The Electoral Connection Revisited: Introduction to the Special Issue
| Author | Mihail Chiru,Corentin Poyet |
| Published date | 01 August 2021 |
| Date | 01 August 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211022954 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue: The Electoral Connection Revisited: Personal Vote-Seeking Efforts in the Era of Political Personalization |
https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211022954
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(3) 327 –333
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/14789299211022954
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The Electoral Connection
Revisited: Introduction to
the Special Issue
Corentin Poyet1 and Mihail Chiru2
Abstract
Introduction to a symposium: ‘The electoral connection revisited: personal vote-seeking efforts’
Keywords
representation, electoral connection, personalization of politics, campaigning, vote-seeking
Accepted: 18 May 2021
Introduction
The decline of parties as primary vehicles of interest aggregation and substantive repre-
sentation has been paralleled in many European democracies by a multifaceted phenom-
enon, generally referred to as the personalization of politics (Balmas and Sheafer, 2016;
Rahaṭ and Kenig, 2018). Personalization, usually defined as an increased relevance of
individual politicians at the expense of parties over time (Pruysers et al., 2018: 5), mani-
fests itself at institutional, media and behavioural levels (Rahat and Sheafer, 2007).
While cross-national evidence regarding institutional personalization, reflected in
reforms of electoral systems (Renwick and Pilet, 2016), candidate selection (Cross et al.,
2016) and party leadership selection processes (Cross and Pilet, 2015) is hard to ignore,
there is significantly more controversy around behavioural personalization (Wauters
et al., 2018) and media personalization (Kriesi, 2012).
The articles in this special issue revisit the electoral connection in five European coun-
tries, and in so doing they contribute to the literature on institutional and behavioural
personalization. Behavioural personalization refers to the extent to which party leaders
and chief executives dominate politics more than before (Poguntke and Webb, 2005), the
increased usage of personalized campaign strategies by legislators and ordinary candi-
dates (De Winter and Baudewyns, 2015; Zittel and Gschwend, 2008) and the salience of
1Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
2Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Corresponding author:
Corentin Poyet, Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Kanslerinrinne 1, 33014
Tampere, Finland.
Email: corentin.poyet@tuni.fi
1022954PSW0010.1177/14789299211022954Political Studies ReviewPoyet and Chiru
research-article2021
Special Issue Introduction
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