The course is about the scientific study of elections and voting behavior in modern democracies. The organization of elections is a key defining feature, maybe THE key defining feature, of democracy. It is thus crucial for political analysts to be able to apprehend them scientifically. The course examines in detail the act of voting in contemporary democracies (mostly, Western democracies mostly, but also non-Western democracies). The topics covered include how voters form preferences for parties/candidates, how they translate these preferences into a vote (or an abstention), and how they react to electoral campaigns and the state of the economy. It also covers how parties decide upon their electoral program, and how this affects their electoral performance.
By the end of the module students will be able to:
(i) Actively read, fully understand, and critically appraise the scientific literature on elections;
(ii) Mobilize and articulate this scientific literature on elections to form an informed judgement about the state of elections in contemporary democracies and analyze new elections;
(iii) Independently catch up with the latest developments of the scientific literature about elections
Damien BOL
Cours magistral seul
English
The course focuses on the scientific and quantitative study of elections. Hence, we discuss scientific papers published on the topic in class (research questions, hypotheses, research method, design, variables…). For one of the assessment, students are also expected to critically analyze some scientific papers. There is no formal pre-requisite for this course, but students are expected to know the basics of quantitative methods (or statistics) or be willing to learn them independently during the semester. This knowledge is required to analyze the scientific papers covered in class.
Spring 2023-2024
Students are assessed based on an (i) essay and an (ii) online exam (open book). Each are worth 50% of
the final grade.
(i) The essay consists in a report of 2,000 words, in which students critically analyze three scientific papers
around elections. The three papers are chosen by the professor and are available from the beginning of the
year on the usual communication platform. Students can thus write their essay when they want. However,
the deadline for submitting the essay is the last day of Week 8 at 15.00 (in 2023: Friday, 29th of March at
15.00).
(ii) The oral exam is a two-hours long exam consisting in two long
questions to which the students must answer in around 1,000 words each. At 15.00 during the first Friday of
the exam session (in 2023: Friday, 10 th of May at 15.00), the students will receive the exam questions by
email. They will have two hours to respond to them and upload them via the usual submitting platform.
Claudio Ferraz, and Frederico Finan (2008). Exposing Corrupt Politicians: The Effects of Brazil's Publicly Released Audits on Electoral Outcomes. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 123(2): 703-745.
Robert Thomson, Terry Royed, Elin Naurin, Joaquín Artés, Rory Costello, Laurenz Ennser‐Jedenastik, Mark Ferguson, Petia Kostadinova, Catherine Moury, François Pétry, and Katrin Praprotnik (2017). The Fulfillment of Parties' Election Pledges: A Comparativ