How Power Changes Hands: Transition and Succession in Government

How can we strengthen the capacity of our governments and key political parties to manage arrivals and departures at the top? Democracy requires reliable processes for the transfer of power from one generation of leaders to the next. How does power pass from leaders to their challengers? What patterns of political and social organisation emerge from the comparative study of the passage of power from possessors to successors? This collection represents the findings of a research team investigating the pathways of power in transitions, when one individual leader replaces another in political office, and in successions when internal generation changes one set of leaders for another. The authors bring many academic disciplines to the task, including political science, history and social psychology.