The Universitat de Barcelona School of Economics will host the launch event of The Birth of Party Democracy ERC Advanced Grant and the Institutions and Political Economy Research Group (IPERG), both led by UB researcher and Robert Garret professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University Carles Boix. The event will take place at Sala de Graus (690 Building, Faculty of Economics and Business) on March 2nd, 2017, at 11:00. It will start with a presentation by Elisenda Paluzie, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Barcelona, and Carles boix, who will present the aims and resources of the research group, and the substantive content of the ERC project. A small snack and coffee will be offered after the presentation.

Registration HERE.

IPERG is a research group recently established at the Universitat de Barcelona School of Economics. The main goal of IPERG is to foster the study the role of institutions on the emergence of political order and stability, the political representation of individual and social interests, and economic development and redistribution. A second objective of IPERG is to encourage greater integration among various parts of the social sciences in Barcelona, particularly among political science, economics, sociology and history.

The group is built around the ERC-funded project “The Birth of Party Democracy. The Emergence of Mass Parties and the Choice of Electoral Laws in Europe and North America (1870-1940)”. 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 political elites.