Karina Kosiara-Pedersen

Short presentation

Office hours Wednesday 9-10. 

CV

I hold a cand.scient.pol. (MA) from 1999 and a PhD from 2003 from the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. I study parties and elections, currently in particular party membership, party organizational development and candidate recruitment.

Keywords: Political parties, party organizations, party membership, elections, campaigning, comparative methods, empirical analysis, parliament, party systems, political behavior, political communication, electoral systems, democracy.

I teach ‘Introduction to Political Science’ to our great first semester students and MA courses within my research fields. I supervise at all levels.
I’m director of Center for Voting and Parties (CVAP) and sit on the Department’s Research Committee and PhD Committee.

Current research

Party membership

Party membership and parties' role in representative democracy is in transistion. At the aggregate level the number of members is declining but a number of individual parties are experiencing increasing membership figures. Who are the members? Why do they enroll? What do they do? Why do they participate? What are their political opinions? What do they think of intra-party democracy? Why are some of them on the way out of their party? These are some of the questions responded to in the FSE funded survey based project on Danish party membership.

Members and Activists of Political Parties (MAPP).

International research project with the leading party member survey scholars from Europe, Israel, Canada and Australien. The project has published a state-of-the-art book on party member research. Next step is to run the first comparative party member survey. For more information, see http://www.projectmapp.eu/.

Political Parties Data Base (PPDB)

International research project with leading party researchers from Europe, Israel, Canada and Australien. The project is led by Susan E. Scarrow (Houston), Paul Webb (Sussex) and Thomas Poguntke (Düsseldorf). The purpose of the project is to create a data base for all interested to use for studying parties comparatively. The project is also publishing a book as well as several articles. For more information, see http://www.politicalpartydb.com/.

Teaching

Mine undervisnings- og vejledningskompetencer dækker temaerne politiske partier, partisystemer, politisk kommunikation, politisk deltagelse, politiske kampagner, valg og vælgere, valgsystemer, ny informations- og kommunikationsteknologi, dansk politik, Folketinget, politiske organisationer og bevægelser, New Zealands politiske system mv.

Jeg har siden 2010 undervist og været fagkoordinator på første semester, i 2010-2016 i PG og fra 2017 i 'Dansk og komparativ politik 1' (DAK 1). Derudover underviser jeg fag på kandidatuddannelsen om partier, kampagner og køn. 

Mangler du ideer til specialet, så se her:

Lars Bille konstaterede i 1997 i Partier i forandring, at de danske partier primært var massepartier men med visse træk fra catch-all og kartel parti typerne. Er der sket nogle forandringer de sidste femten år; eller med andre ord, er de danske partier stadig massepartier? Hvilke konsekvenser har det for den måde, det danske repræsentative demokrati fungerer på? En anden analyse af de politiske partier kunne have fokus på professionalisering: Hvor professionaliserede er de danske partier, hvad er årsagerne, og hvilke konsekvenser har det for det repræsentative demokrati?

Er du interesseret i politiske partier, politisk deltagelse etc. og i at basere dit speciale på interview, så overvej en analyse af hvorfor politisk engagerede (unge) ikke melder sig ind i et politisk parti - eller hvorfor de gør det.

Er du interesseret i den lille forskel? Hvis ja, så overvej at undersøge, om mandlige og kvindelige kandidater (til kommunal- eller folketingsvalg) behandles ensartet eller forskelligt af medierne. Eller om de oplever ensartede barrierer og muligheder i deres politiske karrierer.

Alternativet - hvor alternative er de?

Politikere i ikke-politiske medier: Hvorfor vil dameblade, underholdningsprogrammer mv. have politikere med? Hvorfor stiller de op? Og hvilken betydning har det for politikerne, vælgerne og demokratiet?