Actualités et agenda
Nos formations
Présentation
No prerequisite.
Learning Outcomes
This course is designed to help you:
• Identify major similarities and differences in parties and party systems across countries and across sets of countries;
• Explain the patterns you observe in the functioning and roles of parties in European democracies;
• Articulate why the explanation(s) you find to be persuasive actually hold explanatory power.
The course will also equip you to:
• Hone your critical and analytical skills;
• Acquire a scientific perspective on political behaviour and phenomena.
The course will focus on the emergence, functions, activities and future prospects of political parties in European democracies and around the world. Parties are one of the central actors of modern democracies and are essential to running elections, recruiting candidates for public office and governing the state. They are a main actor of representation and their role in interest aggregation and processing of societal demands is crucial. However, parties are also increasingly challenged by the complexity of multilevel governance and by their increasing unpopularity with citizens. Political parties organize many aspects of public life in democratic regimes, yet they are constantly derided as a source of corruption, bad government, and political paralysis. In order to address all these problems, we will review some of the classic studies of party politics as well as more recent contributions on party change.
Parties, in short, are ubiquitous in modern politics. This fact did not went unnoticed by scholars and commentators, who have endeavoured since early in the 19th century to understand how political parties originate, the conditions under which they thrive and decline in the electoral arena, and the various ways in which they aggregate societal preferences into public policy in the legislative realm. This course aims to provide students with a panoramic view of received social scientific theorizing and empirical studies about political parties and party systems.
. In this course, we will look at the formation, evolution, and role political parties play in society. We will explore party strategy, party and electoral systems. We will take a comparative approach and explore political parties primarily in advanced industrial democracies and in EU member states (two sessions will be devoted to parties outside Europe). The readings and discussions will challenge you to think about how and why political parties and party systems differ (or are the same) across countries. Additionally, you will begin to develop a deeper understanding of the political effects of these differences. Through lectures and presentations, readings, class discussions, and written work, you will have developed a thorough understanding of political parties and their role in society.
We will begin by examining how party systems vary across countries, and investigating the role of electoral institutions and electoral cleavages in explaining these variations. Next, we will focus on the activities of modern-day parties and their functions. We will learn how political scientists measure parties’ ideological positions and their organizational structures. In the third part of this course, we will focus on party organizations. We will observe the practices of party internal functioning and recent organizational change. We will look at how parties cope with contemporary societal challenges, with digital transition and with evolutions in their role as main intermediary between state and society. Political parties are expected to represent citizens’ interests. However, increasingly parties have weak contacts with society. Does this mean that parties are no longer needed in contemporary democracies? In the last part of this course, we will address some of the following questions: are parties becoming insulated vehicles of power? Do they transmit voter interests or rather constitute a cartel penetrating the state institutions and focusing on maintaining power? How new digital technologies have affected parties, their functions and their organizations?
COURSE OUTLINE & SCHEDULE
1. INTRODUCTION: WHAT ARE POLITICAL PARTIES AND WHAT DO THEY DO? 29/09
Lecture
Suggested reading: Russell Dalton and Martin Wattenberg. (2000). Unthinkable Democracy: Politic
Modalités
The course is taught through in person lectures. Lectures take place once a week, and altogether there are 9 lectures of 2 hours each. During 2 of the 9 classes (so, in sessions 4 and 5 of the course), 20 minutes will be devoted to the collective discussion of the set reading for the day. Students are encouraged to participate and ask questions. Attendance to the lectures is strongly recommended but not compulsory. Lectures are designed to outline the topic in general, highlight illustrative examples and discuss some salient points. They are meant to introduce to the topic at hand, to build the basis of informed discussion and exam answers. Students are expected to read the set readings.
Please note that all the course materials and readings, plus the lectures PPTs presentations, are available on I-Campus (Moodle).
Course Assessment
The course grade will be based on the final examination, course participation, and individual assignments:
1) Assignment (contrôle continu)– Group video on party policy positions (counts for 40% of the final grade): during the second session of this course, all the students will be divided into groups of 5 students each. Each group will be assigned by the instructor a political party to study. Each group will be required to submit a 10 minutes video recording where the group presents the main policy positions of the assigned political parties in a particular country. The students’ presentation in each group will be focused on either environmental policy positions or immigration policy position of the party they have been assigned. In these videos, through the empirical analysis of party electoral manifestos, party platforms and campaign ads, you will have to identify and discuss each political party’s positions regarding the chosen policy area. If you are having trouble in identifying the policy positions of these parties, please contact me immediately. Students should submit their work in video format (1 video for each group) to the course convenor on the ICampus/Moodle platform by November 14, 2022 at 23:59.
2) Final written exam (counts for 60% of the final grade): a 1h written exam (quiz based on 10 multiple-choice questions and 1 open-ended question) on the content of the lectures and of the set readings will be organized during the final exams’ week, December 12-16, 2022.
Participation in class: Students are always expected (but not compelled) to actively participate to the debate during each zoom meeting, especially when we are discussing the 2 compulsory readings, by asking questions and by trying to answer to, and comment on, the points raised during the lecture. Whenever possible, you are invited to refer to other literature and readings of the course, and to the news and ongoing events which the students may know or consider relevant to discuss the topic. Bonus points will be given to students who will be regularly participating to the readings’ discussion.
Ressources
Aldrich, J. H. (2011). Why Parties?: A second look. University of Chicago Press.|| Bolleyer, N. (2013). New parties in old party systems: persistence and decline in seventeen democracies. OUP Oxford.|| Cross, W. P., & Katz, R. S. (Eds.). (2013). The challenges of intra-party democracy. Oxford University Press.|| Cross, W. P., Kenig, O., Rahaá¹, G., & Pruysers, S. (2016). The promise and challenge of party primary elections: A comparative perspective. McGill-Queen's Press-MQUP.|| Dalton, R. J., & Wattenberg, M. P. (Eds.). (2002). Parties without partisans: Political change in advanced industrial democracies. Oxford University Press on Demand.|| Dalton, R. J., Farrell, D. M., & McAllister, I. (2011). Political parties and democratic linkage: How parties organize democracy. Oxford University Press.|| Delwit, P., Külahci, E., & Van De Walle, C. (2004). The europarties: organisation and influence. CEVIPOL, Editions de l’Université Livre de Bruxelles.|| Duverger (1990) “The Two-Party System and the Multiparty System" in Peter Mair (ed), The West European Party System. Oxford University Press.|| Gauja, A. (2016). Party reform: The causes, challenges, and consequences of organizational change. Oxford University Press.|| Gerbaudo, P. (2019). The digital party: Political organisation and online democracy. Pluto Press.|| Hazan, R. Y., & Rahat, G. (2010). Democracy within parties: Candidate selection methods and their political consequences. Oxford University Press.|| Heidar, K., & Wauters, B. (2019) Do Parties Still Represent? London, Routldedge.|| Hix, S., Noury, A. G., & Roland, G. (2007). Democratic politics in the European Parliament. Cambridge University Press.|| Hutter, S., & Kriesi, H. (Eds.). (2019). European party politics in times of crisis. Cambridge University Press.|| Ignazi, P. (2017). Party and democracy: The uneven road to party legitimacy. Oxford University Press.|| Katz, R.S. and Crotty, W. (eds.) (2006), Handbook of Political Parties, London, Sage.|| Kitschelt, Herbert and Steven Wilkinson. 2007. Patrons or Policies. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.|| Krouwel (2013) Party Transformations in European Democracies. SUNY Press|| Lipset, Seymour Martin and Stein Rokkan. 1967. Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments. In Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, ed. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan. The Free Press chapter 1, pp. 1-64.|| Mair (1997) Party system change. Oxford University Press.|| Mair, P. (2013). Ruling the void: The hollowing of Western democracy. Verso Trade.|| Mudde, C. (2007), Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge University Press|| Mudde, C., & Kaltwasser, C. R. (2017). Populism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.|| Pettitt, R. T. (2014). Contemporary party politics. Macmillan International Higher Education.|| Rahat, G., & Kenig, O. (2018). From party politics to personalized politics? Party change and political personalization in democracies. Oxford University Press.|| Römmele, A., Farrell, D. M., & Ignazi, P. (Eds.). (2005). Political parties and political systems: The concept of linkage revisited. Greenwood Publishing Group.|| Russell, J.D and Wattenberg, M.P. (2002), Parties Without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies, Oxford University Press.|| Sartori (1976) Parties and party systems. Cambridge UP.|| Scarrow, S. E., Webb, P. D., & Poguntke, T. (Eds.). (2017). Organizing political parties: Representation, participation, and power. Oxford University Press.|| Strom, K. (1985). Party goals and government performance in parliamentary democracies. American Political Science Review, 79(3), 738-754.|| Strom, K. et al. (eds.) (2010), Cabinets and Coalition Bargaining. The Democractic Life Cycle in Western Europe, Oxford University Press.|| Taagep