Parti içi rekabet ve seçimlerdeki parti performansı: Parti liderlerinin liderlik süreleri

In this thesis, I focus on the intra-party competition channel of the democratic process in major parliamentary democracies. More specifically, I study the linkage between the election performance of the political parties and the tenure of the party leader. A cross-section time-series analysis from 1960-2007 of 117 major political parties in 29 parliamentary democracies, shows that there is a linkage between the political party's vote and the leader's tenure. In this analysis, I test whether the leader's tenure, measured by the years in office, is affected by the party's performance in the general elections.Intuition says that party leadership has to be changed when the respective parties fails in elections. Nevertheless, our data on 29 countries and political parties show that several countries show a contrary trend. We argue that these negative cases lack intra-party democracy, and there is a need to establish proper institutions and check-balance systems in order to foster intra-party democracy in these countries. As a result, patron-client networks will dissolve, and the party leadership will have more incentive to follow common interests instead of private interests.