ECPR Standing Group on Political Sociology

Partecipazione e Conflitto

Call for papers for a special issue on:

POLITICAL PARTIES: THEORETICAL APPROACHES, COMPARISONS AND CASE STUDIES

Guest Editors:

Francesco Raniolo, Università della Calabria, francesco.raniolo@unical.it

Marco Damiani, Università di Perugia, marco.damiani@katamail.com

Lorenzo Viviani, Università di Pisa, lorenzo.viviani@unipi.it

The crisis of political parties in contemporary societies and democracies is composed of different points of views, that require a joint effort for social and political science to try to understand the changing relationship between citizens and parties. Compared to the political mass models, which are typical of the second half of the twentieth century, parties undergo deep processes of transformation. The beginning of a critical season for the traditional forms of political organization goes back to those years; and this critical season can be configured as ideological, organizational and institutional. The main indicators of the crisis are, mainly, due to: i) an increase of the distance between the democratic institutions and the citizens-voters, ii) a decrease of the number of activists and members of political parties, iii) a constant decrease of the political and electoral participation at all levels of government. On the other hand, between the twentieth and twenty-first century, the political parties has strengthened the structure of their political organization and the weight of their parliamentary activities within the institutions, becoming more and more «state-centered parties», characterized by the progressive reduction of the forms of territorial settlement and the growth of the importance of central organisms and the representatives of the assemblies, especially those elected in national parliaments. This results in significant changes of the organizational model and their political functions. In the face of these changes, will the parties still remain a key player for the functioning of contemporary democracy?

The branch of research the call deals with the analysis on how the parties, which the public appointment made strong but are frail in credit, relate with a “re-opened” civil society, that is virtually the right place where social links can grow again and the political requests can find a voice. The aim of this special issue is to consider the planning, ideological, strategic changes of the parties and their crisis as well as to rebuild their ability in giving life to a new networking role. The ideological block and the colonization strategies towards institution and society, and the “linking” strategies towards the varied realities of the public and political domain go alongside. For these parties, the selection of the political class takes place via a reciprocal contamination among the various members of the network, where the personalization of politics and leadership becomes a relevant aspect in planning the consent and developing the political identities. It is not, therefore, a simple confrontation between the epitaph and the revival of the parties. The fact concerns, once more and as it has always been in the history of political parties, the link with the social changing, looking to the behavior of a political class, which has the task of understanding and, at the same time, addressing this change itself. It is a many-sided link, grounding a net able to create a new link between institution and society, following those patterns of identity and organization that can express new contents, importance and trust towards the mover of the political representation.

In this regard, we welcome in particular:

– political parties

– electoral studies

– leadership, personalization and presidentialisation of politics

– organizational models and membership

– internal democracy, primaries

– political communication and electoral campaigns

– political parties, lobbies, other political organizations

– parties, institutions and policies

– political parties and foreign policy

– populism and challenges to democracy

– political parties in non-democratic regimes

– political system and case studies

Peer Review Policy: Partecipazione e Conflitto adheres to a standard double-blind peer review process. Each article submitted will be evaluated by Editors and Editorial Board. If congruent with the object of the call for papers, it will be reviewed by at least two anonymous scholars.

Submission procedure:

Articles, written in English, will be submitted to a peer review process according to the following schedule:

– Submission of long abstracts (about 1,000 words): 30 May 2014

– Selection of long abstracts: 15 June 2014

– Submission of articles: 15 September 2014

– Provision of peer review feedback: 15 November 2014

– Submission of revised papers: 30 December 2014

– Publication of the issue: 15 March 2015

Articles should be no longer than 10,000 words, including notes and references. A maximum of 10 articles will be published.

Please refer to the editorial guidelines available at http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/paco/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions

Please address any queries to one of the three guest Editors.

Panel organized at the ECPR General Conference 2014, Standing group on Southern European Politics

Panel Chair: Giorgos Charalambous (PRIO Cyprus Centre and University of Cyprus).

If you are interested in proposing a Paper to this Panel, please contact Giorgios Charalambous. Deadline for Panel submissions (which include Papers) is 15 February.

Abstract

Social contention in the form of strikes, protests, riots and violent acts tends to be an important characteristic of countries in crisis. Southern European countries – Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain – are currently experiencing a dramatic economic slump and fully fledged austerity measures. Accordingly, the standard of living of large parts of southern European populaces has suffered dramatically and political alignments have been affected. Nevertheless, the proliferating dynamics of social contention that accompany these experiences remain understudied. The phenomenon of citizens and social groups seeking alternative, confrontational and even illegal channels of influence or resistance by attempting to challenge the legitimacy of political institutions and actors may not be new, but it has not been sufficiently inrorporated by scholars into the larger study of crisis environments. How economic malaise unfolds into societal behaviour cannot be fully appreciated without assessing the patterns and causes of social contention. Similarly, the consequences of contentious acts for the modalities of political competition and public governance can offer comparative insights into the cultures of policy making at times of economic crisis.

Why in certain southern European countries social contention has increased to unprecedented heights while in others social upset has not translated into contentious acts? Why some forms of protest flourish over others? What is the role of the internet and the media in initiating, spreading or obstructing contentious acts? To what extent, if at all, has social contention exercised influence on the programmatic positions offered by parties, or the policies implemented by governments, either at the national or sub-national level? The panel invites empirical papers that aim at answering the above and other related questions in an attempt to interrogate further the particularities of the countries of southern Europe and the sociopolitical manifestations of the ongoing economic crisis.

Call for papers

European Unions’ Relational Politics Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow: The Union – Labour INGO Link in Times of Change and Crisis.

Panel Sponsor: The Politics & Labour Network (Italy) Panel Chair: Antonina Gentile, Università degli Studi di Milano Panel Discussant: Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick, University of London

The need for intra- European labour solidarity is palpable in today’s Europe. With the end of the Cold War, the widening and deepening of the EU, the recent global economic crisis, and the politics of Austerity in southern Europe, calls for unions’ cross-border coordination and mobilization – both political and industrial – have progressively increased. In theory, these phenomena have been seen as intensifying the incentive for labour to organize cross-border campaigns and to access centres of European power. And they have been seen as opportunities to develop a realm of European labour and social rights; to narrow the developmental divide between Europe’s internal regions; to strengthen the European Parliament; and to promote a politics of growth against the EU’s politics of Austerity. In practice, however, INGO-led attempts to organise cross-border political and industrial mobilization have been uneven across time, space, issues and sectors. Their attempts have revealed: conflicts of interest between regional cores and peripheries of labour; an uneven representation of national unions in labour INGOs; contradictory national and EU legal institutions and legal strategies; and widely differing repertoires of labour. For scholars of labour there is ample ground for empirical research and for re-theorizing labour internationalism. During the past decade, EU institutions posed new threats to existing labour rights, as evidenced by a series of European Commission directives and rulings by the European Court of Justice. These prompted labour INGOs to construct cross-border campaigns and cross-national legal strategies – sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Central to the process of coordinating and mobilizing unions of Europe were international and European labour INGOs, e.g., the European Trade Union Confederation and the International Transport Workers Federation. But how prepared and resourced for the task were these? What baggage did labour INGOs carry from the half-century long Cold War and to what extent was that baggage dropped? How universally shared were their campaign goals and frames and, indeed, how were those goals and frames designed and by whom? How strongly represented and integrated into labour INGOs were national affiliates and regional clusters of affiliates? What were the limits of INGOs’ political/industrial/legal strategies? Even more recently, workers and unions in southern Europe have felt the full force of national and European Austerity measures. Most southern European union movements have mobilized in record numbers, frequently joining forces with other domestic social movements. Conspicuous for its absence during these recent protest events and industrial actions, however, was an additional up-scaling of southern European unions’ campaigns to the regional or EU level. There was little coordination across southern European states, and only symbolic INGO campaigning for European-wide actions in solidarity with southern European workers and unions. What factors – whether internal or external to labour INGOs, internal or external to national unions, internal or external to regions of Europe, internal or external to EU institutions, or, indeed, in the dynamics between any of these – have restricted intra-European labour solidarity with southern European unions and workers? Why the drop in INGO-led campaigning by comparison to the 1990s and 2000s? This panel seeks to interrogate European labour internationalism today and yesterday in the hope of theorizing it for tomorrow. To broach these questions, the Politics and Labour Network (Italy) welcomes a range of methods and perspectives: case studies, comparative studies, historical studies, legal studies, institutional analysis and contentious politics approaches, among the many. It is hoped that the panel’s contributions will lay the basis for a publication.

NEW DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: 9 FEBRUARY 2014

Please send abstracts to the Politics and Labour Network (Italy) Coordinator: antonina.gentile@unimi.it

This new journal is of great interest to our community. ‘New from the European Sociological Association, the EJCPS seeks to explore the relationship between culture and politics through a sound sociological lens. It welcomes both considerations of cultural phenomena in relation to political context, work that situates political phenomena within a cultural framework, and all points between these poles’.

You can find a call for papers here

Here is the EJCPS’s aim and scope from the journal’s website:

The European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology is a peer-reviewed journal published under the auspices of the European Sociological Association.

The study of culture is the fastest growing area in both European and North American sociology. After years of mild neglect, political sociology is also re-establishing itself as a central plank of the discipline. The European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology aims to be a forum not so much for these fields of study considered separately, as for any work seeking to explore the relationship between culture and politics through a sound sociological lens. It welcomes, thus, both considerations of cultural phenomena in relation to political context, work that situates political phenomena within a cultural framework, and all points between these poles. In so doing it seeks both to address matters of immediate concern and to recover the broad sociological sensibility that was once a staple of the classical tradition.