To join this network, click here. Note: All Memberships in CES Research Networks are open for CES individual members in good standing.
This Research Network has a simple purpose, to improve our understanding of political parties, party systems and elections by engaging scholars in sustained conversations that cut across geographical and disciplinary boundaries. We will use a combination of electronic networking tools and more traditional conference meetings to bring scholars together and assist them in working together to gather and disseminate better data and collaborate on joint projects.
What will we work on? On the basis of a survey completed by nearly 100 of our founding members, the research network will focus on four main areas of party-related research:
- Understanding How Parties Work
- Understanding How Party Systems Change
- Understanding How Voters Choose
- Understanding the Contexts in which Parties and Party Systems Operate
How will we work together? Our goal with this proposal is to create a practical filter mechanism for scholars of parties and elections. Within the bounds of time and expertise, we seek to create a place where scholars turn first for what they need to know about scholarship on parties and elections and about the scholars who do the work. We seek to provide a consistent flow of information that scholars need without creating new demands on their attention to offer a convenient and useful mechanisms for users to generate content that will be of use to others.
- Linking scholars. We began our efforts to link scholars with the “Why We Study Parties” Facebook Group, which combines up-to-date news from in-country observers and participants with commentary and humor. We will also be making information from this group available to members who prefer not to use Facebook. We are building a detailed membership directory to allow members to find just the right combination of expertise that might help to answer particular questions.
- Linking scholarship. Developing personal networks is easiest when there are common projects around which to build, and we publicize joint projects, provide a space for communication among researchers engaged in the large-scale data gathering efforts, help find partners and advisors for grant proposals and scholars for expert surveys.
- Linking existing groups and their members. Although scholars of political parties have formed a variety of groups at the national and regional level, these remain largely disconnected. The Research Network will create links between the party- and election-related efforts of regional and domestic political science associations by posting their updates, newsletters, and calls for papers.
Co-Chairs:
- Daniela Piccio, University of Torino, danielaromee.piccio@unito.it
- Luis Ramiro, UNED (Spain), lramiro@poli.uned.es
- Sorina Soare, University of Florence, sorinacristina.soare@unifi.it
Network Announcements
2024 Peter Mair Award
After a short break in the awarding of the Peter Mair Prize in 2023, the CES RN Political Parties, Party Systems, and Elections is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2024 award is the paper What’s in a Name? Party Branding in Europe, presented by Endre Borbáth and Swen Hutter at the CES 2024 Conference in Lyon.
The paper analyzes changes in party brands (understood as the names or denominations of parties as expressions of empirical information about their contents) in 28 countries between 1948 and 2023. It tests the extent to which changes have occurred since the classical party brands existed at the end of World War II, systematizes the conditions under which these changes have taken place, and specifies the types of parties experiencing those changes. Finally, through two conjoint survey experiments carried out in four countries, interviewees evaluated these old and new party brands, specifically whether they like or dislike the changes occurring in the parties they support. The results are extremely interesting, detailing how party systems increasingly contain formations that do not include the term “party” in their names, and how, especially after the Great Recession, non-party brands have emerged, particularly among new parties, opposition parties, and those emerging on the right, all of which tend to adopt non-ideological denominations and/or names related to social movements. These changes have occurred despite the fact that, as shown by the surveys, voters tend to reject changes in party brands and reward parties that maintain continuity in their denominations.
The RN chairs are extremely grateful to the jury composed of: Jose Ramon Montero (Autonomous University of Madrid), Andrea Pirro (University of Bologna), and Bonnie Field (Bentley University). The jury had a very difficult task due to the high quality of the papers presented. A special thanks to all the authors and panel chairs who submitted papers for evaluation. Please note that the responsibility for the final ranking rests solely with the RN chairs.
2022 Peter Mair Award
The Jury made of Jose Ramon Montero (the Autonomous University of Madrid), Andrea Pirro (Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence), Guillermo Cordero (the Autonomous University of Madrid ), Daniela Piccio (University of Turin), and Sorina Soare (University of Florence) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2022 Peter Mair Award.
Max Kiefel has received the award for the paper “Leftism Defeated: Party Organisation and Social Democratic Erosion”.
The paper wonders about the reasons for the electoral and representative deterioration of Social Democratic parties over the last decade and builds on a wide body of research dealing with the decline of social democratic parties. The jury acknowledged that Kiefel’s contribution is well balanced in theoretical and empirical terms, advancing interesting perspectives and making use of novel primary data. The author convincingly employs logical Bayesianism to weigh and assess a wide repertoire of qualitative sources, including 25 interviews. Kielfel proposes an “organizational power theory” fundamentally based on the premise that party change is contingent on elite replacement. His findings reinforce the need to pay more attention to developments within parties to understand their success and responsiveness.
The jury acknowledges the intellectual contributions to party politics of women and scholars from minority groups. In order to tackle the under-representation of female and minority scholars in publications, the jury invites women and scholars from minority groups to join and play an active role in the Research Network community.
Our research network awarded the “Peter Mair Prize” to the best paper on Political Parties, Party Systems and Elections presented at the 28th Int’l Conference of Europeanists in Lisbon. The winner has been awarded a $500 prize.
The jury of the prize is composed of:
- José Ramón Montero (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
- Andrea Pirro (Scuola Normale Superiore)
- Guillermo Cordero (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
- Daniela Romee Piccio (University of Turin)
- Sorina Soare (University of Florence)
Considering the limited number of papers received for evaluation, the 2023 Peter Mair Award has been postponed to the next CES Conference in Lyon (July 3-5, 2024).
