Introduction to Political Sociology. Understanding social and political conflicts

Dozent/in	Dr. Andrea De Angelis
Veranstaltungsart	Hauptseminar
Code	HS181485
Semester	Herbstsemester 2018
Durchführender Fachbereich	Politikwissenschaft
Studienstufe	Bachelor Master
Termin/e	wöchentlich (Mo), ab 17.09.2018, 12:15 - 14:00 Uhr, 3.B01
Umfang	2 Semesterwochenstunden
Turnus	wöchentlich
Inhalt	Politics is ultimately about building compromise in conditions of social conflict. This seminar will analyse the fundamental socio-economic conflicts affecting the development of political systems. The seminar encourages the students to reflect on the most salient factors of political change in order to foster their understanding of contemporary social and political divisions. A key concept in our discussion will be represented by social cleavages. The students will familiarize with the classic account of cleavage politics (Lipset and Rokkan 1967), learn about the four fundamental social cleavages in industrial societies, before moving on to the more recent research on political change in post-industrial societies. The last part of the seminar will dive into a crucial contemporary discussion, involving the relationship between the erosion of the representative function of European party systems and the recent populist uprising. Populist parties are underming the traditional role of political parties and shaking European politics. What is the social cleavage on which the populist antiestablishment front applies leverage? Are we assisting to the development of the old left-right class cleavage, or —as some scholars suggest— to the surge of a new ‘territorial’ form of conflict dividing the supporters of further international integration and the defenders of the Nation States?
Voraussetzungen	Research-Masterseminar; offen für fortgeschrittene BA-Studierende
Sprache	Englisch
Abschlussform / Credits	Aktive Teilnahme (Essay, benotet) / 4 Credits
Hinweise	Politische Kommunikation/Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft/Internationale Beziehungen
Hörer-/innen	Nach Vereinbarung
Kontakt	andrea.deangelis@unilu.ch
Material	wird auf OLAT zur Verfügung gestellt
Literatur	· Bartolini, Stefano. 2000. The class cleavage. The political mobilization of the European left, 1860-1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. · Beramendi, Pablo, Silja Häusermann, Herbert Kitschelt, and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2015. The Politics of Advanced Capitalism. Cambridge University Press. · Bornschier, Simon. 2015. “The New Cultural Conflict, Polarization, and Representation in the Swiss Party System, 1975–2011.” Swiss Political Science Review 21(4): 680–701. · Caramani, Daniele. 2012. “The Europeanization of electoral politics: An analysis of converging voting distributions in 30 European party systems, 1970–2008.” Party Politics 18(6): 803–823. · Deegan-Krause, Kevin. 2007. “New Dimensions of Political Cleavage.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior, Oxford: Oxford University Press. · Franklin, Mark N. 2010. “Cleavage Research: A Critical Appraisal.” West European Politics 33(3): 648–658. · Goldberg, Andreas C., and Pascal Sciarini. 2014. “Electoral Competition and the New Class Cleavage.” Swiss Political Science Review 20(4): 573–589. · Inglehart, Ronald. 1997. Modernization and postmodernization: cultural, economic, and political change in 43 societies. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. · Kitschelt, Herbert. 2011. “Party Systems.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Science, ed. Robert E. Goodin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. · Knutsen, Oddbjørn, and Elinor Scarbrough. 1998. “Cleavage Politics.” In The Impact of Values, eds. Jan W. Van Deth and Elinor Scarbrough. Oxford University Press, p. 492–521. · Kriesi, Hanspeter. 2014. “The Populist Challenge.” West European Politics 37(2): 361–378. · Kriesi, Hanspeter. 1998. “The transformation of cleavage politics The 1997 Stein Rokkan lecture.” European Journal of Political Research 33(2): 165–185. · Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1967. Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: An Introduction. Free Press. · Mair, Peter. 2008. “The Challenge to Party Government.” West European Politics 31(1–2): 211–234. · Mair, Peter. 1989. “The Problem of Party System Change.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 1(3): 251–276.