PO7003 Field Seminar A in Political Science – 2008-09
Note: The latest version of the course handout is available from http://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/postgraduate/phdtaught.php. That version lacks the hyperlinks to the readings below, however.
The meeting time and place is Friday 10-13:00, College Green 4, starting 3 October 2008. In practice the actual length of the Seminar will depend on the instructor, and typically will run from 10-12:00 only. While I am the coordinator for the course, the weekly seminars are led by a rotating set of staff from Political Science
Week 1 – 3 Oct 2008 – Ken Benoit - Policy Positions and Policy Spaces
Kenneth Benoit and Michael Laver. 2006. Party Policy in Modern Democracies. London: Routledge, 2006. Wiesehomeier, Nina and Kenneth Benoit.“Presidents, Parties And Policy Competition.“University of Konstanz and Trinity College Dublin manuscript. Version: July 7, 2008.
Week 2 – 10 Oct – Ken Benoit - Electoral System Origins
Kenneth Benoit. 2007. “ Electoral Laws as Political Consequences: Explaining the Origins and Change of Electoral Institutions."Annual Review of Political Science 10: 363-90.
Boix, C. 1999. “ Setting the rules of the game: The choice of electoral systems in advanced democracies."American Political Science Review 93 (3): 609-624.
Andrews, Josephine and Robert Jackman. 2005. “ Strategic Fools: Electoral rule choice under extreme uncertainty."Electoral Studies 24: 65-84.
Colomer, Josep M. (2004). “ The Strategy and History of Electoral System Choice.” In Josep M. Colomer (Ed.), Handbook of Electoral System Choice, pp. 3"78. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (photocopied)
Birch, Sarah, Frances Millard, Marina Popescu, and Kieran Williams (2002). Embodying Democracy: Electoral System Design in Post-Communist Europe. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ch 1. (photocopied)
- Benoit, Kenneth and Jacqueline Hayden. “ Institutional Change and Persistence: The Evolution of Poland’s Electoral System 1989-2001."_Journal of Politics _66 (May, 2): 396-427.
Week 3 – 17 Oct – Ken Benoit - Electoral System Consequences
Gallagher, Michael and Paul Mitchell. 2005. “ Introduction to Electoral Systems.“In Michael Gallagher and Paul Mitchell, eds., The Politics of Electoral Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp3-24.
Cox, Gary W. 1997. Making votes count: strategic coordination in the world’s electoral systems, Political economy of institutions and decisions. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Duverger, Maurice. 1959. Political parties: Their organization and activity in the modern state. Second English Revised ed. London: Methuen & Co. Book II, Chapter 1, “The Number of Parties.“Also see this related reading.
Duverger, Maurice. 1986. Duverger’s Law: Forty Years Later. In Electoral Laws and Their Political Consequences, edited by B. Grofman and A. Lijphart. New York: Agathon Press.
Gallagher, Michael. 1991. “ Proportionality, disproportionality, and electoral systems.” Electoral Studies 10 (1): 33-51.
Ordeshook, Peter, and Olga Shvetsova. 1994. “ Ethnic heterogeneity, district magnitude, and the number of parties.” American Journal of Political Science 38 (1): 100-123.
