The Reshaping of West European Party Politics
Moderated by Swen Hutter
Long gone are the times when class-based political parties with extensive membership dominated politics. Instead, party politics has become issue-based according to the interpretation by Green-Pedersen’s latest book “The Reshaping of West European Party Politics”. In the book, Green-Pedersen develops a new issue incentive model of party competition, relying on a top-down perspective which emphasizes issue ownership and coalition seeking behavior by mainstream parties. Empirically, he documents the ebb and flow of party competition on five key contested issues (immigration, European integration, the environment, education and health care) across seven Western European countries from the 1980s onward.
Christoffer Green-Pedersen is Professor of Political Science at Aarhus University. His research focusses on party competition, agenda setting, and public policy in a comparative perspective.
Swen Hutter is Lichtenberg-Professor in Political Sociology at Freie Universität Berlin and Vice Director of the Center for Civil Society Research at the Berlin Social Science Center WZB.
The event is part of the lecture series Civil Society and Political Conflict, organized by the Center for Civil Society Research.