The Politics of Contestation

Political contestation is a key feature of democratic systems. Often conceptualized as the flipside of participation, contestation is both a sign of democratic health (citizen or groups can express dissatisfaction or opposing preferences) and an important form of feedback for policymakers. It is a form of political expression. And it has expressed itself in different ways on both sides of the Atlantic. From the rise of populism (Trump, Le Pen, Meloni, Wilders) to demonstrations against climate policies (yellow vests movement, occupation of windfarm building sights) contestation is a recurrent and important feature of politics. However, contestation has evolved over time, in its action modes (from strikes, to demonstrations, to the occupy movement) and regarding the issues which are targeted (globalization, European integration, immigration, climate policies, LGBT rights).

SAMPOL238 is a hybrid, pluri-disciplinary, transatlantic course aiming at discussing a selection of issues on both sides of the Atlantic. Topics include diversity and race, energy and climate policies, inequalities and policy influence as well as lobbying, all the way to youth involvement and youth contestation.

A student who has completed the course should have the following learning outcomes:

Knowledge

• A comprehensive understanding of the main cleavages structuring the politics of contestation in Europe and the US. These include, for example, the rural-urban divide, the centre-periphery divide, territorial tensions, the education divide, the digital divide, income/occupational divides, generational divides, gender divides, religious and ethnic divides.
• Understand how these divides affect contestation and polarization on a number of salient issues such as climate change, immigration, diversity/race, supranational integration/globalization, policy-making and lobbying, or the digitalization of society.
• Understand the relationship between the politics of contestation and more general issues such as populism, satisfaction with democracy, differential representation, trust in public authorities, or spatial inequalities.
• Understand the links between the politics of contestation and different forms of political participation, from representational forms (voting, party membership, labour union membership) to extra-representational forms (strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, petitions, civil disobedience). Relate this to movements such as the yellow vests, the occupy movement, or the Fridays for Future/School Strike for Climate movement.
• Display an understanding of the extent to which the politics of contestation overlaps with traditional approaches to understanding contestation, such as Rokkan's cleavage theory, left-right approaches, or GAL-TAN approaches.
• Understand the differences and similarities between Europe and the US regarding the structuring and expression of the politics of contestation.

Skills

• Mobilize knowledge from different sessions to answer transversal questions relating to different dimensions of the course (i.e. evidence of horizontal learning and mobilization skills).
• Present strong skills in the critical reading of a variety of texts (using both qualitative and quantitative methods) and the academic scholarship based upon those texts.
• Demonstrate capacity to construct a coherent essay. Students must show awareness of the benefits and pitfalls linked to conceptualization, hypothesis generation, variable operationalization, choice of measurement indicators, as well as the choice of method(s) to test for associations.
• Develop a capacity to understand and criticize different types of literatures using a variety of theoretical approaches and analytical tools.
• Demonstrate a capacity to manipulate and visually represent simple information and data (i.e., infographics).
• More generally, display a capacity to provide insights into the key debates related to the politics of contestation in advanced democracies.

General Competence

• Display ability to think critically, independently, and constructively.
• A capacity to read, understand, and digest material using different methods (from qualitative case studies to quantitative large-n analyses, from diachronic to synchronic analyses, from x-centered research to y-centered research).
• A capacity to build an argument based on a variety of sources, and to initiate a dialogue between those sources.
• Capacity to synthesize and present knowledge in a simple and efficient way under time constraints and displaying time-management (in the form of a semester essay).