Multilevel Political Competition: Parties, Citizens and Elections
2014-15
Department of Political Science
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Lorenzo De Sio
LUISS Guido Carli – Rome
e-mail: ldesio@luiss.it
Diego Garzia
European University Institute – Fiesole
diego.garzia@eui.eu
Alexander H. Trechsel
European University Institute – Fiesole
alexander.trechsel@eui.eu
Course description
Elections are one of the core processes of democracy. In virtually all democracies they are
disputed by political parties, which compete for political support among citizens. Despite the strong
agreement on such basic concepts, many different strands of research have developed on the electoral
connection between citizens and parties, highlighting how different institutional and cultural factors lead
to strong differences in the structure of both parties and party systems (i.e. the configuration of
relationships among parties, and their competition model), and in how citizens behave differently, and
with different motivations. The course aims at presenting a broad overview of different (often rival)
theories on such citizens-parties relationships, in order to offer students a toolkit to understand the
evolution and changes of contemporary democracies. A special attention is dedicated to the challenges
posed to such electoral connection by contemporary multilevel governance arrangements, including
regional elections, European Parliament elections, and the interplay of these with the national electoral
cycle.
Course development
The course starts by introducing two idealtypical models of party origin (and structure) and voter
behaviour: the Rokkanian macro-sociological framework based on the idea of cleavage politics (a
mostly static view of party competition, with strong mass parties, and voters embedded in long-term
social identities, leading to stable vote choices) compared to the Downsian rational-choice framework,
theorizing mobile, utility-maximizing voters and dynamic, vote-seeking parties led by pragmatic
political entrepreneurs. Such rival frameworks can be considered opposite extremes on a continuum,
which proves useful to classify other frameworks that have emerged mostly from empirical research,
such as party identification theory, or empirical contributions on Western Europe, highlighting the
importance of the left-right dimension. Attention will also be devoted to the valence issues framework,
as well as to recent developments in models of issue politics.
The second part of the course will look inside the voter’s mind, by exploring political psychology
approaches in order to take into account the context in which political choices take place. The focus will
be two-fold. On the one hand, we will analyze the transformation in the supply side of electoral politics.
On the other hand, new strands of literature dealing with short-term determinants of voting choice (i.e.,
political leaders, economic evaluations) will be explored. Finally, we will present recent technological
developments impacting the electoral process, such as voting advice applications, internet voting and edemocracy.
In the final session, we will unfold the multi-level component of contemporary electoral politics,
by referring to the two-fold impact of multilevel governance: on the one hand, the challenge posed by
increasing regional autonomies; on the other hand, the changes introduced by the increasing relevance of
European parliament elections.
Sessions
The first class session will feature a common reading for all students. During this initial session,
each student will be assigned a specific reading to present in one of the subsequent class sessions,
followed by a discussion. Readings will be made available in advance in electronic form.
Course requirements
Active participation by students is expected and reading requirements are to be fulfilled before
hand (the reading list is kept short but all requirements have to be met). A 4000 word research paper, on
a topic selected in accordance with the instructors, is due shortly after the end of the course. Evaluation
is based on class participation – including oral presentation of relevant literature – and the term paper.
Readings
The basic reference text that you are expected to have available is Russell Dalton's Citizen Politics.
1. Introduction
Russell Dalton and Martin P. Wattenberg, The Not So Simple Act of Voting, in Ada W. Finifter (Ed.),
Political Science. The State of The Discipline II, Washington, The American Political Science
Association, 1993, 193-218
Mark N. Franklin, Electoral Participation, in Lawrence LeDuc, Richard Niemi, Pippa Norris (Eds.),
Comparing Democracies. Elections and Voting in Global Perspective, Sage Publications, 1996, 216235.
2. The sociological framework
Lipset, S.M. and Rokkan, S. (1967), Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: An
Introduction, in S.M. Lipset and S. Rokkan (eds.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National
Perspectives, New York, The Free Press, pp. 1-64. download
Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, Hazel Gaudet, The People’s Choice. How the voter makes up his
mind in a presidential campaign, New York, Columbia University Press, 1968 3d (orig. ed. 1944),
Preface to the third edition (pp.V-XVII) Ch. 3 (Social differences between Republican and Democrats,
pp.16-39), Ch. 15 (The political homogeneity of social groups, pp137-149)
[TBD: One additional article]
3. Downsian spatial model and its critics
Downs, A. (1957), An Economic Theory of Democracy, New York, Harper, ch. 8. download
Pizzorno, A. (1990), On Rationality and Democratic Choice, in Birnbaum, P. and Leca, J. (trans. by
John Gaffney), Individualism. Theories and Methods, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 295-331.
Grofman, B. (2004), Downs and Two-Party Convergence, in “Annual Review of Political Science”, vol.
7, pp. 25-46. download
4. Political identities
Bartle, John, and Paolo Bellucci. 2009. “Partisanship, social identity and individual attitudes”. In John
Bartle and Paolo Bellucci (eds.), Political parties and partisanship. Social identity and individual
attitudes. London and New York: Routledge.
Campbell, A., Converse, P.E., Miller, W.E. and Stokes, D. (1960), The American Voter, New York,
Wiley, ch. 6. download
Fuchs, D. and Klingemann, H.-D., The Left-Right Schema, in M.K Jennings. and J.W. van Deth (eds.),
Continuities in Political Action, Berlin/New York, De Gruyter, pp. 203-234. download
[TBD: OR Inglehart, Ronald, and Hans-Dieter Klingemann. "Party identification, ideological
preference and the left-right dimension among Western mass publics." Party identification and beyond:
Representations of voting and party competition(1976): 243-273. ]
5. Valence politics and issue politics
Stokes, Donald E. "Spatial models of party competition." The American Political Science Review
(1963): 368-377.
Budge, Ian, and Dennis J. Farlie. Explaining and predicting elections: Issue effects and party strategies
in twenty-three democracies. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983.
De Sio, Lorenzo and Weber, Till. "Issue Yield: A model of party competition in multidimensional
space." American Political Science Review, Nov. 2014
6. The transformation of political parties and voters
Kirchheimer, O. (1966). The transformation of the Western European party system. In J. LaPalombara
& M. Weiner (Eds.), Political parties and political development (pp. 177–200). Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Katz, R.S. and Mair, P. (1995), Changing Models of Party Organizations and Party Democracy: The
Emergence of the Cartel Party, in “Party Politics”, vol. 1, pp. 5-28. download
Russel Dalton, 2000. The Decline of Party Identifications, in R. J. Dalton, M. P. Wattenberg (Eds.),
Parties without Partisans, Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
Russel J Dalton, Ian McAllister, Martin P. Wattenberg, 2000. The Consequencies of Partisan
Dealignment, in R. J. Dalton, M. P. Wattenberg (Eds.), Parties without Partisans, Political Change in
Advanced Industrial Democracies. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
7. New drivers of voting behaviour: Political leaders
King, Anthony. 2002. “Do Leaders’ Personalities Really Matters?”. In Anthony King, (ed.), Leaders’
Personalities and the Outcomes of Democratic Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Garzia, Diego. 2014. Personalization of Politics and Electoral Change. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan. Chapters 1 and 2
Rico, Guillerme. 2011. El impacto de los líderes en las elecciones de 2008 – y más allá. . In José Ramón
Montero and Ignacio Lago (eds.), Elecciones generales 2008. Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones
Sociológicas.
8. Short-term drivers of voting behaviour
Samuel Popkin, The Reasoning Voter. Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaign,
Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 19942nd (Ch. 1, The reasoning voter, 7-21)
Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Economics and Election. The Major Western Democracies, Ann Arbor, The
University of Michigan Press, 1988 (Ch. 3, Economic Voting: Theory and Measurement in the European
Surveys, 33-51; Ch. 4. The European Voter: Economics, Cleavages, Ideology, 55-67).
Marta Fraile and Michael S. Lewis-Beck. 2012. “Economics and Elections in Spain (1982-2008): CrossMeasures, Cross-Time”. Electoral Studies 31(3): 485-490
9. Direct democracy, e-voting, VAAs
Alvarez, R. Michael, Thad E. Hall, and Alexander H. Trechsel. "Internet voting in comparative
perspective: the case of Estonia." PS: Political Science & Politics 42.03 (2009): 497-505.
Garzia, Diego, Kristjan Vassil, Alexander H. Trechsel, and Elias Dinas (2014). “Indirect campaigning –
Past, Present and Future of Voting Advice Applications“, in Bernie Grofman, Alexander H. Trechsel
and Mark Franklin (eds.), The Internet and Democracy in a Global Perspective: Voters, Candidates and
Social Movements. New York: Springer.
[TBD: One additional article]
10. Multilevel political competition: From European elections to regional politics
Reif, Karlheinz, and Hermann Schmitt. "Nine Second‐order National Elections–a Conceptual
Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results." European journal of political research 8.1
(1980): 3-44.
Trechsel, A., De Sio, L. and Garzia, D. "2014 as the first (truly) European elections?", unpublished
manuscript.
Bellucci, Paolo, Diego Garzia, and Martiño Rubal. "¿ Importa Europa en las elecciones europeas? Un
modelo explicativo de las elecciones del 2009 al Parlamento Europeo." Revista Española de
Investigaciones Sociológicas 137.1 (2012): 25-41.
[TBD: One additional article]