Course Description:

This seminar will focus on the emergence, role, and influence of political parties in advanced capitalist democracies. Political parties are one of the central institutions of modern representative democracies. Parties recruit candidates for public office, formulate programs for governmental action, compete for votes, and if lucky, exercise executive power until ejected from office. For Americans who are used to thinking of party competition as a duopoly between Republicans and Democrats, one of the more interesting aspects of comparative party politics is the complexity of multiparty competition. Most of the course readings will focus on party politics in Europe, where multiparty systems are the rule, not the exception.

Requirements:

This is a seminar course, which means that students are expected to participate actively through class presentations and discussion. This course provides an opportunity to practice the essential skill of oral presentation of ideas. The course will require a substantial amount of reading, which must be completed prior to the class period so that you may participate actively and intelligently.

There is also a substantial writing component for this course. Students will write two short papers analyzing the readings assigned for two weeks of their choosing. One of these summaries will be presented in class. There will also be a research paper due at the end of the term. This research paper will be presented to the class at the end of the semester. The final exam will be a take home essay exam.

Relative weights of course requirements:

• Participation 10%
• Class Presentations 10%
• 2 Weekly Summaries 15% each
• Research Paper 25%
• Term Paper Presentation 10%
• Final Exam 25%

Readings:

Readings will be drawn from books and journal articles on reserve in the main library, or for sale at the BU bookstore. Students would be wise to make copies of the required reading over the course of the semester, as they will be expected to discuss some of these readings on their final exam. Because that exam will be an open book exam, students will probably want to refer to the original works rather than relying entirely on memory.

The following books are available at the BU bookstore.

Required:

Reserve reading schedule

Tentative Reading Schedule:

Week II. 2/1 - 2/3. What are political parties?
Required:

• Joseph Schumpeter Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy Harper & Row 1975;Chapter XXII
• Anthony Downs, Economic Theory of Democracy 1957; Chapters 2, 7
• Kay Lawson "Political Parties and Linkage" in Kay Lawson ed. Political Parties and Linkage: A Comparative Perspective.Yale University Press 1980.
• Angelo Panebianco Political Parties: Organization and Power Cambridge 1992; Part I Chapters 1, 2

Week III. 2/8 - 2/10. Where do parties come from?
Required:

• Maurice Duverger Political Parties 1963; Introduction
• Eliassen and Svaasand "The Formation of Mass Political Organizations: An Analytical Framework" Scandinavian Political Studies 10/75 Universitetsforlaget Oslo 1975.
• Peter Mair (ed.) The West European Party System Oxford University Press, 1990. Chapter 2
• Herbert Kitschelt The Logics of Party Formation Ecological Politics in Belgium and West Germany Cornell University Press 1989; Chapter 3

Recommended:

• Moisei Ostrogorski Democracy and The Organization of Political Parties: Volume II The United States; Part IV Chapter 1

Week IV. 2/15 - 2/17. How are parties organized?
Required:

• Peter Mair (ed.) The West European Party System Oxford University Press, 1990; Chapters 3, 5
• Robert Michels Political Parties 1915; Part One, Chapters I, II, III
• Herbert Kitschelt The Logics of Party Formation Ecological Politics in Belgium and West Germany Cornell University Press 1989; Chapter 2

• Maurice Duverger Political Parties 1963; Book I (Chapters 1, 3)

Week V. 2/22 - 2/24 Politics within parties.
Required:

• Robert Michels Political Parties 1915; Part Two Chapters IV, VII, Part Six, Chapter II

• Herbert Kitschelt The Logics of Party Formation Ecological Politics in Belgium and West Germany Cornell University Press 1989. Chapter 6
• Kaare Strom "A Behavioral Theory of Competitive Political Parties" American Journal of Political Science, 34: 565-98.
• Andrew Appleton "The Formal versus Informal Rules of French Political Parties" in Kay Lawson ed. How Political Parties Work: Perspectives from Within. Praeger 1994

Week VI. 2/28 - 3/2. Party Systems and Social Cleavages
Required:

• Peter Mair (ed.) The West European Party System Oxford University Press, 1990. Chapters 7, 8, 9, 11, 24, 20, 22

• Maurice Duverger Political Parties 1963; Book II (Chapters 1, 3)

Week VII. 3/7 - 3/9. Party Systems and Electoral Competition
Required:

• Anthony Downs. Economic Theory of Democracy 1957, Chapters 3, 4, 8
• Gary Cox. Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World's Electoral Systems. Cambridge 1997; Chapters 1, 2, 3
• Iversen, Torben. 1994. "The Logics of Electoral Politics: Spatial, Directional, and Mobilizational Effects." Comparative Political Studies, 27: 155-189.

• Albert Hirshman Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States; Chapter 6.
• Adam Przeworski and John Sprague Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism. University of Chicago Press,1986.

Week VIII. 3/14 - 3/16. Party System Change

• Peter Mair (ed.) The West European Party System Oxford University Press, 1990. Chapters 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

3/21 - 3/23. Spring Break

Week IX. 3/28 - 3/30. Coalition Theory
Required:

• Anthony Downs, Economic Theory of Democracy 1957; Chapter 9
• Laver, Michael and Norman Schofield. Multiparty Government: The Politics of Coalition in Europe. 1990
• Kaare Strom and Jorn Leipart 1993. "Policy, Institutions, and Coalition Avoidance: Norwegian Governments 1945-1990." American Political Science Review 87:870-887.

Week X. 4/4 - 4/6. Delivering the (Public) Goods
Required:

• Klingemann, Hans-Dieter, Ian Budge, and Richard Hofferbert. 1994. Parties, Policies, and Democracy. Boulder: Westview Press.

Week XI. 4/11 - 4/13. Delivering the (Private) Goods

Required:

• Plunkitt of Tammany Hall
• Robert Leonardi "Political Power Linkages in Italy: The Nature of the Christian Democratic Party organization" in Kay Lawson ed. Political Parties and Linkage: A Comparative Perspective.Yale University Press 1980.
• Harnett T. Kane Louisiana Hayride: The American Rehearsal for Dictatorship 1928-1940 William Morrow & co. 1941. Chapter VIII

Week XII. 4/18. Parties in Quasi or Non Democratic systems

• Ronald Hill "Party Linkage in a Communist One-Party State: The Case of the CPSU" in Kay Lawson ed. Political Parties and Linkage: A Comparative Perspective.Yale University Press 1980.
• John Corbett "Linkage as Manipulation: The Partido Revolucionario Institucional in Mexico" in Kay Lawson ed. Political Parties and Linkage: A Comparative Perspective.Yale University Press 1980.

4/20 Easter/ Passover Break

Week XIII. 4/25 - 4/27. Party Finance
Readings:
Pollock, James, Money and Politics Abroad New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1932. Chapters 1, and 20
Rosa Mul© Financial Uncertainties of Party Formation and Consolidation in Britain, Germany, and Italy: the early years in theoretical perspective. in Burnell and Ware eds. Funding Democratization. Manchester University Press: 1998.
Karl Heinz Nassmacher Structure and Impact of Public Subsidies to Political Parties in Europe: The Examples of Austria, Italy, Sweden, and West Germany. in Herbert Alexander ed. Comparative Political Finance in the 1980's. Cambridge University Press 1989.

Week XIV. 5/2 - 5/4. and XV. 5/8 - 5/11. Presentations. Class canceled May 2