Mainstream Political Parties are in Hard Places

Become a Patron! Mainstream Political Parties are in Hard Place Throughout the series on democracy in hard places, institutional weakness became a recurring theme. Unfortunately, established democracies have seen their own institutions gradually weaken or decay in recent years. Nowhere is this more evident than the state of political parties. Voters punish mainstream political parties... Continue Reading →

Party System Institutionalization (PSI)

Become a Patron! Party System Institutionalization (PSI) This week's podcast throws around quite a bit of political science jargon. One of the terms we discuss is party system institutionalization (PSI). It's a bit confusing because it refers to the health of the party system rather than any individual political party. The United States is a... Continue Reading →

Party System Institutionalization and Democracy

Become a Patron! Party System Institutionalization and Democracy Political parties do not exist independently. They operate as a system or a network. Scott Mainwaring developed a term he calls party system institutionalization (PSI). A party system with high degrees of institutionalization encourages long-term party formation. On the other hand, weakly institutionalized party systems discourage the... Continue Reading →

Party Systems in 50 Different Democracies

Thomas Piketty is best known for the publication of Capital in the Twenty-First Century. It changed how the intellectual community thought about the problem of inequality. Despite the fact it may not have changed many opinions, it is one of the most influential books on economics in the past quarter century. It provided a language... Continue Reading →

Mexico: A Podcast Primer

Mexico: An Overview Tomorrow’s podcast features a conversation with Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley about the politics of criminal violence in Mexico. Their research transcends Mexican politics to provide insights about democratization and criminal governance. But it helps to have a basic overview of Mexico’s political system. This is not an outline designed for serious... Continue Reading →

James Loxton Explains Why Authoritarian Successor Parties Succeed in Democracies

James Loxton explains why authoritarian successor parties succeed in democracies through a conversation about conservative parties in Latin America. He is the author of the forthcoming Conservative Party-Building in Latin America: Authoritarian Inheritance and Counterrevolutionary Struggle. This is the 47th episode of the Democracy Paradox podcast.   They really view their history as one of victimization, one... Continue Reading →

Chris Bickerton Defines Technopopulism

Chris Bickerton defines the concept of technopopulism. He is the author, alongside Carlo Invernizzi Accetti, of Technopopulism: The New Logic of Democratic Politics.   That tension between the politics of the whole and the politics of the part, that tension between the politics of generality and the politics of particularity, is really at the heart of... Continue Reading →

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