Personalization and de‐institutionalization: Our common conceptual framework

Though parties serving as "personalist vehicles" have been known to exist for some time in less well-established democracies, they are certainly less commonplace in well-institutionalized democracies where parties are normally expected to make decisions by routinized, democratic procedures and maintain substantial value in their own right. And yet, even highly institutionalized parties in such settings may fall prey to personalistic tendencies.1 Such has, for instance, been the case recently for one of the most established, institutionalized parties in one of the most established, institutionalized democracies in the world: Donald Trump's Republican Party in the United States. And while that case may be the most notorious of late, it is hardly the only instance of this phenomenon! Indeed, across a range of democracies over a span of decades, there have been numerous other cases of personalization of well-established parties, though not always personalized in exactly the same ways or to the same degree. It is our explicit purpose in this special issue to gain a better understanding of numerous relevant cases and the process of party personalization in general, through a collection of case studies rigorously employing a common conceptual framework and guided by similar research questions. To what degree, and in what ways, has each case experienced personalization? What factors and circumstances made this possible? (And to the process culminated in less than complete personalization, what hindered/stopped the process?) What have been—or are likely to be—the consequences for the party and the polity? What follows is a discussion of the common conceptual framework that underpins the analysis of each of the case studies in this special issue. In our multidimensional conceptual framework,2 an established, fully institutionalized party is one in which decisions are made following established routines and where both internal loyalty and the party's external reputation are focused on the party as an organization.3 In such a party, personalization would occur by placing decision-making authority, loyalty, and reputation in the hands of a single party leader. Thus, an institutionalized party would become personalized to the extent that the "person" who holds the position of party leadership is given special value and/or decision-making power, beyond what is normally afforded to the party's leaders based only on the position that they hold, and at the expense of value attributed to the organization per se and/or established decision-making routines. We begin our discussion here with our conceptualization of institutionalization and then conceive of personalization as the "reverse" of certain aspects of institutionalization. Our multidimensional approach to the concept of institutionalization recognizes three separate dimensions (or "types") of party institutionalization: internal institutionalization (including routinization of procedures and internal value infusion), external institutionalization, and objective durability. Internal institutionalization refers to behavior and attitudes within the organization that are indicative of reification—"in the party's own mind"—of the party aside from the founder or any particular leaders or purposes of the moment. As such, internal institutionalization itself is two dimensional, encompassing both (1) the routinization (e.g., depersonalization) of decision-making procedures4 and (2) behavior of internal party actors—including members and public officeholders—indicative of attaching value to the party rather than just to temporary leaders or ambitions of the moment (i.e., "internal value infusion").5 External institutionalization consists of perceptions by others—outside the party itself—that the party is more than a personalist vehicle and is indeed an 'institution'—with implied "lasting power" and relevance, and is to be thought of and treated as such. The most relevant external actors making such a determination would normally be (1) the electorate and (2) the system's other parties.6 Objective durability is demonstrated by a party's record of substantial persistence (i.e., longevity) and ability to adapt in the face of "shocks" beyond its immediate control.7 Under this approach, the routinization and value infusion embodied in the first two dimensions of institutionalization—internal and external institutionalization—are conceptually related to a lack of personalization.8 And hence, while reduction of organizational institutionalization could theoretically occur without personalization (e.g., in a situation of complete anarchy),9 in the field of political parties personalization is normally seen as undermining—or in the extreme, negating—institutionalization. abandonment of important, routinized procedures, in favor of personalization of decision-making (i.e., important decisions made at the whim of the party's leader); displacement of "value" from the party organization to a single leader by important internal party actors (including party officeholders, party members, and other party personnel); perception by the electorate—including a substantial portion of the party's own support base – that the party is essentially a personalist vehicle (with voter loyalty attached more to the leader than to the party organization); perception by other parties and their leaders that this party is personalized (and hence in jeopardy of collapse in the absence of the current leader). Parallel to our multi-dimensional treatment of institutionalization, the first two items on this list pertain to "internal" or "organizational" personalization, while the last two may be considered indicators of "external" or "perceived" personalization. Theoretically, "externally perceived" personalization could have important political repercussions even in the absence of true, "internal" personalization. For this project, we conceive of personalization as a continuum, rather than as a dichotomy. And we allow for the possibility of temporary movement in the direction of personalization, rather than assuming permanence. Thus, we treat the extent and duration of personalization as important and interesting variables, which indeed tend to vary across our collection of cases. The degree to which a given party, at a given point in time, is "personalized" can be thought of as a position on a scale that ranges from "no personalization" to "complete personalization," which allows for parties to be personalized "to some degree," and on just one or a subset of dimensions, without being completely personalized/deinstitutionalized. In the lowest range of the personalization-to-institutionalization scale, certain degrees of personalization could coexist with a relatively high level of institutionalization. But at higher levels, personalization can be seen as significantly diminishing institutionalization, indicating "de-institutionalization" to some degree. And, at the extreme, complete personalization would displace institutionalization, essentially replacing what had been an institutionalized party with a personalist vehicle. When is "value" attached to a party leader—or "decision-making authority" granted to the leader—an indication of personalization rather than just normal party behavior, even for a highly institutionalized party? After all, parties commonly place value on their leaders/candidates. However, it is not always at the expense of organizational value. It is "normal" to the extent that a different leader/candidate could be substituted and would receive the same value. A particular leader may even be given special value, but not always at the expense of value placed on the party itself. When it does involve displacement of value from the party organization to the leader, that constitutes an aspect of personalization/de-institutionalization. Likewise, parties commonly allow leaders to impact party rules, but when the changes in rules take place using routinized procedures, that is not evidence of personalization/deroutinization. Even when the changes are "abnormal" in their degree, and where personal leadership skills are deemed to have been critical in allowing the changes to happen, that may point to the importance of "personality" and may indicate "exceptional party leadership," but it would not constitute personalization of the party if the changes were made by using routinized procedures. It is when decisions are made by leaders (or others on their behalf) using nonroutinized means—or by significantly stretching the routinized procedures—that institutionalization is challenged. With a primary focus on the personalization of previously institutionalized (and nonpersonalized) parties in democratic settings, the cases covered in this issue are all parties that had previously been fully institutionalized and that reside in established democracies. In addition to Trump and the GOP, these include Reagan and the Republican Party (USA), Netanyahu and the Likud (Israel), Modi and the BJP and Indira Gandhi and the INC (India), Menem and Kirchners and the Partido Justicialista (Argentina), Churchill and the Conservatives (UK), and Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats (USA). Together, they constitute an interesting range of experiences with personalization/de-institutionalization—from temporary to more long-lasting, and from partial to nearly complete. It is exactly the type of variance with which to inspire the development of rich theory of party personalization.