Isabela Mares, Ph.D.

Project

Defending Parliament: Responses of Mainstream Parties to Parliamentary Erosion

This book-length project investigates how mainstream political parties can respond to and contain parliamentary disruption initiated by extremist parties. Whether from the far right or far left, these parties often enter legislatures intent on undermining parliamentary procedures and obstructing the legislative process. How can democratic parties effectively counter such threats and safeguard parliamentary integrity? To answer this question, I conduct a comparative historical analysis of political developments in France and Germany, spanning from the Weimar Republic and the French Third and Fourth Republics to the present day. I develop a typology of parliamentary defense strategies, ranging from targeted sanctions against individual legislators to broader institutional reforms, such as changes to parliamentary or electoral rules. The project further examines the political demand for these defense strategies and the conditions under which stable legislative majorities can be formed to implement them. I argue that the success of collective defense measures depends on mainstream parties first establishing clear political boundaries—a cordon sanitaire—between themselves and ideologically adjacent extremists, and I analyze the political dynamics behind such decisions.

Recommended Reading

Mares, Isabela. From Open Secrets to Secret Voting: Democratic Electoral Reforms and Voter Autonomy. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Mares, Isabela, and Lauren E. Young. Conditionality and Coercion: Electoral Clientelism in Eastern Europe. Oxford University Press, 2019.
Mares, Isabela. Protecting the Ballot: How First-Wave Democracies Ended Electoral Corruption. Princeton University Press, 2022.

Colloquium, 22.04.2026

How mainstream parties fight back against extremists: explaining the choice among strategies of democratic defense

This project examines how, over the long run, mainstream parties seek to curb the electoral rise of extremist rivals. It develops a comprehensive typology of democratic defense strategies—systemic measures, such as changes to electoral rules; collective measures, such as party and association bans; and individual measures targeting specific politicians—and theorizes the partisan incentives that shape the choice among them. I argue that this choice depends on the ideological distance between mainstream parties and on whether they face competition from one or multiple extremist parties. I evaluate these propositions using historical and contemporary evidence from France and Germany, covering nearly a century of political development.

Publications from the Fellow Library

Mares, Isabela (Princeton, NJ, 2022)

Protecting the ballot : how first-wave democracies ended electoral corruption

Mares, Isabela (New York, 2019)

Conditionality and coercion : electoral clientelism in Eastern Europe Oxford studies in democratization

Mares, Isabela (Cambridge, 2015)

From open secrets to secret voting : democratic electoral reforms and voter autonomy Cambridge studies in comparative politics