Professor Pippa Norris will lecture on the subject of "Do Power-Sharing Regimes Work?"

Her lecture will take place on Tuesday, January 22, 2008, at 12:00PM in the Stiteler Hall Silverstein Forum, (map)

Abstract:

The unresolved debate between proponents and critics of power-sharing regimes raises critical issues both for scholarly research seeking to understand the underlying drivers of democracy and for policymakers concerned with promoting sustainable democracy and implementing durable peace-settlements. 
To address this long-standing controversy, the aims of this study are two-fold. The first is to update and refine the theory of consociationalism, originally developed in the late-1960s, to take account of the flood of contemporary developments in constitution-building which have occurred worldwide. This study compares four dimensions of power-sharing regimes: the basic type of electoral system, whether there is a parliamentary or presidential executive, the decentralization of power in unitary or federal states, and the structure and independence of the mass media. Building on this classification, the study tests the potential advantages and disadvantages of each of these institutions against a wider range of evidence and indicators than previous studies.

Website

is the Director of the Democratic Governance Group at the United Nations Development Program in New York. On 1st September, she is returning to her position as the McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.  

Her research compares democracy, elections and public opinion, political communications, and gender politics in many countries worldwide.  A well-known public speaker and prolific author, she has published almost three-dozen books.

This includes a series of volumes for Cambridge University Press: A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Postindustrial Societies (2000, winner of the 2006 Doris A. Graber award for the best book in political communications), Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet Worldwide  (2001), Democratic Phoenix: Political Activism Worldwide (2002) and Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the Globe (with Ronald Inglehart, 2003), Electoral Engineering: Voting Rules and Political Behavior (2004), Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (with Ronald Inglehart, 2004, winner of the Virginia Hodgkinson prize from the Independent Sector), and Radical Right: Voters and Parties in the Electoral Market (2005). Her most recent research is for a new book on Driving Democracy: Do power-sharing institutions work? (for CUP).

She has served as an expert consultant for many international bodies including the UN, UNESCO, NDI, the Council of Europe, International IDEA, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the UK Electoral Commission. Her work has been published in more than a dozen languages (French, German, Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Croatian, Pashtu, Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Korean, and Japanese). Journals articles include those in the British Journal for Political Science, Political Studies, Political Communication, the European Journal of Political Research, the International Political Science Review, Electoral Studies and Legislative Studies, and she co-founded The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics. She has served on executive bodies for the American Political Science Association (APSA), the International Political Science Association (IPSA), the Political Science Association of the UK (PSA), and the British Politics Group of APSA. She is President of the Political Communications section of APSA and she was President of the Women and Politics Research Group of APSA and Co-Founding Chair of the Elections, Parties, and Public Opinion Group (EPOP) of the PSA. She has held visiting appointments at Columbia University, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of East Anglia, the University of Oslo, the University of Cape Town, Otago University, and the Australian National University. Prior to Harvard, she taught at Edinburgh University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Politics and Philosophy from Warwick University, and Masters and Doctoral degrees in Politics from the London School of Economics (LSE). She teaches STM 103: Good Governance and Democratization (MPA/ID) at the Kennedy School and Gov 20: Introduction to Comparative Politics in the Government Department.

Full details and publications can be found at: www.pippanorris.com and she can be contacted at Pippa_Norris@Harvard.edu.

Selected Publications:

Driving Democracy: Do power-sharing institutions work? (for CUP), On Message (1999), Electoral Change Since 1945 (1997), Political Recruitment (1995), British By-elections (1990), Politics and Sexual Equality (1986). 

Edited books include Britain Votes 2005 (co-edited with Christopher Wlezien, 2005), Framing Terrorism (2003), Britain Votes 2001 (2001), Critical Citizens (1999), Critical Elections (1999), The Politics of News (1998), Elections and Voting Behaviour (1998), Britain Votes 1997 (1997), Women, Media and Politics (1997), Politics and the Press (1997), Passages to Power (1997), Comparing Democracies (1996, 2nd ed. 2002, 3rd ed under development), Women in Politics (1996), Different Voices, Different Lives (1994), Gender and Party Politics (1993), British Elections & Parties Yearbook (1991, 1992, 1993).

Recently she has developed an edited volume for UNDP, Making Democracy Deliver: Governance for Human Development.