In this episode, I talk to Gary Marks who is Professor of Political Science at UNC-Chapel Hill. We discuss the work of Seymour Martin Lipset and focus on three main themes in Lipset’s body of work.
We first discuss Lipset’s 1960 book Political Man, which includes a number of essays that have become classics of political sociology and political science more generally. Central themes of the book are the social requisites for democracy and the group bases of politics. Our second focus is on Lipset and Rokkan’s cleavage theory and the formation and transformation of party systems. In line with the main ideas of Political Man, we discuss cleavage theory as a sociological and group based approach to political competition and contrast it with the Downsian perspective. The third part of the conversation covers Gary’s joined work with Lipset that addresses the question of why there has never been a successful socialist party in the United States.
The conversation goes beyond the work of Lipset alone and focuses on several main themes of political sociology as well as many political transformations of the last 100 years.
If you want to know more about Gary and his work, you can visit his website. http://garymarks.web.unc.edu/
I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Political science reading recommendation:
Achen, Christopher/Bartels, Larry, 2016, Democracy for Realists, Princeton University Press
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In this episode, I talk to Gary Marks who is Professor of Political Science at UNC-Chapel Hill. We discuss the work of Seymour Martin Lipset and focus on three main themes in Lipset’s body of work.
We first discuss Lipset’s 1960 book Political Man, which includes a number of essays that have become classics of political sociology and political science more generally. Central themes of the book are the social requisites for democracy and the group bases of politics. Our second focus is on Lipset and Rokkan’s cleavage theory and the formation and transformation of party systems. In line with the main ideas of Political Man, we discuss cleavage theory as a sociological and group based approach to political competition and contrast it with the Downsian perspective. The third part of the conversation covers Gary’s joined work with Lipset that addresses the question of why there has never been a successful socialist party in the United States.
The conversation goes beyond the work of Lipset alone and focuses on several main themes of political sociology as well as many political transformations of the last 100 years.
If you want to know more about Gary and his work, you can visit his website. http://garymarks.web.unc.edu/
I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Political science reading recommendation:
Achen, Christopher/Bartels, Larry, 2016, Democracy for Realists, Princeton University Press
Episode 11 - Tarik Abou-Chadi. Social democratic party strategies and the progressive coalition
Transformation of European Politics Podcast
1 hour 29 seconds
5 years ago
Episode 11 - Tarik Abou-Chadi. Social democratic party strategies and the progressive coalition
In this episode we are changing the roles and Silja Häuserman, professor of political science at the University of Zurich takes over as the host. I discuss my article “The Electoral Appeal of Party Strategies in Postindustrial Societies: When Can the Mainstream Left Succeed?” which is co-authored with Markus Wagner and came out in the Journal of Politics in 2019.
The article discusses different policy strategies of social democratic parties and their potential electoral appeal. The main hypothesis is that mainstream left parties need to appeal to educated middle class voters in order to be electorally successful. A combination of investment-oriented economic and liberal-progressive positions are necessary to appeal to this group.
In addition to the article, we discuss different narratives for the electoral decline of social democratic parties. Neither the economic narrative that focuses on too centrist economic positions of the Third Way, nor the cultural narrative that blames too progressive positions on the second dimension find much empirical support.
If you are interested in knowing more about my work (beyond this podcast) you can follow me on Twitter under at tabouchadi or visit my website www.tarikabouchadi.net
I hope you enjoy the conversation
Transformation of European Politics Podcast
In this episode, I talk to Gary Marks who is Professor of Political Science at UNC-Chapel Hill. We discuss the work of Seymour Martin Lipset and focus on three main themes in Lipset’s body of work.
We first discuss Lipset’s 1960 book Political Man, which includes a number of essays that have become classics of political sociology and political science more generally. Central themes of the book are the social requisites for democracy and the group bases of politics. Our second focus is on Lipset and Rokkan’s cleavage theory and the formation and transformation of party systems. In line with the main ideas of Political Man, we discuss cleavage theory as a sociological and group based approach to political competition and contrast it with the Downsian perspective. The third part of the conversation covers Gary’s joined work with Lipset that addresses the question of why there has never been a successful socialist party in the United States.
The conversation goes beyond the work of Lipset alone and focuses on several main themes of political sociology as well as many political transformations of the last 100 years.
If you want to know more about Gary and his work, you can visit his website. http://garymarks.web.unc.edu/
I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Political science reading recommendation:
Achen, Christopher/Bartels, Larry, 2016, Democracy for Realists, Princeton University Press
