RC06 - Political Sociology

The CPS Conference held in Sciences Po Paris on September 22-23 on 'Referendum Politics, Policies and Political Effects of Referendums in EU Countries' (see programm) gathered experts on the subject from all over Europe. Thanks again to IPSA (International Political Science Association) and Sciences Po for their financial support! The Conference will have as an output a book, which is to be published by Routledge next year.

CPS will be present at the next American Political Science Association (APSA) Conference in Philadelphia, 1-4 September 2016. CPS will promote a panel on 'Migrants' Representation. The Role of Parties, Electoral Systems and Mobilization' (chair: Luis Ramiro; discussant: Silvia Erzeel).

Abstract: This panel examines the drivers of migrant’s political representation in Europe from a Political Sociology perspective. With novel data on all national MPs coming from the Pathways project (http://www.pathways.eu/) for eight European countries – Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom – for the period since the early 1990s, the four papers examine how political parties, electoral systems and mobilization from various groups shape the levels of political representation gained by citizens of immigrant origin (CIOs) – migrants and their descendants – across Europe.

You can access further information on paper givers and paper abstracts here.

CPS is proud to announce that a Conference on 'Referendum, Policies and Political Effects in EU Countries' will be held in Paris (France) on 22-23 September 2016. The Conference will be held under the auspices of the Research Committee on Political Sociology of the International Political Science Association (IPSA RC06/ISA RC18); the Research Committee on Elections, Citizens and Parties of the International Political Science Association (IPSA RC23); and the Research Group on Democratic Procedures (PROCEDEM), CEVIPOF. The event is sponsored by CEVIPOF, IPSA Committee on Research and Training and IPSA/ISA Research Committee on Political Sociology.

The Conference is organized by:

• Laurence Morel (university of Lille & CEVIPOF, Chair of IPSA RC06/ISA RC18)
• Anika Gauja, University of Sydney, Vice-Chair of IPSA RC23
• Matt Qvortrup, Coventry University

The Conference will be introduced by a keynote lecture of Guy Lachapelle (IPSA Gen. Secr., Concordia University, Montréal) on: How to organize a referendum to be sure that its result will be respected?

The Conference benefits from two IPSA seed grants.

You may find a detailed presentation of the Conference in English and French, by clicking here.

The full programm can be read here.

The CPS released the January 2016 issue of its newsletter. You can read it here.

In this issue, you find:

1. Panels Sponsored by CPS at Upcoming Conferences
2. News from the Working Groups
3. Other News and Announcements

The list of CPS sessions at the next 3rd ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016, Vienna) and panels at the next 24th IPSA World Congress of Political Science (July 23-28, 2016) has been finalized.

Full information can be found here:

• ISA Forum of Sogiology
• IPSA World Congress of Political Science

The CPS produced its Annual Financial Report for the year 2015. It can be consulted at this link.

ICA-Polcomm & the University of Milan co-organize the International Summer School of Political Communication 'Changing Media Environments, Changing Democracies'. The Summer School will be held on 18-23 July 2016 in Milan (Italy).

Confirmed speakers are: Homero Gil de Zuñiga, Patricia Moy, Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck, Jesper Strömbäck, Dhavan Shah, Gianpietro Mazzoleni, Mauro Barisione, Yariv Tsfati, Stefano Iacus, Catherine deVries, Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw, and Marina Costa Lobo.

Lots of info here: www.polcomm2016.unimi.it

CPS released the September 2015 issue of its newsletter. You can read it here.

The CPS  would like to organize one or two panels at the IPSA Congress in Istanbul on the referendum as a crisis-solving device. Everybody who is interested to participate is invited to submit a short written proposal within September 25th (laurence.morel@eui.eu).

Description of the call:
'We see the referendum as a continuation of the negotiations by other means', said Greek Minister George Katrougalos, alluding to Clausewitz famous definition of war. The recent Greek referendum on the debt resolution plan proposed by European bodies and the IMF has revived the much debated issue of the potential impact of referendums on crisis resolution. Admittedly, referendums have often be called in the last decades, especially in Western Europe, to solve problems of internal party or coalition crisis - often on EU issues. But one has probably to come back to Gaullist referendums, or to the referendum on Monarchy in post-war Belgium, to find in Europe a use of the device with such a clear function to unblock a serious crisis at national and international level.
 
This panel is seeking theoretical and empirical papers about the crisis-solving - or crisis-worsening - potential of referendums, the factors on which it depends, and the ex-ante or ex-post legitimacy of such referendums even when they do not fully meet the requirements of democracy. Beyond the Greek case, case-studies refering to other referendums held in all parts of the world in a context of severe crisis will be very appreciated.

A new book on The Presidentialization of Political Parties. Organizations, Institutions and Leaders, edited by Gianluca Passarelli, has been published by Palgrave Macmillan.

This book considers why the level of party presidentialization varies from one country to another, and how constitutional structures and party genetics affect both the level and the degree it is present. 
Presenting an international collection of case studies from the US, Latin America, Australia, Japan and Europe, including France, Italy, Germany, Poland and the Ukraine, it examines how the presence of presidential features in political parties varies in terms of the constitutional framework. 
Highlights the importance of institutions in political life, the case studies provide empirical evidence that no stable presidentialization is possible outside regimes where a presidential dynamic is introduced by the institutions.

Further details can be found here.