while their parties have little change or a small drop in popularity. While in contrast the main opposition Mary Lou McDonald is both viewed favourably as a party leader as well as her party.
In Belgium the party leaders are the most important and powerful people in politics. Even when the executive government (coalition) needs to decide on almost every topic of even a bit of importance, party leaders are often part of the negotiations. This cause the parties are super hierarchical and the head of a party decides how much his ministers can deviate from the party program. Leaning towards a Particracy.
The tasks that might be different to a lot of other places mainly consists of:
– Leading the party during negotiations for the formation of government.
– Decide the order on the list of candidates, how higher, the bigger chance for minister positions.
– After elections they actually have the final word on who becomes minister from their party if part of the government.
– All news and general media tend to interview the party leaders for information. So in broad terms he decides the way and what is communicated to the outside world.
More and more criticism is noticeable in the media and among the people but to make a fundamental change in my country is like beating a dead horse.