Electoral System, Party System and Society

Abstract

Nature, preferences and behavior of (democratic) political elites strongly depend on contextual and systemic factors. At the same time, political elites can have a major impact on these factors and the respective interdependency has always been of great interest to scholars from different sub-fields of political science. Most importantly, this refers to electoral systems, party systems and various features of society, e.g., societal conflicts, political culture or norms. While institutional features are rather stable by definition, we see many changes and developments when looking at party systems and especially societies at this point. Moreover, these changes and developments are often associated with negative consequences for or, at least, challenges to the quality of democracy. However, there is also increased discussion and implementation of institutions complementing or even substituting classical institutions of representative democracy. In this panel, different studies investigate current developments in established as well as young democracies focusing on various aspects of this interdependency. The papers relate to old questions of democracy research but with novel approaches and, most importantly, with an additional focus on what any changes can mean for the state of democracy. As a result, this panel contributes, on the one hand, to efforts revising existing knowledge regarding the embeddedness of political elites as well as their role in societal and systemic change. On the other hand, the panel fosters exchange between scholars of established and Western democracies and experts of younger democracies and semi-democratic countries.