Leadership Turnovers and Their Electoral Consequences: A Social Democratic Exceptionalism?

Pundits have attributed the frequency of party leadership churns as a factor in the decline of the German Social Democrats. But have leadership changes and their frequency contributed to the German SPD's and other social democratic parties' declines across parliamentary systems? More generally, when and why do political parties change their leaders, and what are the electoral consequences of these changes? Using original party leadership data from ten parliamentary democracies across three decades, we show that while factors that affect leader durations in office vary across countries/regions, there are no unique factors influencing social democratic leaders' tenure. In addition, while leadership changes and the frequency of leadership changes have some minor impact on polling results, they do not influence election results, and once again, their effects do not vary across party families. Our results have important implications for the party organizations and electoral outcomes literatures and call into question the recent argument about the increasing presidentialization of politics in parliamentary systems.