Undergraduate Module Descriptor

POL2104: Party Politics and Democracy

This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.

Module Aims

The aims of this module are to provide you with a detailed examination of the place of parties in representative democracies. A key emphasis of the module will be to enrich your understanding of the role of political parties both in the historical development of representative democracy and in its contemporary crises, using a range of theoretical approaches and empirical studies. Through taking this course and fully participating  you will leave with a grasp of key debates in party studies and theories of partisanship and knowledge of historical and contemporary trends in the relationship between democracy and party politics.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

This module's assessment will evaluate your achievement of the ILOs listed here – you will see reference to these ILO numbers in the details of the assessment for this module.
On successfully completing the programme you will be able to:
Module-Specific Skills1. Demonstrate good knowledge of the role of partisan agency in the historical development of representative democracy and in its contemporary crises.
2. Assess the democratic merits of party strategies in Europe and the US from a range of theoretical perspective.
Discipline-Specific Skills3. Demonstrate an understanding of contemporary debates in the field of party studies.
4. Display knowledge of diverse approaches to the democratic functions of political parties and a capacity to apply these theoretical tools to empirical case studies.
Personal and Key Skills5. Conduct independent research and exercise critical reasoning in weighing academic arguments
6. Demonstrate analytical capacity and structure in written and oral expression

Indicative Reading List

This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.

Basic reading:

Hofstadter, Richard (1969), The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780-1840, Berkeley: University of California Press

Katz, Richard S., and William J. Crotty, eds. 2006. Handbook of party politics. London: SAGE.

Mair, Peter. 2013. Ruling the Void, The Hollowing of Western Democracy. London: Verso.

Mudde, Cas. 2007. Populist radical right parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Muirhead, Russell (2014) The Promise of Party in a Polarized Age, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Rokkan, Stein, and Seymour Martin Lipset (1967) Party systems and voter alignments: cross-national perspectives, New York: Free Press.

Rosenblum, Nancy (2008), On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship, Princeton: PUP

Sartori, Giovanni (1976), Parties and Party Systems, Cambridge: CUP

Schattschneider, Elmer Eric. 2009 [1942]. Party government, American government in action series. New Brunswick: Transaction publishers.

White, Jonathan, and Léa Ypi (2016) The meaning of partisanship, Oxford: Oxford University Press.