Posted on 04 October 2012
A conference to honour Professor Peter Mair has been held jointly by the Department of Political and Social Sciences and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, examining how political parties manage the tension between their international obligations and those to their electors.
Mair died in August 2011, over 30 years after he first came to the EUI as a researcher. He worked as a departmental assistant in the early 1980s before embarking on an international career, returning to the EUI in 2005. The three-day ‘Responsive or Responsible? Parties, Democracy and Global Markets’ conference celebrated his most recent work on party politics.
“Over time he became more interested in the impact of the European Union on governments and their ability to manoeuvre and be responsible,” said Professor Alexander Trechsel. “Squeezed from above because they were obliged to respect international treaties and from below by the citizens who have their demands and had voted for them.”
The conference began by looking at the way democratic theory developed, before exploring the empirical implications of this new tension and on the final day looking at how parties respond and adapt.
The attendees were a selection of the people Mair worked with during his career, from a variety of backgrounds. For Professor Luciano Bardi, limiting numbers was challenging as “Peter was a person with one of the largest networks in terms of people he really cooperated with – we could have filled a stadium!”
The multidisciplinary conference was reflective of Mair’s approach to political science, said Trechsel: “He was not a political theorist but at the same time he was no number cruncher just running models. He was theoretically very strong but always empirically grounded and conceptually clear and solid.”
A publication based on the conference will follow, while the Chair in Comparative Politics has been renamed in recognition of Mair’s contribution to the field. This post will be held by Stefano Bartolini, currently director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Academic Studies, in September 2013. Bartolini recalled the “very close friendship” he established with Mair at the EUI in the 1980s, and said he was honoured to take up the position.
(Text by Rosie Scammell)