In command but nowhere to go? Parliamentary party group leaders' role orientations in partitocratic Belgium

Parliamentary party group leaders take centre stage in contemporary parliaments. To this day, however, their functioning remains rather understudied. Drawing on the parliamentary role literature, and using a series of in-depth interviews with (current and former) PPG leaders, this paper examines the self-reported role orientations of PPG leaders in Belgium. Unlike commonly-assumed theoretical dispositions on ‘position roles’, and despite Belgian PPG leaders’ limited formal authority as intermediaries between the central party elite and backbenchers, we do find role variation among PPG leaders.... Mehr ...