PS 219 PARTIES AND DEMOCRACIES

Fall 2000

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE

Modern democracy is above all party democracy. Parties organize electoral choices and ensure that popular priorities get translated into government policy. It is no coincidence that the first step towards full democracy in Central and Eastern Europe was the formation of new political parties.

Parties are the great social invention of the modern age, on a part with electricity and computers on the technological side. Mass democracies cannot do without them. This makes it important to examine claims about their decline or ideas that they have abandoned their key ideologies (often made about Socialist parties).

The course is divided into five parts. The first examines ideas about parties and democracy at an analytical level (e.g., what does it mean to say that parties are, or are not, in decline?).

The second examines party families and party systems across democracies.

The third looks at party competition in elections and how this is affected by societal developments and the electoral system, i.e. the rules for translating party vote shares into legislative seats. On the other side, we examine how and why electors choose to vote for particular parties.

The fourth part of the course looks at parties in government - how governments are formed, ministries distributed and policies made.

In the fifth part we pull all these threads together, to see how democracy functions as a whole in the modern age.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course you should:

• Know a lot about parties and the democracies they operate in, but especially in Europe which has the greatest variety of functioning parties in the World.
• Have reviewed all the main explanations of why people vote for parties and how parties complete for votes.
• Have viewed all the main explanation s of how parties form and run governments.
• Be able to offer reasoned judgements on the workings of party democracy across the world.

Teaching

This course is focused on one 3 hour seminar a week. The seminar is a flexible format which allows, above all, for informed discussion and dialogue. The emphasis is on discussion, assuming that relevant information and background knowledge are already assimilated. To facilitate this all participants in the course prepare a 1-2 page paper on the subject to be discussed. Topics are listed, along with reading, under each seminar.

Assessment

The weekly papers are used to raise or lower the course grade primarily awarded on the basis of the term paper you write in the course. Paper topics are attached to this syllabus. Final grades will be the essay mark, with some input from the class papers.

Feel free to come and talk with me, after the seminar or during office hours, if you have any problems or difficulties with the course. Office hours will be notified and posted on the door of my office. Appointments can be made for other times by arrangement.

General Reading

Specific reading is listed below for each seminar. The general books you should read in full and buy are:

Alan Ware, Political Parties and Party Systems, (OUP, 1996)

Ian Budge and Hans Keman, Parties and Democracy, paperback edition (OUP, 1993)

In addition you should read through Ian Budge, Kenneth Newton, et a. The Politics of the New Europe. (London and New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1997). This gives much factual information on parties, social movements and interest groups in Western and Eastern Europe, which will be useful, as well as a lot of insight into the politics of individual countries.

Seminars and Topics

Week 1 Organization. Political Parties and Party Systems

Reading
Ware, Introduction and Chapter 1
Budge & Newton, et al. Chapter 9

Question What is a political party? What is a party system?

I. BIG QUESTIONS ABOUT DEMOCRATIC PARTIES

Week 2 Are Political Parties in Decline?

Paper: What do we mean by 'party decline'?

Ian Budge, The New Challenge of Direct Democracy, Chaps 4 & 5
Russell Dalton and Marty Wattenberg, eds. Parties Without Partisans, Chaps. 1,
2, and 12

Is the Left in Decline? Is it the 'End of Ideology'? What about the right?

J.C. Thomas, "The Decline of Ideology in Western Political Parties," in Peter Merkl, ed, West European Party Systems (1980)
Ian Budge, 'Parties, Programs and Policies,' American Review of Politics, Vol. 14 (1993) pp. 695-716

II PARTY FAMILIES AND PARTY SYSTEMS

Week 3 Party Families and Ideology

Paper: Propositional analysis of the ideology of a selected party family

Budge & Newton et al. Politics of the New Europe, chap. 9
Klaus von Beyme, Political Parties, ch 2.
Ware, Parties and Party Systems, ch. 1
Add additional party family references given in class

Part B Can political parties be democratic

R, Michels, Political Parties, part 6
Ian Budge, The New Challenge of Direct Democracy, section 5.4
Klaus von Beyme, Political Parties, ch. 3
Ware, Parties and Party Systems, ch. 3
M. Duverger, in Peter Mair, ed. West European Party System
T. Poguntke, Alternative Politics.

III PARTIES IN ELECTIONS

Week 4 Why Party Systems Differ: Elections Rules and Social Cleavages

Ware, Parties and Party Systems, ch. 6 and 7
S. Rokkan, Citizens, Elections and Parties, ch.
H. Daalder and P. Mair, eds. West European Party Systems, ch. 1
S. Bartolini and Mair, Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability.
G. Evans and S. Whitefield, Explaining Cleavages in post-communist democracies. In Klingemann, Mochmann and Newton, eds. Elections in Central and Eastern Europe.

Week 5 Party Competition: Spatial Models

Paper: Present a spatial model of party commpetition and voting and state the assumptions behind it

A. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, ch 7-9
B. Barry, Sociologists, Economists and Democracy, pp. 99-164
I. Budge, A new spatial model of party competition, British Journal of Political Science (1994).

Part II Broadening to non-spatial models

I. Budge and D. Farlie, in Daalder and Mair, eds. West European Party Systems
Ware, Parties and Party Systems, ch. 9 and 10.

IV PARTIES IN GOVERNMENT

Week 6 The Electoral Mandate

Paper: How closely do election results link up with the government that forms?

Budge and Keman, Parties and Democracy, ch. 1-3 and 6
Ware, Parties and Party Systems, ch. 11
Laver and Budge, eds. Party Policy and Government Coalitions, ch. 1, 14 plus country chapter of your choice.
Budge et al. Organzing Democratic Choice (ms), ch. 2, part 2 and appendix 8

Week 7 Implementing Party Programs in Government

Paper: Well, do parties do this?

E. Kalageropoulou, "Do paries do what they say they will?" European Journal of Political Research 14 (1989): 289-311.
Klingemann, Hofferbert, Budge et al. Parties, Politics and Democracy, ch. 1,2 14

Week 8 Implementing Policies through Ministries

Paper: How far can parties control the state apparatus?

Budge and Keman, chs. 4, 5 and concl.

Week 9 Ideologies and Programs: The Missing Link between Voting and Governing

Imbeau and McKinley, Comparing Government Activity, ch 6 and 3
Budge, Newton et al. chs. 11 and 12
Hans Keman, Problem Solving in Democracy, ch.

V PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Week 10 Organizing Democratic Choice

Budge, Hofferbert, Keman, McDonald and Pennings, Modelling Democratic Processes across 16 Countries.