Programme

8th Swiss Summer School in Democracy Studies

Advances in Comparative Democracy Research

12-16 September 2022

University of Zurich

Keynote Lecture

Monday 12 September 2022, h.16.00
Room KOL E 18 (City Campus)
Rämistrasse 71
8006 Zürich

Stefano Bartolini

European University Institute

The Nature of Political Institutions

To understand what ‘political institutions’ are, we may check textbooks and specialised works, which provide listings such as human rights, constitutions, state formats, executives, legislatures, judiciaries, election systems, democracy, the rule of law. There is disagreement about missing, redundant or unnecessary items. In perusing the literature further, one encounters additional bedfellows. Party systems, parties, trade unions, and more generally interest organisations are often considered political institutions, as are regimes, cleavages and standard operating procedures of administrative bureaucracies. The range extends further to include public policies and political economies. The list of ‘which’ grows and with it grows the perplexity too. To try to answer the ‘which’ question is not the right strategy. Which political institutions exist logically depends on ‘what’ political institutions are. If we fail to agree on the ‘what’ we are unlikely to concur on the ‘which.’ In line with the understanding of all institutions, also political institutions are here considered norms and rules. In particular, political institutions are those norms and rules that empower the rulership, set limits on the monopolistic capacity to produce and distribute behavioural compliance and define the ‘proper’ means for achieving such compliance. They are what I call ‘conferral’ norms/rules’, to be clearly distinguished from ‘conduct’ norms/rules and from ‘recognition’ norms/rules’. There is no novelty in understanding institutions as normative facts. The point is to distinguish clearly among different types of norms/rules and to specify the particularities of those norms/rules that we define as ‘political.’ There are institutions that do not belong to the realm of the political and political realities that do not belong to the realm of institutions. The issue is to specify the properties of this intersection area. Whether the ‘institutional’ or the ‘political’ element prevails in what we call a ‘political institution’ is an issue that identifies the constitutive ambiguity of the term and of its analysis.

Programme at a glance

ACADEMIC PROGRAMME

Room AFL E 019(Oerlikon Campus)
Affolternstrasse 56

8050 Zürich

Tuesday 13	Panel 1
Democratic Election Campaigns: Challenges and Opportunities		Laura Sudulich, U. of Essex with Frederico Ferreira da Silva, U. of Lausanne
Wednesday 14	Panel 2
Social Media, Political Science and the Study of Democracy		Andrea De Angelis, U. of Zurich with Luca Manucci, U. of Lisboa
Thursday 15	Panel 3
Diversity in Democracies: Social Groups, Political Behaviour and Representation		Daniel Bochsler, Central European University and University of Belgrad with Samuel D. Schmid, U. of Lucerne

Friday 16	Panel 4
Gender and Democratic Politics: Are Really Women Who Shy Away from Politics?		Marta Fraile, Instituto de Políticas y BienesPúblicos with Mathilde van Ditmars, U. of Lucerne

Panel 1

Tuesday 13 September			AFL E 019
	PANEL 1	Democratic election campaigns: challenges and opportunities
		Laura Sudulich University of Essex with Frederico Ferreira da Silva University of Lausanne
	*Seminar*
09.00	Round of introduction
09.30	Lecture
	Laura Sudulich University of Essex Electoral campaigns
	Electoral campaigns seek to persuade and mobilize voters. Measuring how they achieve these goals is at the core of public opinion, political communication, and behavior studies. This workshop seeks to unpack campaign processes from a comparative perspective. We will discuss challenges and opportunities in measuring and estimating campaign effects. The widespread use of experiments in political and communication studies has provided new insights into how persuasion and mobilization mechanisms occur. However, the generalizability of experimental findings needs validation from observational studies. The workshop will cover both theoretical perspectives and empirical approaches to developing new avenues of research.
	Frederico Ferreira da Silva University of Lausanne Negative Campaign
10.45	Break
11.00	Interactive session and Q&A
12.00	Lunch break
	*Workshop*
13.00	Lisa Basishvili Tbilisi State University
	Importance of TV Media for Democratic Deliberation and Civic Engagement -the Case of Georgia
14.00	Michaela Fisher University of Zurich
	From newspapers to social media? Changing dynamics in Swiss direct democratic campaigns
15.00	Break
15.30	*Discussion*

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Panel 2

Wednesday 14 September			AFL E 019
	PANEL 2	Social media, political science and the study of democracy
		Andrea De Angelis University of Zurich with Luca Manucci University of Lisboa
	*Seminar*
09.00	Lecture
	Andrea De Angelis University of Zurich
	This workshop will discuss how political scientists can take advantage of the increasingly available information (in textual data, video, images, and audio) produced on social media to answer relevant political questions in research about contemporary democracies. Albeit not entering into technical details, we will briefly summarize the challenges in doing it and the available methods developed in the literature. We will then discuss works that have employed successfully such a type of approach.
10.30	Break
10.45	Interactive session and Q&A
12.00	Lunch break
	*Workshop*
13.00	Rahul Singh Bais Korea Development Institute
	Why do we need to democratize digital and emerging technologies to have a vibrant democracy?
14.00	Giada Gianola University of Bern
	Motivating Participation Through Rewards: How Does Gamification Influence Behavior on a Digital Democratic Innovation?
15.00	Break
15.30	Session on Wellbeing in Academia
16.15	*Discussion*

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Panel 3

Thursday 15 September			AFL E 019
	PANEL 3	Diversity in democracies: social groups, political behavior, and representation
		Daniel Bochsler Central European University CEU with Samuel D. Schmid University of Lucerne
	*Seminar*
09.00	Lecture
	Daniel Bochsler Central European University CEU
	Social science and economic research are concerned with the orientation of individuals towards other members of society whom they consider as members of their cultural group. In experimental studies, from behavioral economics to social psychology, scholars find consistent ingroup favoritism and outgroup discrimination patterns. What lessons can we draw from the literature on social and economic behavior in heterogeneous societies for democracies? We discuss whether findings in social psychology and behavioral economics, interested in individual behavior, can be transferred to the political realm, where ethnic politics is primarily understood as a phenomenon of elite agency and large-scale mobilization. And we discuss whether and how political institutions may attenuate ingroup favoritism
10.30	Break
10.45	Interactive session and Q&A
12.00	Lunch break
	*Workshop*
13.00	Nicolas Jaramillo University of Heidelberg
	The ‘Demos’ divided: Limitations of democracies to solve the public-private tensions.
14.00	Junmo Cheon University of Zurich
	Switzerland's Municipal Congruence in Environmental Policy: Empolying Fuzzy-Set Ideal Type Analysis for Comparison
15.00	Raphael Capaul University of Zurich
	Agenda Setting in Swiss Politics: Opening the Black Box of Federal Laws under Parliament’s Lead
16.00	Break
16.15	*Discussion*

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Panel 4

Friday 16 September			AFL E 019
	PANEL 4	Gender and democratic politics: are really women who shy away from the political realm?
		Marta Fraile Instituto de Políticas y BienesPúblicos with Mathilde van Ditmars University of Lucerne
	*Seminar*
09.00	Lecture
	Marta Fraile Instituto de Políticas y Bienes Públicos
	This session will cover a summary of theoretical discussions about the the general research area of Gender and Political Representation, including the following topics: the need for parity in representation and the concepts of descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation;the current state of parity across the world; a discussion of the different factors explaining the the gender gap in representation. This seminar aims at providing (i) an introduction to the debate about the obstacles (both evident and subtle) that women face to getting involved, participating, and obtaining positions of power in the political realm. And (ii) an example of the design of an empirical study on the demand side of the problem where socialization and gender roles are considered (and tested) as possible explanations for the persistent gender gap in internal political efficacy using both observational and experimental evidence. Finally, (iii) the session will discuss some insights from the supply side by examining the literature on the study of women’s candidates in elections.
10.30	Break
10.45	Interactive session and Q&A
12.00	Lunch break
	*Workshop*
13.00	Okan Akmehmet Istanbul Medipol University
	Descriptive representation and disproportionality: A gender-focused perspective
14.00	Alix D’Agostino University of Zurich
	Do nature park citizens vote greener? An analysis of voting behaviour in Switzerland.
15.00	Stefan Kalberer University of Zurich
	Democracy in Swiss Municipalities
16.00	Break
16.15	Session on Academic Writing
16.45	*Discussion*

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