The Presidentialization of American Political Parties

This chapter focuses on party presidentialization in the presidential system par excellence: following Samuels and Shugart (2010), the United States (US) parties should clearly, and obviously, represent the prototypical case of presidentialized parties. However, in a separation of powers system, parties are fragmented into different arenas, horizontally (between the executive and the legislature) as well as vertically (between the federal, the state, and the county or municipal level). This means that one needs to search for evidence of “presidentialization” both in different arenas of partisan activity, each one with its own functioning logic, as well as in the broader political system, where the institutions of government, and their parties, come together. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.