The Crisis of Party Democracy: Origins, Consequences, Remedies - Professor Chris Bickerton
This course is a comparative politics course focusing on the crisis of political parties and the problems faced by representative government across advanced democracies. The course begins by studying party democracy as a distinctive political regime rooted in 20th century mass politics. It then considers the pressures and challenges faced by party democracy since the 1970s, culminating in the contemporary “populist explosion”. The course then ends looking at possible remedies to the crisis, including alternatives to political parties.