Party Democracy & Party Law
CDI Director Ben Reilly was one of the speakers at a special session of the World Congress of Political Science in Santiago this July on the subject of 'Party Democracy and Party Law: the Legal Regulation of Political Parties in Modern Democracies'. The World Congress is held every three years and is the major international meeting of political scientists from around the globe.
Building upon CDI's previous work on this subject, the session focused on different types of law affecting political parties, investigating the underlying dimensions of party regulation and asking fundamental questions about its effectiveness and its relevance for the future of party democracy. The panel included papers with an empirical comparative focus and papers which contributed to the development of the theory of party regulation.
The panel featured a number of the world's major scholars working on party regulation, including Professor Ingrid van Biezen from the University of Leiden and Emeritus Professor Kenneth Janda of Northwestern University. Professor Reilly's paper looked at the increasing incidence of party engineering in developing democracies, and the growing tendency for South-South learning and imitation as part of this process.
The meeting also provided an occassion for a follow-up meeting of many of the authors associated with CDI's book on this same subject, Political Parties in Conflict-Prone Societies, which was published by the United Nations University Press in 2008.
While in Santiago, Professor Reilly held separate meetings with several other CDI associates, including Professor Larry Diamond, who will present this year's CDI Annual Address.
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