Political Parties in a Comparative Perspective (Winter term 2025/26)
Content
This seminar deals with a critical actor in representative democracies: political parties. The course is structured along four segments. The first block seeks to introduce students to the topic. Methodologically, we will learn how to approach and critically assessing the course literature. Substantively, we will discuss the importance to understand of party democracy. The second block is dedicated to the origins of political parties. We will explore how institutions and societal developments contribute to their emergence. In a third block, we will learn about their functions in democracies. We will start with their recruiting functions and assess the implications of candidate selection methods for democratic representation? Thereafter, the following three sessions deal with parties as electoral organizations. How do parties appeal to their voters? On which agenda do they decide and which groups do they target? How do they respond to their competitors? The final block is reserved for the presentation of students' projects.
You can download the most recent version of the syllabus here.The seminar takes place weekly, on Wednesday (16:15-17:45) in seminar room SCH 100.124.
Material
Week 1: Introduction
In this session, we will get to know each other and discuss some logistics about the seminar. Moreover, a brief introduction into the topic is given.Slides
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Week 2: Concepts
[//]: # In this session, we will discuss the method of comparison in political science and introduce some key concepts in the study of party competition.[//]: # Slides
[//]: # Mindmap on good research
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Week 3: Political Cleavages
[//]: # Have the conflict lines in Western societies changed over times? We will discuss the idea of political cleavages and their recent transformations.[//]: # Slides
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Week 4: Polarization
[//]: # Do Western societies become more polarized? How do actors like the far-right contribute to polarization? We will first deal with these questions before discussing data sources on voters we can use to analyse voters.[//]: # Slides
[//]: # R Code
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Week 5: Changing Contexts
[//]: # How did globalization affect citizens' grievances? Do those losing from labor market transformations vote for anti-system parties? We will approach these questions from two empirical readings on technological change and labor market risk.[//]: # Slides
[//]: # Mindmap on the readings
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Week 6: Roundtable
[//]: # Do citizens behave rationally when casting their vote? In this week, we will discuss your essays.[//]: # Slides
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Week 7: Issue Competition
[//]: # In this week, we will switch the perspective and focus on the strategic behavior of political parties. In the first session of this bloc, we will focus on issue competition of parties. Moreover, we will access data from the Manifesto Project (please register and download the .csv-file in preparation of the session).[//]: # Slides
[//]: # R Code
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Week 8: Social Groups
[//]: # Do parties appeal to social groups directly? We will engage with two strategies parties can employ: (1) group references and (2) strategic appointments of group representatives, and evaluate whether these affects parties' electoral fortunes.[//]: # Slides
[//]: # R Code (for survey)
[//]: # Data (survey)
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Week 9: Challenger Parties
[//]: # In this week, we zoom in on the interactions between challenger and mainstream parties. We critically evalute different conceptualizations of challengers and learn how they innovate the party system agenda.[//]: # Slides
[//]: # Mindmap (Challengers)
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Week 10: Roundtable 2
[//]: # In our second roundtable session, we discuss whether mainstream parties should accommodate their challengers.[//]: # Slides
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Week 11: Electoral Systems
[//]: # We are shifting to the final part of the seminar where we focus on political institutions. In this session, we will discuss the effect of electoral system change on voting behavior. Moreover, we will do a short input session on institutional data.[//]: # Slides
[//]: # Code
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Week 12: Legislatures
[//]: # In our final substantive session, we will talk about parliamentary rules and how they shape debates and party behavior.[//]: # Slides
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Week 13: Wrap-Up
[//]: # This last session deals with student projects for their term papers and reflects about the learning outcomes of the seminar.[//]: # Slides
[//]: # Feedback on Learning Outcomes
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