Talk:Party leader

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Most powerful official?

The statement that "a party leader is the most powerful official within a political party" is debatable. It is not supported by the page cited on the UShistory website, which offers a much more nuanced account. Meanwhile a recent article in the Atlantic argues "The very term party leaders has become an anachronism. ... There no longer is any such thing as a party leader. There are only individual actors, pursuing their own political interests and ideological missions willy-nilly, like excited gas molecules in an overheated balloon." (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/) I think the point here is to distinguish between the formal and ceremonial role of Party Leader with the actual networks of power within a political party. --RichardVeryard (talk) 19:35, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Further down, the article provides a list of seven people who are supposedly the "leaders" of the US Republican party. Obviously they can't all be "the most powerful". And in some countries, the leadership of the governing party is not always held by the president or prime minister. For example, the Socialist Party (France) is led by Jean-Christophe Cambadélis. --RichardVeryard (talk) 21:41, 5 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Merge Party chair into Party leader

It seems to me that the subjects of these articles are identical, and these terms are only synonyms for the same position. The details of the articles overlap significantly (e.g. China, UK, US). This article even lists "Chair/Chairperson/Chairman/Chairwoman" as official names for the role. BappleBusiness (talk) 00:51, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is not the case that party leaders and party chairs are the same concept. In the American example, the party chair is an official who is named by the party and is usually relatively unknown, whereas the party leader is a de facto position that is held by the highest-ranking politician of each of the two major parties. Compare Party leader#United_States to Party chair#United_States. The chair of the US Democratic Party is Jaime Harrison; the leader is Joe Biden. A similar distinction is in Party leader#Netherlands and Party chair#Netherlands. Having said that, lots more work can be done to clarify the distinction on these pages, and some content might end up being duplicated (like in the case of China, where the leader is the chair). - Astrophobe (talk) 02:51, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing out the distinction for me; I wasn't exactly sure before. I'm still concerned about the overlap, but merging the articles might not be the best option so I've taken the merge templates down. The obvious first step is to make the distinction clear in the opening paragraph of the Party leader article, instead of what we have now where party chair is bolded. I'll try to make other revisions too, feel free to revert them and discuss them here if needed. BappleBusiness (talk) 05:05, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yeah I totally agree with you, these pages are not exactly polished encyclopedia entries ... - Astrophobe (talk) 01:08, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]