Presidentialization of parties and the career path to the premiership: The case of regional Spain

This article contributes to the recent debate about the effects of institutional settings and the presidentialization of parties on the career path to the head of the executive by looking at the political background of candidates for regional premiers in Spain. Whereas some scholars have shown that heads of the executive in parliamentary and presidential democracies differ on their partisan background, others suggest that the increasingly presidentialization of parliamentary politics should lead to their “top candidates” becoming more alike their presidential counterparts. We focus on the Spanish regional case as an example of a “most likely case” of the presidentialization thesis. Our main finding, however, is that this transformation does not seem to occur. As such this study reinforces the argument that institutional frameworks still make premiers differ from presidents on their career paths.