Party Politics and Democracy in Europe: The Legacy of Peter Mair

Peter Mair, defined by his long-time co-author and friend Richard Katz as one of the foremost scholars of party politics, passed away in Ireland on August 15th 2011. In the years that have since elapsed, there have been numerous homages to his intellectual work and human qualities. One of the latest is Ferdinand Müller-Rommel and Fernando Casal Bértoa’s edited volume Party Politics and Democracy in Europe: Essays in Honour of Peter Mair published last September. Written exclusively by his former students at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, the book analyses Mair’s academic work by applying his empirical findings to new research topicsdeveloping his ideas under different framework conditions and testing his hypotheses in a wider context.
 The proposed panel will not only discuss the findings of the book, but also more broadly Peter Mair’s legacy to the study of parties and democracy in Europe, trying to examine to what extent his long-term expectations (e.g. cartelization, decadence of political parties and party government, EU’s democratic void, rise of anti-establishment parties, etc.) still hold (or not). Moreover, the panel is designed as the forerunner of The Peter Mair Annual Lecture to be inaugurated in the next CES Conference in Istanbul (2017).