Maurice Duverger
Maurice Duverger (born June 5, 1917 in Angoulême ; † December 17, 2014 ) was a French lawyer , political scientist , author and politician . In the Duverger's Law named after him, it is stated that a proportional representation system (such as in Italy) tends to multiply parties, and a majority system (such as in the UK or USA) leads to a two-party system .
Stages of life
As a professor of law, Duverger made a significant contribution to the establishment of political science as a university discipline. He was active in teaching for over forty years; with professorships in Bordeaux (1940–1955), Poitiers (1942/1943), Paris (1955–1985, Sorbonne 1971–1985), Vienna (1965), Tel-Aviv (1979), Geneva (1983–1986) and New York (1986). In 1962 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .
Maurice Duverger was a member of the social democratic group of the European Parliament from 1989 to 1994 , into which he was elected via the list of the Italian Partito Democratico della Sinistra (the successor party to the Communist Party of Italy ).
Scientific work
At the beginning of his career, Duverger taught as a specialist in administrative law in Bordeaux. Thanks to his colleague Pière Maydieu, who also brought him into contact with the newspapers “ Le Monde ” and “Liberation”, he began to study the sociology of law and constitutional law.
This influence from political issues is expressed in his first publication “The Constitution of France” (1944): In it he declares the French constitution of 1940 to be irregular and claims that the assembly that created it is a “de facto government ". In the resistance newspaper "Liberation" he also analyzed the legitimacy of the Provisional Government of France and devoted himself to social science theory.
Furthermore, as early as 1944, he assigned the party system an important role in shaping the political order. In 1946 he expanded his theses to the effect that there was a compelling relationship between electoral and party systems. This relationship is at the heart of his most important publication: "The Political Parties" (1951). The work is one of the classics of party research - its importance for science is made clear by the translation into many languages (English, German, Spanish, but also Turkish, Iranian and Arabic). According to Duverger's thesis on the relationship between the electoral and party system, also known as “Duverger's Law”, majority voting promotes party dualism, i. H. it usually leads to a relatively rigid two-party system .
In addition to the "law" named after him, Duverger played a key role in coining the term " semi-presidential system of government ". In 1956 this principle appeared for the first time in one of his articles in “ Le Monde ”. With the definition he originally described France's “mixed system” with its “bipolar” executive : According to the constitution, France has a parliamentary system in which the government elected by parliament provides the executive, but the president also has relevant executive powers. This means that the President is of central importance, not least in the eyes of public opinion.
In the course of his career, the lawyer Duverger devoted himself more and more to political science topics and combined them with legal matters. Among other things, he is concerned with the relationship between social forces and the legal framework. Shortly after the Second World War, he campaigned for political science to be increasingly incorporated into university teaching. In 1948 he founded the Institute for Political Studies in Bordeaux. Duverger is one of the co-founders of European political science, which only began to establish itself after 1945. As a trained lawyer, he is primarily committed to influencing legal science through political science. Political science, by its definition, is a science-carrefour . In other words, it is a meeting place for scientists from different disciplines: Historians and philosophers could shape it as well as legal scholars, anthropologists and sociologists. He himself worked a. a. worked with historians at the Center d'Analyse comparative des Systèmes in the 1970s .
In addition to his scientific works, Duverger also published articles and essays in numerous newspapers (especially in Le Monde , in the Resistance daily Liberation, which existed until 1964, El País and in the Corriere della Sera ).
See also
Important publications
- Les constitutions de France (The French Constitution), 1944
- Les partis politiques (The Political Parties), 1951 - German 1959
- Droit constitutionnel et institutions politiques (Constitutional law and political institutions), 1955
- La IVeme République et le régime présidentiel (The 4th Republic and the Presidential Order ), 1961
- Sociologie politique (political sociology), 1966
- De la dictature (On the dictatorship), 1961
-
Janus: les deux faces de l'Occident
- German: Democracy in the technical age. The Janus face of the west. Transl. And preface by Kurt Sontheimer . Piper, Munich 1973 ISBN 3492019986
- Europa-Union Schweiz, ed .: The historical compromise. Chances and Limits of Eurocommunism . Amounts from MD, Theodor Leuenberger, Werner Gysin et al Colloquium (Copress), Berlin 1979 ISBN 3767804573
- La Cohabitation des Français (The Cohabitation of the French), 1987
Web links
- Literature by and about Maurice Duverger in the catalog of the German National Library , until 1973
- Entry on Maurice Duverger in the Members' database of the European Parliament
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Duverger, Maurice |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French lawyer, political scientist, author and politician, MEP |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 5, 1917 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Angoulême |
| DATE OF DEATH | 17th December 2014 |