Contemporary issues in European Politics
Etablissement : ESPOL European School of Political and Social Sciences
Langue : Anglais
Formation(s) dans laquelle/lesquelles le cours apparait :
Période : S3
Is our democracy in danger? Do governments still have the freedom to meet the demands of their voters? Are political parties still representing citizens’ preferences?
This course aims to present some of the main insights from the scholarly literature on these questions. In particular, it focuses on how changes in the global economy or in the post-industrial society may (or may not) affect the functioning of our democracies.
The main teaching objective is to develop students’ critical thinking about the issue of representation: when are political leaders representative of their constituencies and when are they not; how can we assess whether they are?
After a brief introduction about how political science contributes to the public debates about democracy, the course starts by characterizing western governments as ‘representative’ and identifying political parties as the actors responsible for a successful combination of representation and government, and thus as the actors that are determinant for the proper functioning of our democracies. The course then proceeds with the presentation of the current challenges faced by parties and how these challenges may in turn affect the functioning of democracy. The focus of the course is on the process linking citizens’ preferences to public policy, and how this is challenged by ongoing societal and economic developments. Some examples of studies that attempted or claimed to test the democratic linkage are presented, together with their merits and shortcomings.
Sample of main readings:
Mair, P. (2011) ‘Bini Smaghi vs. the parties: representative government and institutional constraints’, EUI RSCAS; 2011/22; EUDO – European Union Democracy Observatory.
Saward, M. (2008). “Making representations: modes and strategies of political parties”. European Review, 16(3): 271-286.
Dalton, R.J., Farrell D.M. and I. McAllister (2011) Political Parties and the Democratic Linkage. How parties organize democracy, New York: Oxford University Press: 3-28, 215-234 (Chapters 1 and 9).
Caramani, D. (2017). Will vs. reason: the populist and technocratic forms of political representation and their critique to party government. American Political Science Review, 111(1), 54-67.
Thomassen, J. & C. van Ham (2014) ‘Failing Political Representation or a Change in Kind? Models of Representation and Empirical Trends in Europe’, West European Politics, 37(2): 400-419.
Kriesi, H., Grande, E., Lachat, R., Dolezal, M., Bornschier, S., & Frey, T. (2006). Globalization and the transformation of the national political space: Six European countries compared. European journal of political research, 45(6), 921-956.
