Why strong leaders often end up damaging their parties in the medium term

Successful leaders tend to be big personalities who dominate their party’s organisation, policy development, and electoral campaigns.. But does that control come with a price? Despina Alexiadou and Eoin O’Malley hypothesise that political parties will go through a period of leadership instability and electoral decline after strong leaders step down. Using a dataset with elections under party leaders in nine countries over a 25-year period, and a qualitative case study, they find some evidence for the theory.