Editing Political party (section)

===Party leaders===
[[File:18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.jpg|thumb|upright=1|left|A [[National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party]], where policies may be set and changes can be made to party leadership]]
Parties are typically led by a [[party leader]], who serves as the main representative of the party and often has primary responsibility for overseeing the party's policies and strategies. The leader of the party that controls the government usually becomes the [[head of government]], such as the [[President (government title)|president]] or [[prime minister]], and the leaders of other parties explicitly compete to become the head of government.<ref name=helms2012>{{cite book |editor=Ludger Helms |page=78 |year=2012 |title=Comparative Political Leadership |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-349-33368-4}}</ref> In both [[Presidential system|presidential democracies]] and [[Parliamentary system|parliamentary democracies]], the members of a party frequently have substantial input into the selection of party leaders, for example by voting on party leadership at a [[party conference]].<ref>{{cite journal |first=Michael |last=Marsh |title=Introduction: Selecting the party leader |journal=European Journal of Political Research |volume=24 |pages=229–231 |date=October 1993 |issue=3 |doi=10.1111/j.1475-6765.1993.tb00378.x}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |author1=William Cross |author2=André Blais |title=Who selects the party leader? |journal=Party Politics |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=127–150 |date=26 January 2011 |doi=10.1177/1354068810382935|s2cid=144582117 }}</ref> Because the leader of a major party is a powerful and visible person, many party leaders are well-known career politicians.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Stephen |last=Barber |title=Arise, Careerless Politician: The Rise of the Professional Party Leader |journal=Politics |volume=34 |issue=1 |pages=23–31 |date=17 September 2013 |doi=10.1111/1467-9256.12030|s2cid=143270021 |url=http://researchopen.lsbu.ac.uk/1237/1/Arise%20Careerless%20final%20version.docx }}</ref> Party leaders can be sufficiently prominent that they affect voters' perceptions of the entire party,<ref>{{cite journal |first=Diego |last=Garzia |title=Party and Leader Effects in Parliamentary Elections: Towards a Reassessment |journal=Politics |volume=32 |issue=3 |pages=175–185 |date=3 September 2012 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-9256.2012.01443.x|hdl=1814/23834 |s2cid=55189815 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> and some voters decide how to vote in elections partly based on how much they like the leaders of the different parties.<ref>{{cite journal |author1=Jean-François Daoust |author2=André Blais |author3=Gabrielle Péloquin-Skulski |title=What do voters do when they prefer a leader from another party? |journal=Party Politics |volume=50 |pages=1103–1109 |date=29 April 2019 |issue=2 |doi=10.1177/1354068819845100|s2cid=155675264 }}</ref>

The number of people involved in choosing party leaders varies widely across parties and across countries. On one extreme, party leaders might be selected from the entire electorate; on the opposite extreme, they might be selected by just one individual.<ref name=kenig09>{{cite journal |first=Ofer |last=Kenig |title=Classifying Party Leaders' Selection Methods in Parliamentary Democracies |journal=Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties |volume=19 |issue=4 |pages=433–447 |date=30 October 2009 |doi=10.1080/17457280903275261|s2cid=146321598 }}</ref> Selection by a smaller group can be a feature of party leadership transitions in more autocratic countries, where the existence of political parties may be severely constrained to only one legal political party, or only one competitive party. Some of these parties, like the [[Chinese Communist Party]], have rigid methods for selecting the next party leader, which involves selection by other party members.<ref>{{cite journal |author1=Li Cheng |author2=Lynn White |title=The Fifteenth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party: Full-Fledged Technocratic Leadership with Partial Control by Jiang Zemin |journal=Asian Survey |volume=38 |issue=3 |pages=231–264 |year=1998 |doi=10.2307/2645427|jstor=2645427 }}</ref> A small number of single-party states have hereditary succession, where party leadership is inherited by the child of an outgoing party leader.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Jason |last=Brownlee |title=Hereditary Succession in Modern Autocracies |journal=World Politics |volume=59 |issue=4 |pages=595–628 |date=July 2007|doi=10.1353/wp.2008.0002|s2cid=154483430 }}</ref> Autocratic parties use more restrictive selection methods to avoid having major shifts in the regime as a result of successions.<ref name=helms20>{{cite journal |first=Ludger |last=Helms |title=Leadership succession in politics: The democracy/autocracy divide revisited |journal=The British Journal of Politics and International Relations |volume=22 |issue=2 |pages=328–346 |date=11 March 2020 |doi=10.1177/1369148120908528|doi-access=free }}</ref>