One of the key shifts in contemporary politics is the trend towards greater personalization. Collective actors such as political parties are losing relevance. Citizens are slowly dealigning from these actors, and individual politicians are therefore growing in importance in elections, in government, within parties, and in media reporting of politics. A crucial question concerns how this new pattern could be restructuring politics over the long run - notably, whether the personalization of politics is changing the institutional architecture of contemporary democracies.
The authors show that the trend towards personalization is indeed changing core democratic institutions. Studying the evolution of electoral systems in thirty-one European democracies since 1945, they demonstrate that, since the 1990s, there has been a shift towards more personalized electoral systems. Electoral systems in most European countries now allow voters to express preferences for candidates, not just for political parties. And the weight of these voters' preferences in the allocation of seats has been increased in numerous countries.
They examine the factors that appear to be driving this evolution, finding that the personalization of electoral systems is associated with the growing gap between citizens and politics. Politicians and legislators appear to perceive the personalization of electoral systems as a way to address the democratic malaise and to restore trust in politics by reducing the role of political parties in elections. The book also shows, however, that whether these reforms have had any success in achieving their aims is far less clear.
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The key contribution of Faces on the Ballot is to really give us a good sense of how electoral systems have changed in European countries in the post-war period. I think what it shows very clearly which many of us hadnt realised before is how systems have moved towards a more personalised system and away from a more party-based system. -- Justin Fisher, Brunel University
I think there are at least two key contributions of this book. The first is simply as a huge exercise in data gathering and in meticulous documentation of often very subtle, nuanced changes in electoral systems, from which we can start to see a pattern emerging. It has created a huge data resource for future scholars to use. I think the other is showing there has been this tendency towards greater personalisation of electoral system, trying to see the causes of that, and also looking for evidence of the consequences. -- Roger Scully, Cardiff University
Alan Renwick is an expert in the mechanisms through which citizens can participate in formal politics: particularly in electoral systems, referendums, and deliberative processes such as citizens' assemblies.
His research is comparative: besides the UK, his recent projects have included all European democracies as well as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada, and the United States.
He was recently the chair of the Working Group on Unification Referendums on the Island of Ireland.
Jean-Benoit Pilet is a professor of Political Science at ULB. He works on elections, electoral system, political parties and representation. He is the coauthor of Faces on the Ballot; The Personalization of Electoral Systems in Europe (with Alan Renwick – Oxford UP 2016) and The Politics of Political Party Leadership in Comparative Perspective (with William Cross – Oxford
UP 2015).
