The Role of Ideology in Person-Based Politics

Political live in both established and new democracies is increasingly characterised by its personalisation, i.e. rise of importance of personal traits of individual actors. There were personalities of different political leaders that in last couple of decades decisively contributed to the emergence of new political parties, especially those of regionalist or autonomist orientation and also those on extreme right, as well as to the renewal of some traditional parties. Personalisation of politics is usually perceived in relation to the rise of so called ‘niche parties’ that type reject traditional class-based orientation of politics and transcend socio-economic cleavage (Meguid, Wagner, Cabada). The paper deals with the ideological background of this type of political parties. Although the person-based based politics is often proclaimed as non-ideological (or even non-political) one, the author will try to show that it often has evident (though camouflaged) ideological grounding that determine its political conduct.