Lecture
Lecture: Individualism and Political Personalism
- Date
- Monday 8 December 2025
- Time
- Address
-
Wijnhaven
Turfmarkt 99
2511 DP The Hague - Room
- 3.48
Individualization and political personalization are often treated as parallel shifts toward greater emphasis on individual actors and weaker collective structures. The conventional view is that cultural change from collectivism toward individualism drives the personalization of politics, weakening parties and institutions and paving the way for populism and personalist rule.
This paper challenges that assumption by analyzing the relationship between cultural orientations and political personalism across countries. Drawing on multiple indicators of personalism, individualism, and collectivism, we show that the association between individualism and personalism is not positive but negative. This relationship persists when controlling for GDP per capita, regime type, population size, and regional context, and remains robust when the cultural dimension of collectivism is included in the models.
Contrary to common intuition, we argue that individualism’s emphasis on equality, autonomy, and dispersed authority constrains the consolidation of personal power, fostering more institutionalized leadership and reducing the likelihood of personalist rule.
About the speaker
Gideon Rahat is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research fields are comparative politics and Israeli politics. His interests include political parties, electoral reform, the personalization of politics and candidate selection methods. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.
Join this event
All staffmembers and students from Leiden University are welcome to join, registration is not necessary. Please remember to bring your LU-card to enter the Wijnhaven building.