In democracies, political parties can serve both as agents for stability and for change. Regarding the former, parties aggregate and adjudicate among diverse interests in society and, when functioning well, use these interests to inform policy. But parties can also be handmaidens to the rise of new issue concerns—like immigration, Europe, pensions, or the environment—and inject a level of instability into what were once predictable political systems. What moves parties to become champions of new issues or, for that matter, to change their positions on old ones? Why do some parties in Europe today seem quick to sell out their principles to curry favor with voters while others remain wed to old principles? And what if parties fail to react to growing pressures in society?

Timothy Hellwig from IU's Department of Political Science and Swen Hutter from FUB will discuss these questions in the second Berlin-based event of this year's Freie Universität Berlin–Indiana University joint speaker series under the theme Moving People.