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Beyond Party Government? Technocratic Trends in Society and in the Executive

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Book cover Technocratic Ministers and Political Leadership in European Democracies

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership ((PSPL))

Abstract

This book proposes to analyse, in a sample of European countries, the weight of technocracy in governments with the ambition of providing, in the first place, an accurate mapping of the phenomenon and, secondly, to explore some of the potential explanatory factors of its growing presence in Political Leadership. Our study concentrates its attention on Europe for three main reasons: First, this is the region of the world where party government has found its fullest development, but also where the party systems generated by the recent waves of democratization have been considered as substantially weaker. Secondly, Europe is the region where the parliamentary form of government is the most diffuse, but also where, in recent times, semi-presidential forms of governments have proliferated. Thirdly, Europe has seen with the EU, the development of a particularly strong form of multi-level governance. There are thus good reasons for an in-depth exploration of cabinet recruiting patterns in this area of the world.

In the introductory chapter, we will provide a more systematic overview of the existing literature, before, in the final section, describing our research strategy, the selection of cases and the operationalization of the variables.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Social Science, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    António Costa Pinto

  2. Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences, University of Siena, Siena, Italy

    Maurizio Cotta

  3. Department of Political Studies, Nova University, Lisbon, Portugal

    Pedro Tavares de Almeida

Authors
  1. António Costa Pinto
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  2. Maurizio Cotta
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  3. Pedro Tavares de Almeida
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    António Costa Pinto

  2. University of Siena, Siena, Italy

    Maurizio Cotta

  3. NOVA University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Pedro Tavares de Almeida

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Costa Pinto, A., Cotta, M., Tavares de Almeida, P. (2018). Beyond Party Government? Technocratic Trends in Society and in the Executive. In: Costa Pinto, A., Cotta, M., Tavares de Almeida, P. (eds) Technocratic Ministers and Political Leadership in European Democracies. Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62313-9_1

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