In this episode, I talk to Gary Marks who is Professor of Political Science at UNC-Chapel Hill. We discuss the work of Seymour Martin Lipset and focus on three main themes in Lipset’s body of work.
We first discuss Lipset’s 1960 book Political Man, which includes a number of essays that have become classics of political sociology and political science more generally. Central themes of the book are the social requisites for democracy and the group bases of politics. Our second focus is on Lipset and Rokkan’s cleavage theory and the formation and transformation of party systems. In line with the main ideas of Political Man, we discuss cleavage theory as a sociological and group based approach to political competition and contrast it with the Downsian perspective. The third part of the conversation covers Gary’s joined work with Lipset that addresses the question of why there has never been a successful socialist party in the United States.
The conversation goes beyond the work of Lipset alone and focuses on several main themes of political sociology as well as many political transformations of the last 100 years.
If you want to know more about Gary and his work, you can visit his website. http://garymarks.web.unc.edu/
I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Political science reading recommendation:
Achen, Christopher/Bartels, Larry, 2016, Democracy for Realists, Princeton University Press
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In this episode, I talk to Gary Marks who is Professor of Political Science at UNC-Chapel Hill. We discuss the work of Seymour Martin Lipset and focus on three main themes in Lipset’s body of work.
We first discuss Lipset’s 1960 book Political Man, which includes a number of essays that have become classics of political sociology and political science more generally. Central themes of the book are the social requisites for democracy and the group bases of politics. Our second focus is on Lipset and Rokkan’s cleavage theory and the formation and transformation of party systems. In line with the main ideas of Political Man, we discuss cleavage theory as a sociological and group based approach to political competition and contrast it with the Downsian perspective. The third part of the conversation covers Gary’s joined work with Lipset that addresses the question of why there has never been a successful socialist party in the United States.
The conversation goes beyond the work of Lipset alone and focuses on several main themes of political sociology as well as many political transformations of the last 100 years.
If you want to know more about Gary and his work, you can visit his website. http://garymarks.web.unc.edu/
I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Political science reading recommendation:
Achen, Christopher/Bartels, Larry, 2016, Democracy for Realists, Princeton University Press
In this episode, I talk to Björn Bremer who is Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG) in Cologne. We talk about his article “The ideational foundations of social democratic austerity in the context of the great recession” which is co-authored with Sean McDaniel and was published in the Socio-Economic Review in 2019.
The article investigates the economic ideas that build the bases for the decision of social democratic parties to embrace austerity policies following the economic and financial crisis in 2008. Based on over 60 semi-structured interviews with high-profile social democratic politicians in France, the UK and Germany, the authors argue that what they call supply-side Keynesianism builds the ideational foundation for these policies. Social democratic austerity policies are thus based on a unique ideational perspective that is neither fully congruent with neo-liberal or conservative perspectives, nor can it fully be explained by structural determinants.
We also discuss the largely negative consequences that embracing austerity has had for social democratic parties and the question if the economic response to the current Covid pandemic is comparable or different.
If you want to know more about Björn and his research you can follow him on Twitter under at bjoern_bremer or visit his website www.bjoern-bremer.com
I hope you enjoy the conversation
Transformation of European Politics Podcast
In this episode, I talk to Gary Marks who is Professor of Political Science at UNC-Chapel Hill. We discuss the work of Seymour Martin Lipset and focus on three main themes in Lipset’s body of work.
We first discuss Lipset’s 1960 book Political Man, which includes a number of essays that have become classics of political sociology and political science more generally. Central themes of the book are the social requisites for democracy and the group bases of politics. Our second focus is on Lipset and Rokkan’s cleavage theory and the formation and transformation of party systems. In line with the main ideas of Political Man, we discuss cleavage theory as a sociological and group based approach to political competition and contrast it with the Downsian perspective. The third part of the conversation covers Gary’s joined work with Lipset that addresses the question of why there has never been a successful socialist party in the United States.
The conversation goes beyond the work of Lipset alone and focuses on several main themes of political sociology as well as many political transformations of the last 100 years.
If you want to know more about Gary and his work, you can visit his website. http://garymarks.web.unc.edu/
I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Political science reading recommendation:
Achen, Christopher/Bartels, Larry, 2016, Democracy for Realists, Princeton University Press
