Università Roma Tre

This course examines the political systems of various European nation-states. Focus is placed on the main political cleavages in each, such as class, ideology, ethnicity, and religion, and how these divisions have influenced the political playing field. Additional topics include nationalism, citizenship, party structures, corporatism, the welfare state, and electoral politics. A special focus will be recent symptomatic challenges to European democracy. As we compare the features of these different democratic systems in detail and relate them to their historical and cultural context, we will focus on three major challenges common to all of these democracies: the decreasing level of participation, especially regarding voter turnout; the decline of large political parties, which raises the question of who, in future, is going to mediate between the citizens’ interests and those of the state; and the perception that the major decisions in democratic countries are increasingly made outside the purview of democratic institutions.

This course is taught in English.

Readings

Aguilar, Paloma. Memory and Amnesia: The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy. New York: Berghahn, 2002.
Sonia Alonso, Sonia and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. “Spain: No Country for the Populist Radical Right?” South European Society and Politics. Vol. 20, Iss. 1, 2015.
Derenne, Benoît et al. “G1000 Manifesto”. Eurozine 02-11-2011.
http://www.eurozine.com/pdf/2011-11-02-G1000-en.pdf
Dryzek, John S. Deliberative Democracy and beyond: Liberals, critics and contestations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Dryzek, John S. Foundations and Frontiers of Deliberative Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Elster, Jon, ed. Deliberative Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Eley, Geoff. Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Encarnación, Omar G. Spanish Politics: Democracy after Dictatorship. New York: Poltiy, 2008.
Fishman, Robert M. Democracy’s Voices: Social Ties and the Quality of Public Life in Spain. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.
Fukuyama, Francis. Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2014.
Grönlund, Kimmo, Bächtiger, André, and Maija Setäla, eds. Deliberative Mini-Publics: Involving Citizens in the Democratic Process. Colchester: ECPR Press, 2014.
Gunther, Richard, Montero, José Ramón, and Joan Botella. Democracy in Modern Spain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
Hancock, Donald M. Politics in Europe. 6t h ed. Thousand Oaks: CQ Press, 2015.
Heywood, Andrew. Politics. 4th ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Iglesias, Pablo. Politics in a Time of Crisis: Podemos and the Future of Democracy in Europe. London: Verso, 2015.
Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe after 1945. New York: Penguin, 2005. Magone, José M. Contemporary European Politics: A Comparative Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 2011.
Magone, José M. Contemporary Spanish Politics. London: Routledge, 2009.
Martí, José Luis, and Philip Pettit. A Political Philosophy in Public Life: Civic Republicanism in Zapatero's Spain. New York: Princeton University Press, 2012.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. New ed. New York: International Publishers Co., 2014 [1848].
Müller, Jan-Werner, What is Populism? Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
Pierson, Christopher, Castels, Francis G., and Ingela K. Naumann, The Welfare State Reader. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013.
Rosenberg, Shawn W., ed. Deliberation, Participation, and Democracy: Can the people govern? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Smith, Rand W. Enemy Brother: Socialists and Communists in France, Italy and Spain. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012.
Van Reybrouck. Against Elections: The Case for Democracy. London: Random House UK, 2016.
Vincent, Mary. Spain, 1833–2002: People and State. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Online resources

Journal of Democracy http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/
South European Society and Politics http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fses20
Open Democracy https://www.opendemocracy.net/
The Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University: http://cdd.stanford.edu/
Eurozine (a netmagazine that publishes outstanding articles from more than 80 associated journals
partnered in the network by the same name): http://www.eurozine.com/
G1000 Platform for democratic innovation: http://www.g1000.org/en/