Call for Papers "Political Systems in Central and Eastern Europe and Southern Europe – Comparative Studies", 2015 ECPR Joint Sessions, University of Warsaw
The comparative studies concerning the political systems of European countries concentrate first of all on the “old” EU member states. There is a small number of comparative works dealing also with the Union’s members from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), i.e.: Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Although there are many differences between these states and other EU countries, there are substantial and sometimes surprising similarities as well. This concerns particularly the EU members or still associate members from the Southern Europe (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain as well as Cyprus, Malta and Turkey) which are closest to the CEE countries in terms of political and economic changes. Comparing the political systems of both groups of countries allows for the analysis of very important political and socioeconomic processes (led by the democratization and development of the market economy), the components of political systems, the political culture, the role of contemporary ideologies in shaping political systems as well as particular domestic and external policies (as outputs of political systems). The key question in this context is to what extent different political phenomena are shaped by the specific domestic factors (historical and current ones) and to what extent by “external” factors, mainly the integration with the EU and globalization processes.
All these interesting research questions will be the subject of the Workshop within the ECPR Joint Sessions 2015 event, organized by Adam Szymański (ad_szym@poczta.onet.pl; ar.szymanski@uw.edu.pl), Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science, University of Warsaw as well as Özgün Erler Bayır (ozgunerler@yahoo.com), Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences, Istanbul University and sponsored by the ECPR Standing Group on Southern European Politics.
The expected type of paper within the Workshop is a comparative analysis on the states from CEE and Southern Europe regions. The Workshop Directors prefer comparative analyses of political systems of at least one state from each of the two regions, but also accept comparative analyses of states from only one region if the discussed issues are important for the other one.
The topics of the papers can concern:
-General processes, e.g. democratization, political and economic transformation, secularization as well as the Europeanization, regionalization and globalization
- Particular components of political systems, e.g. governing bodies, political parties (including far-right and far-left oriented parties), civil society organizations and social movements, media as well as state-Church relations, role of the military and civil-military relations
- Particular ideological/cultural and political culture elements influencing political systems, e.g. the position of nationalism, secularism/religion(s), conservatism, liberalism, populism and feminism; Euroscepticism, attitude towards democracy, etc.
- Particular policies (political system’s outputs), including among others: the economic, financial, energy, social and environmental policy as well as foreign/European and security policy
- Coping with contemporary challenges – e.g. economic crisis, globalization challenges, transnational processes that limit the role of a state
More information about the Workshop may be found in the Workshop outline in the Academic Programme (look at the Workshop no. 11): http://www.ecpr.eu/Events/PanelList.aspx?EventID=90
If you are interested in participation in the Workshop, please, submit a paper proposal by 1 December 2014 via MyECPR.
