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Members versus Experts: The Perceptions of Party Leadership Styles in New Democracies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2020

Sergiu Gherghina
Sergiu Gherghina*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, School of Social and Political Sciences, Room 1206, Adam Smith Building, University of Glasgow, GlasgowG12 8RT, UK. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Party leaders are highly relevant for contemporary political arenas. Their leadership styles have been often investigated relative to their behaviour and attitudes, but rarely through the lenses of those who observe them closely. This article aims to fill this gap in the literature and compares the ways in which party members and experts evaluate leaders on the transactional–transformational continuum. It uses individual-level data from a survey conducted in 2018 with a modified version of the MLQ. The analysis focuses on eight parliamentary parties in Romania and Bulgaria, covering 19 party leaders and 33 terms over a period of 15 years (2004–2018). The results indicate important differences in the assessment of party leaders, with members having more heterogeneous opinions and seeing them more transformational in comparison to experts.

Type
Articles
Information
European Review , Volume 28 , Issue 5 , October 2020 , pp. 810 - 825
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2020

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