Letter of the past Chair

Dear members,

after eight years of chairmanship I leave the charge to Laurence Morel, elected by the new CPS board as chairperson. These years have been characterized by an intense activity of promotion and organization for increasing the CPS presence at the official conferences of IPSA and ISA. This aim has been met, in my opinion. As you can see below, the number of sessions we sponsored covered the maximum numbers of allotted sessions to CPS at each occasion. Moreover, as required by the statutes, we organized inter-congresses conferences. Some workgroups affiliated to CPS have also been particularly active, like the one on ‘Members and Activists of Political Parties’ now chaired by Emilie van Haute. This working group stands as a marvellous example of international cooperation and high quality scholar research. I hope Laurence Morel will stimulate and foster similar groups. CPS is in good health on both the financial and membership side. It has 110 members from ISA and 556 IPSA members interested in CPS activity. The Financial Balance at 31 July 2014 is 3,377 euro. I am totally confident that the new chairperson and the new board will increase the CPS activity on every aspect.

Piero Ignazi

Summary of Activities 2006 – 2014

Panels and conferences: International conference on "Political Parties: the challenge of organization and representation in a period of social and political malaise", University of Bologna, Italy, 10-11 June 2014 14 sessions at the World Congress of ISA in Yokohama, Japan, 13-19 July 2014; International workshop on “Religiosity, ideology and voting in Europe” Milan, 10-12 January 2013; 20 sessions at the World Congress in Madrid, 8-12 July 2012; 16 sessions at the Second ISA Forum of Buenos Aires, 1-4 August 2012; 16 sessions at the World Congress of ISA in Gothenburg, 11-17 July 2010; 5 sessions at the World Congress of IPSA in Santiago of Chile, 12-16 July 2009; 9 sessions at the First ISA Forum of Barcelona, 5-8 September 2008; International conference on “Class and religion in contemporary party politics”, University of Bologna, Department of Politics, Institutions, History, Bologna, 1-2 December 2006; 4 panels at the World Congress of IPSA in Fukuoka, 9-13 July 2006; 4 panels at the World Congress of ISA in Durban, 23-29 July 2006.

Newsletters: CPS has periodically sent official Newsletters to its members: usually twice per year plus a few extra Newsletters per year depending on the intensity of activities.


Letter of the new Chair

Dear CPS members*,

It’s a great pleasure and honor to take over from Piero Ignazi at the head of the Committee of Political Sociology, and let me first thank you all for having me elected in the new Executive Board, which in turn elected me to the Chair. With the help of Ferdinand Mueller-Rommel, who has kindly accepted to be the co-Chair of the Committee, I will do my best in this four years term to fulfill the main tasks assigned by IPSA and ISA to Research Committees, that is: running panels at the various Congresses and Forums of the two Associations, being present as well at other disciplinary meetings, possibly by means of institutionalized links (like we already have with APSA), organizing academic conferences and research activities through working groups, and disseminating information to members via our Website and periodic Newsletter. In this latter respect, I want to encourage all of you to send regularly to me and to the co-editor Michelangelo Vercesi news or relevant informations about the academic/research activities that you are conducing and wish to bring to the attention of CPS members, or other news you know about and could profitably be posted on our website (just published books, events like conferences, summer schools, Masters or Ph.D courses, vacant positions...). Regarding the CPS activities, the first announcement I want to make is the launching by Ferdinand of a new working group on “Personnalization and Politics”, which will start soon with a broad interdisciplinary call to everybody interested to participate. Beside the other CPS working groups on “Members and Activists of Political Parties”, “Social Movements and Contentious Politics”, and “Political Inequality”, this new working group will form the backbone of the scientific activity of the CPS in the next few years. I myself plan to create a fifth group on “The Transformations of Democracy”, at the crossroad of political theory and political sociology, which could be another pillar of our activity. The CPS is a “big” committee (more than 600 members), with a “big” history, since its foundation by Lipset and Rokkan in 1960, and the involvement of other giants of the discipline like Raymond Aron, Simon Eisenstadt, Mattei Dogan, Juan Linz or Giovanni Sartori, so we should prove worthy of our masters…on the shoulders of which we are now standing…In the meantime, let me wish a Happy New Year to everybody!

Laurence Morel