Chairman versus Party Leader: Who is really in charge ?

In the context of the run-up for the 2014 elections, a focus on the role and the influence of party leaders in Belgium is interesting and timely. Indeed, the forthcoming campaign and the government formation will bring these leaders back to the political forefront. Those moments well illustrate some of the principal functions of party leaders related to the candidates’ selection or to the role of main spokesman. The theme of the concentration of power round leaders in democratic political system is not a new one. There is no denying that party leaders occupy a central place in Western democracies. Nevertheless, a question could be the following: who actually lead a political party? Especially, is it one person or more? In general, in Belgium, known as a strong ‘partitocracy’, the answer will be: the party leader, understood as the chairman of the party . This paper aims at testing the hypothesis that the role and the influence of party chairmen are gradually weakened by the decentralization process. Even more, they are challenged by another kind of party leaders. In this context, it is useful to distinguish the formal and statutory leader of the party, that I shall call the “chairman”, and one (or even those) that enjoys a key executive function, bypassing the traditional operating model. The latter shall be called, at least for the moment, the de facto party leader or, in a more figurative way, the challenger. In sum, my research question is: Are the party chairmen’s role and influence weakened by the decentralization process and challenged by other party leaders?