The Presidentialization Of Politics

The Presidentialization of Politics shows that the politics of democratic societies is moving towards a presidentialized working mode, even in the absence of formal institutional changes. These developments can be explained by a combination of long-term structural changes in modern politics and societies'' contingent factors which fluctuate over time. While these contingent, short-term factors relate to the personalities of office holders, the overall politicalagenda, and the majority situation in parliament, there are several structural factors which are relatively uniform across modern nations. First, the internationalization of modern politics (which is particularly pronounced within the European Union) has led to an ''executive bias'' of the political processwhich has strengthened the role of political top elites vis-¿is their parliamentary groups and/or their parties. Their predominance has been amplified further by the vastly expanded steering capacities of state machineries whic