sow941 - Politics and Organisations (Vollständige Modulbeschreibung)

The module consists of two thematically complementary and methodologically coherent seminars.

The first seminar examines party organisations, political ambition and intraparty politics from a theoretical persepctive. Political parties are central organisations in most political systems and are often seen as unitary actors. However, power can't be understood without looking inside, as ideological differences and individual ambitions interplay with institutions and organisational rules. In this course, we focus on the way of individual citizens into parties and parliament theoretically. We shed light on political ambition and attitudes, parties’ nomination and selection processes, and the parliamentary behavior of parties and individuals. Participants learn to understand the interplay between politicians, parties and parliaments. Students thereby get in touch with different theoretical concepts and research designs (e.g., text-based analyses and experimental studies).

The second seminar deals with organisations, political ambition and intraparty politics from an empirical perspective, presenting case studies and data to analyze in practice. One of the central problems in this regard is the unwillingness of parties and individuals to present their more informal politics to the outside. We analyze individual cases in different political systems and use new methods that allow us to observe finer distinctions, from positions through political communication to networks inside and between parties. 

• Lawless, J. L. (2012). Becoming a candidate: Political ambition and the decision to run for office. Cambridge University Press.
• Schlesinger, J. A. (1984). On the theory of party organization. The Journal of Politics, 46(2), 369-400.
• Greene, Zachary, and Matthias Haber. "Leadership competition and disagreement at party national congresses." British Journal of Political Science 46.3 (2016): 611-632.

Portfolio (work must be completed in both seminars) consisting of the writing of a research design in the theoretically focused seminar and a written report on a data analysis in the methodologically focused seminar.