The personalization of politics, whereby politicians increasingly become the main focus of political processes, is a prominent phenomenon in modern democracies that has received considerable scholarly attention in national politics. However, little is known about the scope, causes and consequences of personalization in European Union politics, although recent institutional and political developments suggest that such a trend is underway. This book sheds light onto this phenomenon by taking a comprehensive approach to understanding four key dimensions of personalization concerning institutions, media, politics, and citizens. In doing so, it relies on an innovative longitudinal and cross-country comparative research design and applies multiple methods. It argues that institutional personalization is a necessary but not sufficient pre-condition for media to increasingly report about individual politicians. It shows that media personalization fluctuates across country and over time, while Members of the European Parliament increasingly engage in personalized legislative and communicative behaviour. These developments are conditional upon domestic media and electoral systems and have limited effects on citizen attitudes and political awareness. The book concludes that as additional political actors gain formal individual responsibilities, European Union politics also becomes more complex to disentangle. Ultimately, institutions provide more effective cues than individual politicians both for media to inform citizens about European Union politics and for the latter to acquire information that may help them understand and evaluate European Union politics. These findings have important implications for the future of personalized politics in the European Union.

"In contemporary Europe, political leaders are key drivers of voters' electoral preferences. While this "personalization" of politics is well established in national-level politics, less is known about this phenomenon in European Union politics. Drawing on an impressive array of new evidence including experiments, analysis of news stories, and survey data over time and across countries, Gattermann demonstrates that this process at the EU level is a complex interplay between actors, political institutions, and the media. This important book is a necessary reading both for those interested in EU politics and in political communication studies." - SUSAN BANDUCCI, Professor in Politics & Turing Fellow, University of Exeter

"Evaluating an impressive amount of data, and applying some of the latest techniques in political science, this is the best book yet written on media coverage of politicians in EU politics. As such, this is a major contribution to our understanding of what drives media coverage of the EU, what motivates the media behaviour of elected European-level politicians, and more generally why attention to media incentives is central to any solution to the democratic deficit in the EU." - SIMON HIX, Stein Rokkan Chair in Comparative Politics, European University Institute

"Politics is about more than policies and institutions. Individual politicians matter too. Yet, this is an aspect of politics in the European Union that has rarely been studied. In this pathbreaking book, Gattermann uses a wealth of empirical evidence to systematically examine the personalization of EU politics, focusing on institutions, the media, and citizens. Notably, the book demonstrates that personalized politics does not provide an easy solution to the problems of lack of awareness of and interest in EU politics." - SARA B. HOBOLT, Sutherland Chair in European Institutions, London School of Economics and Political Science

"Gattermann argues that the personalization of European politics makes voters more receptive to political information, that voters are more likely to adopt media logic in European affairs, and that voters prefer personalized political news. Methodologically, the book uses longitudinal and cross-country comparative research design as well as experimental design conducted in three European countries. The style of presentation is academic, with abundant use of specialized vocabulary." - Choice