Suchergebnisse

First published online: 12 September 2020 ; The aim of this article is to place the recent debate on the concept of disintermediation—intended as the process of change in political representation towards more direct forms of political mediation—within the broader literature on party change, to assess its actual usefulness in the field. We maintain that the potential of this concept applied to party organization is mainly heuristic, as it describes a number of intertwined changes observable in parties' resources, representative strategies and structures. Our expectation is that contemporary parties have progressively adopted disintermediated organizational profiles, by weakening the intermediate organs while favouring both the parliamentarization of the leadership and the opening of their membership. These assumptions are empirically verified through a diachronic analysis of the party changes registered in nine European democracies, from the beginning of the 1970s to 2010. All in all, we argue that parties' internal disintermediation has increased in most countries, in the passing from the 1990s to the New Millennium.

Despite a growing number of studies on simulations and International Relations (IR), few analyses investigate how participating in a simulation affects students' perceptions of relevant IR issues. In addition, almost none of the current analyses on role playing and IR investigate how the involvement in a simulation affects students' views on university enrolment or future career. This article seeks to fill these gaps, addressing how students' interpretations and expectations change after participating in the Model United Nations (MUN). This article studies how the MUN is perceived as an experience that helps improve personal skills such as language ability, negotiation skills, and knowledge related to IR issues. This article also analyses how perceptions about selected IR issues and views on future university enrolment or future career vary before and after the MUN. The article is based on an original data set from a survey submitted to high school and university students participating to two MUNs held in Spring 2018. This article also employs ordinary least squares (OLS) multivariate regression analysis to test alternative hypotheses.

Euroflections is an academic report on the European elections 2019. With Euroflections we want to provide the public with interesting reflections on the election campaigns and their main actors, namely the voters, the parties and the media. In total, more than 70 experts in political science and political communication representing almost every EU country offer insightful analyses of campaign developments and electoral outcomes. Some contributions are one-country studies, while others are written from comparative or thematic perspectives. Euroflections is intended to fill a gap in European elections reporting and research. The report is not as fast as news media analyses and social media comments published immediately when the electoral outcome is known. On the other hand, these texts are produced much faster than standard academic works. The basic idea of Euroflections is thus to combine the best of speed and smartness. Whether we achieve this difficult goal or not is finally up to our readers to find out. Euroflections is based on a concept we first developed during the Swedish National Elections 2018. We were also deeply inspired by previous productions from UK scholars from Bournemouth University who have produced similar reports on UK and US elections. We would like to thank them and all other colleagues who made this fascinating project possible by delivering their brilliant thoughts on European Elections 2019 just in time. We also like to express our gratitude to Mid Sweden University for funding this project. Finally, we are still a bit concerned about using the word Euroflections as we are non-native English speakers and did not find the term in any available dictionaries. However, we have started to get used to it, and in fact it sounds 'better' for every time we use it.

First published online: 30 July 2020 ; In recent years a growing body of literature has widely investigated the impact of role-play simulations in teaching politics and international relations. While scholars agree that participating in simulations is helpful for the students in developing their skills, the evidence about benefits is more mixed. Moreover, the question if all students - regardless of their demographic or academic background - benefit similarly from simulations, remains largely unanswered. This article, based on a cross-national survey submitted to students from Italy and the Netherlands who have participated in the Model United Nations (MUN), provides an innovative contribution to the current literature by looking at views and opinions of students coming from different educational contexts. Our empirical results suggest that students perceive that MUN increases their skills regardless of their academic and socio-demographic background. The quantitative analysis, based on OLS regression models, reveals that the individual students' background does not influence their perceived benefit, nor their enjoyment of the experience. MUNs appear to be educational as well as fun for all students, regardless of their age, gender, field of study, seniority, and academic homeland.

This Report is a follow-up study on "How to create a transnational party system" (2010); it illustrates recent challenges and opportunities at EU level concerning the emergence of: i) transnational parties and a transnational party system; ii) constraints and opportunities for representative democracy. The main areas addressed in the report are: (a) voting coherence of the EP Party Groups after the Euro-crisis; (b) regulation of political parties at European level (PPELs);(c) role of political foundations at European level (PFELs). ; Republished version of EP Study 2014/PE 509.983

This Report is a follow-up study on "How to create a transnational party system" (2010); it illustrates recent challenges and opportunities at EU level concerning the emergence of: i) transnational parties and a transnational party system; ii) constraints and opportunities for representative democracy. The main areas addressed in the report are: (a) voting coherence of the EP Party Groups after the Euro-crisis; (b) regulation of political parties at European level (PPELs); (c) role of political foundations at European level (PFELs).

This study has been prepared by the Observatory on Political Parties and Representation (OPPR), part of the European Democracy Observatory (EUDO) at the European University Institute (EUI). It covers four aspects: 1) An analysis of the political doctrine and programme of major political parties in several Member States. 2) An examination of current procedures applied to political parties to choose leaders for European Office. 3) The development of proposals on how to help a European political party system evolve from national structures strongly influenced by historical traditions and cultural factors. 4) Suggestions regarding the extent to which the European electoral system and different systems of party financing would have to be revised in order to facilitate the above objectives.

This study has been prepared by the Observatory on Political Parties and Representation (OPPR), part of the European Democracy Observatory (EUDO) at the European University Institute (EUI). It covers four aspects: 1) An analysis of the political doctrine and programme of major political parties in several Member States. 2) An examination of current procedures applied to political parties to choose leaders for European Office. 3) The development of proposals on how to help a European political party system evolve from national structures strongly influenced by historical traditions and cultural factors. 4) Suggestions regarding the extent to which the European electoral system and different systems of party financing would have to be revised in order to facilitate the above objectives.