Do political parties serve the interests of representative democracy today?

Distrust in parties is at historic highs, and many reform efforts attempt to weaken party influence in politics. The erosion of intermediary institutions lies at the heart of the broader crisis of liberal democracy. While there is ample evidence that party success or failure impacts democratic outcomes in emerging democracies, we know less about how parties (and their strength or weakness) contribute to problems in established democracies. This talk lays out a concept of party intermediary capacity, which helps to assess how parties mobilize and represent voters. It then traces how party intermediary capacity has changed over time, with particular attention to the political economy of representation in the neoliberal era.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Didi Kuo is a Senior Research Scholar and Associate Director for Research at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. Her research interests include democratization, political parties, and political reform. She oversees the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective, which seeks to bridge academic and policy research on American democracy. She was an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America and is the author of Clientelism, Capitalism, and Democracy: the Rise of Programmatic Politics in the United States and Britain (Cambridge University Press 2018). 

 

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.