Module overview
Political parties are key actors in articulating popular demands and representing them in the policymaking process, mobilizing the masses and recruiting and socialising political elites. This course examines how parties perform these functions in Western European states. The first part of the module will focus on the main theoretical approaches to understand political parties. The second part of the module will analyze in detail recent changes in party organizations, party ideology as well as the role of parties beyond the confines of the nation state at the EU level.
Linked modules
Pre-requisite: PAIR1001 OR PAIR1002 OR PAIR1004 OR PAIR1005
Aims and Objectives
Learning Outcomes
Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills
Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:
- Show understanding of the theories explaining the key aspects of party politics, such as internal party organization and party competition
- Understand the changing role of political parties in contemporary democracies
Knowledge and Understanding
Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:
- Summarise the main empirical facts about parties and party systems in Europe
- Demonstrate understanding of core concepts relevant to party politics in established democracies in Western Europe
Transferable and Generic Skills
Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:
- Understand how various phenomena in party politics can be studied empirically in a systematic way
Syllabus
This course considers some of the seminal contributions to modern scholarship in the field of party politics. This course takes an explicitly comparative approach and doesn't focus on certain parties/countries. Topics to be covered include:
1. Introduction: Why parties?
2. The ‘Golden Age’ of Political Parties
3. Party Models
4. Party Government
5. Parties and Party Systems
6. Party Families
7. Party Organization
8. Parties beyond the state
9. Parties and the crisis of responsiveness
10. Parties today: death or decline?
Learning and Teaching
Teaching and learning methods
2 hours of lectures per week. All will be recorded and posted on Blackboard. Lectures will be delivered either face to face or online only depending upon University and Public Health England Guidance at the time. Total of 24 hours of lectures (2 hours per week X 12 weeks) per module.
Weekly student participation in online discussion boards. 1 hour per week delivered asynchronously. (1 hour X 12 weeks)
| Type | Hours |
|---|---|
| Teaching | 24 |
| Independent Study | 126 |
| Total study time | 150 |
Resources & Reading list
General Resources
Databases. Databases: Comparative Political Data Set, 1960-2017. http://www.cpds-data.org/index.php/data European Representative Democracy (ERD). http://www.erdda.se/index.php/projects/erd/data-archive. Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES). http://chesdata.eu Manifesto Project Database (MARPOR) https://manifestoproject.wzb.eu/ Political Party Database (PPDB).https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/0NM7KZ&version=1.0
Journal Articles. Articles from journals such as Party Politics, Electoral Studies, European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, World Politics, American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science.
Textbooks
Dalton, Russell J. and Wattenberg, Martin P. (2002). Parties Without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dalton, Russell J., Farrell, David M. and McAllister, I. (2011). Political Parties and Democratic Linkage: How Parties Organize Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Assessment
Summative
This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.
| Method | Percentage contribution |
|---|---|
| Literature review | 30% |
| Class participation | 5% |
| Research project | 50% |
| Research proposal | 5% |
| Online test | 10% |
Referral
This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.
| Method | Percentage contribution |
|---|---|
| Essay | 100% |
Repeat
An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.
| Method | Percentage contribution |
|---|---|
| Essay | 100% |
Repeat Information
Repeat type: Internal & External