Jean Blondel Research Articles

Jean Blondel: One of the founding fathers of European political science

AbstractJean Blondel’s personal and scientific biography deserves to be illustrated, as it can in many ways also be an illustration of the laborious making of a genuinely European (though not only) political science from the ashes of World War 2, and the failures (uncertainties) of pre-WWII political science. Here it will briefly be recalled how an enthusiastic and innovative institution builder gained a central place in the making of the new European political science, and how Blondel coupled this with his tireless exploration of new fields of comparative politics, while being at the same time a generous mentor of PhD students and younger scholars and, for many, a great friend.

The comparative study of governments and ministers: Jean Blondel’s legacy

The comparative study of governments and ministers: Jean Blondel’s legacy

Типологии партийных систем в политической науке: классика и современность

The article characterizes the heuristic potential of modern typologies of party systems. Usually, when conducting comparative studies of political parties, quantitative typologies of party systems by Maurice Duverger, Jean Blondel and Giovanni Sartori are used. However, even their heuristic potential is only partially used. Therefore, the article draws attention to some features of these typologies. In particular, qualitative differences were noted between the two types of one-party systems described by Blondel – traditional and mobilization. Sartori’s analysis of party systems in shifting policies is also noteworthy. As a result of this analysis, four new types of (quasi-) party systems were formulated: dominant authoritarian, dominant non-authoritarian, non-dominant, and atomized. In addition, recently, political scientists have developed a number of new typologies and introduced new categories. Thus, Russell Dalton deepens the idea of the differences between authoritarian and adversarial party systems distinguishing exclusive and inclusive among authoritarian systems, and consensus, conflict, and consociative among adversarial ones. The evolution of Alan Siaroff’s typology is traced, which leads to a difference in party system and party model, as well as the emergence of new subtypes – one-party super-majority in a two-party system, dominance and dominance in a multi-party one. Grigorii Golosov, using a modified version of the Nagayama triangle, identifies polyvalent and bivalent systems with a dominant party, monovalent and polyvalent two-party systems, monovalent and bivalent multi-party systems. Finally, Immaculada Szmolka and Lucia G. del Moral conduct a comparative analysis of party systems based on four independent dimensions: competition, stability, the number of parties and the balance between them, polarization. Each measurement allows one to select from three to eight types of party systems, which creates a convenient set of characteristics. It is important to note that these typologies can be used to study party systems, both in stable and new volatile political systems.

The Making of Empirical Political Science in the UK: Jean Blondel, David Butler and Peter Pulzer

AbstractDuring the winter of 2022–3, three of the most influential individuals in the development of empirical political science in Europe, died. All had been active in research between at least the early 1960s and the present century. David Butler had pioneered, especially, the study of electoral behaviour and particularly in the UK. Jean Blondel had founded the outstanding Department of Government at Essex University and he was one of the principal academics responsible for the creation and subsequent flourishing of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR). Peter Pulzer not only published important comparative work on European politics, but he also supervised doctoral theses on topics beyond Europe's own borders. This essay discusses their respective roles and contributions in the founding of a discipline that was only newly forming when they started their own research during the 1950s.

猪口孝，ジャン・ブロンデル著（猪口孝訳） 『現代市民の国家観－欧亜18 カ国調査による実証分析－』

猪口孝，ジャン・ブロンデル著（猪口孝訳） 『現代市民の国家観－欧亜18 カ国調査による実証分析－』

Political Leadership, Parties and Citizens: The Personalisation of Leadership, edited by Jean Blondel and Jean-Louis Thièbault with Katarzyna Czernicka, Takashi Inoguchi, Ukrist Pathmanand and Fulvio Venturino, Abingdon and New York, Routledge, xii + 304 pp., £85.00 (hardback), ISBN 0-415-54736-9

Political Leadership, Parties and Citizens: The Personalisation of Leadership, edited by Jean Blondel and Jean-Louis Thièbault with Katarzyna Czernicka, Takashi Inoguchi, Ukrist Pathmanand and Fulvio Venturino, Abingdon and New York, Routledge, xii + 304 pp., £85.00 (hardback), ISBN 0-415-54736-9 - Volume 18 Issue 1

Forty Years of Political Science in Europe: The European Consortium for Political Research Celebrates Its Ruby Anniversary

In 2010, the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) celebrated its fortieth anniversary as the leading association for political science in Europe. Forty-one years earlier, in 1969, three European political scientists sent a letter to about a dozen of their European colleagues outlining some suggestions for creating an informal network of institutions and centers interested in comparative politics research. The authors of the letter were Serge Hurtig, Jean Blondel, and Stein Rokkan. Over the next year, led by Blondel and Rokkan with the support of a number of leading professors at the forefront of comparative research in their respective countries (the “founders” being Serge Hurtig, Norman Chester, Hans Daalder, Richard Rose, Jorgen Westerstahl, and Rudolf Wildenmann) and the backing of the Ford Foundation, the ECPR began to take shape. The original plan called for a European journal, a summer school, inventories of European political scientists and graduate courses, workshops, a data information center, and the construction of a transnational infrastructure of institutions to foster a self-sustaining community of professional political scientists. On July 29, 1970, a Ford Foundation grant was awarded to support the achievement of these aims, and the ECPR was established.

Mapping Trends in the Study of Political Institutions

The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions. Edited by Rod Rhodes, Sarah Binder, Bert Rockman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 816 pp., $150.00 (ISBN: 0-19-927569-4). Ever since James March and Johan Olsen (1984) heralded the return of institutionalism, institutional schools and institutional studies of varying stripes and colors have blanketed the social sciences. The “New” Institutionalism gave rise to the “next revolution in political science” (Goodin and Klingemann 1996:25)—a movement that many political scientists have joined. The attraction of institutionalism is anything but self-evident. Discourses on institutions and institutional theories tend to be maddeningly vague, and, as Mick Moran (p. 146) observes in The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions , they often bog down in what amount to theological debates about the meaning of institutions. They also tend to leave readers with a feeling that something profoundly important is happening and an urgent wish to understand what that something is. Anybody who has read even a few scholarly books or articles on institutions, institutionalization, or institutionalism should thus be interested in a handbook on the study of political institutions. In this context, The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions , edited by Rod Rhodes, Sarah Binder, and Bert Rockman, promises to bring some much needed clarity. Rhodes, Binder, and Rockman have assembled a star-studded cast of contributors who generally deliver crisply written and reasonably accessible essays that outline the dominant schools of institutional thinking. The chapters discuss a wide array of political institutions—ranging from local government to international security organizations, from constitutions to bicameralism. The handbook ends with a small set of delightful essays written by stalwarts Samuel Beer, Jean Blondel, and Hugh Heclo. The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions provides an authoritative sweep of the field, charting the state of affairs and the field's historical roots. It identifies dominant research questions and presents key findings. All this, of course, is exactly what one would expect of a book published as part of Robert Goodin's handbook …

Jean blondel and the development of european political science

This article examines Jean Blondel's contribution to the development of European – and more generally of contemporary – political science. He is primarily associated with the European Consortium for Political Research, of which he was Founding Director 1970–1979. Crucially important although the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) is, this undervalues the considerable intellectual influence he has exerted over the discipline at crucial points in it is evolution, primarily in terms of comparative research, classification, and data collection. His institutional and intellectual achievements have made him one of the most influential political scientists of the late twentieth century, fittingly recognised by the award of the Johan Skytte Prize in 2004.

The Central Role of Comparative Politics in Political Analysis

Scandinavian Political StudiesVolume 28, Issue 2 p. 183-191 The Central Role of Comparative Politics in Political Analysis Jean Blondel, Jean BlondelSearch for more papers by this author Jean Blondel, Jean BlondelSearch for more papers by this author First published: 18 May 2005 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0080-6757.2005.00127.xCitations: 3Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume28, Issue2June 2005Pages 183-191 RelatedInformation

Easy Come, Easy Go: Ministerial Turnover in Russia, 1990 – 2004

A CABINET JOB REPRESENTS the zenith of a political career, whether in Russia or elsewhere. Yet the turnover of cabinet members is affected, albeit in varying degrees, by the duration of the government, that is, the length of its stay in office. The goal of this study is to analyse ministerial turnover in Russia. The chronological scope of the study is about 14 years, from July 1990, when the first transitional prime minister, Ivan Silaev, was appointed, to February 2004, when the cabinet of Mikhail Kas'yanov was dissolved. The study seeks to address several questions. First, I will discuss the duration of Russian governments in a comparative perspective. Second, I will analyse the turnover of ministers in Russia. Specifically, I will examine rotation across governments and types of ministerial specialisation. I will also consider the cases of short-term and long-lasting ministers. Finally, I will inquire into the turnover of deputy prime ministers and first deputy prime ministers, who constitute a 'buffer group' between prime minister and ordinary ministers in the Russian

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:D.P. Angel and M.T. Rock (eds.), Asia’s Clean Revolution ‐ Industry, Growth and the Environment.Heidi Dahles and Karin Bras (eds.), Tourism and Small Entrepreneurs: Development, National Policy and Entrepreneurial Cultures ‐ Indonesian Cases.Ian Marsh, Jean Blondel and Takashi Inoguchi (eds.), Democracy, Governance, and Economic Performance: East and Southeast Asia.John Oates Myth and Reality in the Rain Forest: How Conservation Strategies Are Failing in West Africa.

Political Studies Books

[Review of] Jean Blondel and Maurizio Cotta (eds) (2000) The Nature of Party Government : A Comparative European Perspective

People and Parliament in the European Union: Participation, Democracy, Legitimacy. By Jean Blondel, Richard Sinnott, and Palle Svensson. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998. 287p. $70.00.

This book seeks to explain why participation rates in elections to the European Parliament (EP) are low and declining. Turnout has fallen from 66% in 1979 to 59% in 1994-20- 40% below levels in national elections. This is a critical issue, the authors insist, because low turnout confirms pervasive doubts that the European Union (EU) is "democratically legitimate." Behind this lies the central question of this era in modern European history, namely, whether a transnational policy with a common discourse and shared institutions can form.

Political Representation and South Korean Women

In his 1955 book,The Political Role of Women, Maurice Duverger brought our attention to the lack of representation of women in politics. Since that time, the dismal underrepresentation of women in politics has not much improved. Few women rise to leadership positions in politics; as Jean Blondel found in a more recent cross-cultural comparison of political leaders, less than 0.005 percent of all leaders were women (1987, 116–17). Regarding women's political participation, political scientists used to assert that women tended to “limit attention to the superficial and irrelevant aspects of politics” (Lane 1959, 213). Many argued that women had a different political view than did men: they were apolitical, they personalized politics, and they adopted their husbands' political orientations. Accordingly, they became political leaders only by default, as substitutes for deceased husbands or fathers.

Reflections on the Golden Age of Comparative Politics

In putting together Comparative European Politics: The Story of a Profession, Hans Daalder attempted “to chronicle the intellectual (auto)biography of the study of comparative European politics since the end of World War II” (p. 1). The book succeeds admirably in achieving this modest goal. It is an enormously enlightening and sometimes fascinating series of self-reflections on the birth of an important subfield of political science by those who established it. The volume contains the intellectual autobiographies of twenty-three of the “founding fathers” of modern comparative politics, and biographies (written by important scholars in the field) of four others who are now deceased. The autobiographies include those of Gabriel Almond, Robert Dahl, S.N. Eisenstadt, Giovanni Sartori, Juan Linz, Jean Blondel, Richard Rose, Jack Hayward, Gordon Smith, Vincent Wright, Pierre Birnbaum, Guy Hermet, Gerhard Lembruch, Klaus von Beyme, Peter Gerlich, Hans Daalder, Arend Lijphart, Mogens Pedersen, Erik Allardt, Sidney Verba, Philippe Schmitter, Ted Gurr, and Harold Wilensky. The biographies explore the contributions of Carl Friedrich, S.E. Finer, Stein Rokkan, and Rudolf Wildenmann. Comparative European Politics goes well beyond the modest objective, however. It emerges as a study of the various factors that contributed to the development of what is arguably the golden age of comparative politics. The 1960s and early 1970s witnessed an unprecedented outpouring of great works, including the Princeton series on political development, Dahl’s Political Oppositions, books by Seymour Lipset and Rokkan, and The Civic Culture to name just a few. Little more than a decade earlier, the field of comparative politics in its modern sense did not even exist. Nonetheless, most of these new works were remarkably sophisticated—examples of first-rate social science that combined rich and creative theorizing with a solid grounding in contemporary empirical data and long-term historical analyses. Many of the concepts first articulated in these works (e.g., the freezing of social cleavages, the catch-all party, polarized pluralism, consociational democracy, and authoritarian versus totalitarian regimes) have had remarkable staying power. They still figure prominently in the vocabulary and research agendas of comparativists more than three decades later. The twenty-seven (auto)biographical essays in this volume provide numerous insights into the ingredients necessary to produce such a massive outpouring of influential works. Mershon International Studies Review (1998) 42, 322–324

Opposition in Italy

IN ROBERT DAHL'S ACCOUNT OF THE SUBJECT ‘OPPOSITION’ IS SEEN AS a political actor, opposing the government in parliament, having goals and strategies, being cohesive or not, well identifiable or not, aggressive or less aggressive in its action, and so on. As it is a ‘theory of action’, applying it would necessarily require (as Jean Blondel also shows in his essay) determining the ‘goals’ of the opposition. One would then be able to predict what a certain opposition would probably be doing, and explain why one type of opposition must be classified as different from another. I maintain, however, that the concept of ‘the goals of a political actor’ is a very elusive, and at the very least, an oversimplified concept. Indeed, it is impossible to match it with the facts and operationalize it. The analysis of the Italian case during the First Republic shows this clearly.

Policy Influence and Participation in the European Parliament

participate more in parliamentary votes. In addition to the impact of other variablesincluding the timing of votes, leadership cues, and the requirement that an absolute majority of members vote at certain stages-EP members are stimulated to participate more in votes on legislation where the EP's influence is greater. The implications of this result for legislative theory, and for our understanding of the EP, are discussed in the conclusion. How important are legislatures to the governing process? In the 25 years since Jean Blondel called for more serious comparative study to answer this question, our understanding has advanced considerably (Blondel 1970). While legislatures are ubiquitous, their influence in the policy process varies greatly across political systems, both in quantity and in type.' A curiosity, however, is that a related and equally basic question remains unanswered. Despite numerous reminders from the new institutionalists that institutions can shape the behavior of political actors, we know almost nothing about whether the policy influence of a legislature affects the behavior of its members. Several studies suggest that legislative influence is positively related to membership retention: members are more likely to remain when they see there is important work to be done (Hibbing and Moore 1991; Shepsle 1988). But the more basic issue, how members of the legislature respond to the institution's policy influence when they are actually there, has been almost entirely neglected.2 This oversight is hardly trivial. A basic task of political science is to understand the motives and behavior of important political actors. Given that influence over policy is one of a legislature's defining characteristics, the response of its membership to the institution's level of policy influence is of fundamental significance. Understanding this response is central to developing an adequate theory of legislative behavior.

Governing Together: The Extent and Limits of Joint Decision-Making in Western European Cabinets. Edited by Jean Blondel and Ferdinand Muller-Rommel. London: Macmillan, 1993. 338p. $59.95.

Governing Together: The Extent and Limits of Joint Decision-Making in Western European Cabinets. Edited by Jean Blondel and Ferdinand Muller-Rommel. London: Macmillan, 1993. 338p. $59.95. - Volume 89 Issue 2

The Profession of Government Minister in Western Europe. Edited by Jean Blondel and Jean-Louis Thiébault. New York: St. Martin's, 1991. 215p. $59.95. - Executive Leadership in Anglo–American Systems. Edited by Colin Campbell S. J. and Margaret Jane Wyszomirski. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991. 416p. $39.95.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.