Political Outsiders and the Challenge of Party Politics

Abstract

Across regions and political systems voters are increasingly choosing political outsiders as their government or state leaders over party women and men. Some claim business competence, others expertise, and others their closeness to ordinary citizens. What appears to unite these political outsiders is their independence from the ‘broken’ political system. How prevalent is this phenomenon? What explains it? What are the political consequences of it? How have these outsider leaders changed party government as we know it? The four papers in the panel address many of these important questions by providing new data on outsider leaders globally, on the distribution of cabinet post by outsider presidents in Latin America, and the appointments of outsider cabinet ministers in Central and Eastern Europe. In addition, the papers make conceptual contributions by identifying the factors that make outsider leaders unpopular.