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The Birth of Party Democracy. The Emergence of Mass Parties and the Choice of Electoral Laws in Europe and North America (1870-1940)

Objective

The project will develop a theoretically-based account of the emergence of mass parties, the choice of electoral institutions, and the final crystallization of different party systems in Europe and North America during the emergence of mass democracy and the formation of modern parties (1870-1940). It will combine statistical and historical methods to explain the formation of diverse party systems as the outcome of political choices made at particular critical junctures that involved the creation of nonsocialist and socialist parties, the mobilization of their corresponding electorates, and the strategic response of ppolitical elites (often through the manipulation of electoral laws and sometimes through the creation of new electoral coalitions).

The project integrates (and, in part, adjudicates between) two different research traditions. It combines sociological approaches, initially used to explain variation in party systems in terms of the nature of underlying societal cleavages, with institutionalist accounts, showing how organizational factors (such as the extension and strategic choices of trade unions) and institutional variables (the choice of electoral rules) shaped parties and party systems in interaction with existing social cleavages.

The project is also innovative empirically. It will assemble a geocoded data set of electoral returns matched with socioeconomic characteristics at the constituency level in several European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain and Sweden). It will then infer individual behavior with the aid of new methods of ecological statistical analysis. It will examine the organizational strategies of parties and, particularly, the choice of electoral institutions, through the careful use of focused comparisons across countries and time periods.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-ADG - Advanced Grant

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2015-AdG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 500 000,00
Address
GRAN VIA DE LES CORTS CATALANES 585
08007 BARCELONA
Spain

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Region
Este Cataluña Barcelona
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 500 000,00

Beneficiaries (2)

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