Political parties shape politics, and the most important person in a party is usually the leader. Party leaders make the political weather. Take a recent example from Britain. In 2015 the Labour Party, somewhat unexpectedly, lost a national election. Its leader resigned and a new one was needed. “Jeremy Corbyn is not going to win the Labour leadership election”, insisted one of the country’s shrewdest political commentators (Rentoul 2015). But Corbyn did win, and by a comfortable margin. Labour thus took a big stride to the left.

In this book, we examine the varying ways in which political parties manage intra-party conflict, or potential conflict, when they make what might be their most important decisions – on the selection of their leaders. We take special account of actors that, formally and informally, filter the field of aspirants even before the decision reaches the selectorate. Our analytical framework is developed both deductively, with a foundation in delegation models, and inductively, through reference to case studies from nine European countries. We present a typology of selection processes, which illuminates intra-party power structures.

In modern democracy, party leaders are key actors. Not only do they hold the highest offices of their organisations; they are also figureheads externally. Party leaders take centre stage in elections, parliamentary debates and in government formation. They are constantly present in the media; political news is simply incomplete without them.

The international trend towards more inclusive leader selection (Cross and Blais in Party Politics 18: 127–150, 2012) seems to have gone largely unnoticed by Swedish parties. At least on the surface, the process works as it has done for decades. Almost exclusively to Sweden, it centres on a valberedning, a selection committee. This committee is typically chosen by the formal selectorate of the party, the party congress. The job of the valberedning is to consider candidates and then to propose one of them as the new leader.

In the Swedish parliamentary election of 7 September 2018, the biggest parties, the Social Democrats and the Moderates, both lost votes compared to their scores in the previous election, but not as many as they had feared. Commensurately, the radical-right challenger party, the Sweden Democrats (SD), which had seemed certain to profit from Sweden's dramatic experience of the European migration crisis, did well, but not as well as it had hoped. The result left the array of parliamentary forces fragmented and finely balanced. Only after months of negotiations could a government be formed. Eventually, the incumbent coalition received a renewed parliamentary mandate. At the same time, the party system was transformed.

Are right-wing populist parties fundamentally diff erent from other types? Th is article exploresone aspect of what we call the exceptionalist thesis. Th e thesis could be applied to a wide rangeof party characteristics, but here we focus on leadership. In this context, our case study is of theSweden Democrats (SD). First, we examine how SD selects its leader. Second, we assess how leadershipworks in practice in SD, especially regarding party management. We also review how thisleadership style has gone down with voters. We mix our own interpretation of these data withother scholars’ assessments. Generally, we fi nd little evidence, at least in this exploratory inquiry,to support the exceptionalist thesis.