Section Structure for the EPSA 2011 1st Annual General Conference

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The ten sections to which proposals to present a paper or to serve as a panel chair or discussant are listed below, along with the names of the chair(s) of each section.

1. Party Politics and Electoral Competition (Ray Duch and Paul Kellstedt)
   
   This section invites paper proposals that address all aspects of electoral politics.  We are particularly interested in papers that propose innovative theories and empirical projects that help us understand how the strategies of parties, both as electoral and governmental actors, interact with institutional contexts, to shape the electoral behaviour of voters.  Examples here of innovative proposals include those that incorporate formal models, employ lab, field and internet experiments, exploit recent advances in automated text analysis, propose novel strategies for estimating dynamic relationships in hierarchical models, etc.


2. Public Opinion and Political Sociology (Susan Banducci and Lynn Vavreck)
   
   The Public Opinion and Political Sociology section welcomes paper, panel, and roundtable proposals addressing all aspects of public opinion and political sociology (including political communication and political psychology). We encourage proposals address questions that are central to the study of public opinion such as: How do citizens understand and respond to political issues?  What are the dynamics of opinion formation? What role do elites and political institutions play in the formation of political attitudes? We are particularly interested in proposals that address questions of diversity (racial, ethnic, class or gender) in public opinion and heterogeneity across political contexts (for example, comparative or regional). We are also interested in new developments in data, measurement, question wording, and methods for addressing public opinion and political sociology questions. Such proposal could include innovative applications of existing techniques, including those from other disciplines.


3. Political Institutions (Torun Dewan and Indridi Indridason)
   
   The Political Institutions section of EPSA welcomes any proposals using formal or quantitative methods to analyze the institutions of parliamentary government. Substantive areas of interest include, though are not restricted to: executive-legislative relations (including government formation and termination); legislative behaviour; cabinet governance; political careers; and party competition. We welcome papers in positive political theory as well as empirical analysis of political institutions.


4. European Union Politics (Simon Hix)
   
   We welcome paper proposals on any aspect of EU politics, including political behaviour (such as public opinion, party competition, or interest group politics), institutional politics (e.g. executive, legislative or judicial politics), policy outputs and policy-making, intergovernmental bargaining, and treaty reform. Papers with either innovative research designs, or new data, or quantitative methods, or any combination of these things, are particularly welcome.


5. International and Domestic Conflict (Gerald Schneider and Branislav Slantchev)
   
   This section invites any kind of paper or panel proposal that promises to explore the causes and consequences of domestic and international conflict. Studies on all forms of conflict are welcome; a special emphasis will be on intensive, but not necessarily violent political exchanges. Proposals will therefore cover a wide range of topics, going from crisis bargaining over revolutions and mass killings to economic, political and environmental effects of conflict. We particularly invite papers that offer experimental or field evidence in support of novel theoretical deductions and studies that explore why political actors resort to one particular violent instrument like military campaigns or terrorism to reach a specific goal.


6. Political Economy (Mark Hallerberg)
   
   This section employs a broad definition of political economy. Political explanations of economic phenomena, economic policy choice and performance, and the functioning of economic institutions are all welcome. Similarly, economic approaches to political phenomena are also encouraged.


7. International Organization (Frank Schimmelfennig)
   
   In this section, we invite paper and panel submissions broadly dealing with international institutions, politics, and policy. Note that there are separate sections for EU politics and international conflict but papers on EU external relations and comparative regionalism may be submitted here.


8. Public Policy (Fabrizio Gilardi and Charles Shipan)
   
   This section invites panel and paper proposals on a wide range of topics related to public policy and is open to any theoretical orientation and methodological approach. We welcome especially studies combining innovative theoretical arguments and creative research designs.


9. Political Methodology (Jude Hays)
   
   The political methodology section invites proposals for papers, panels, and roundtables addressing all areas of empirical methodology including, but not limited to, research design, causal inference (broadly defined), model specification, estimation, and measurement. Proposals that develop new techniques for empirical political analysis or involve innovative applications of existing methods to political science research are particularly encouraged.


10. Comparative Politics (Thomas Plümper and Georg Vanberg)
    
    This section invites paper or panel proposals that study political institutions, political decisions, and policy outcomes in comparative perspective. We are not just interested in cross-country research but also invite submissions that compare different political systems on sub-national level. We particularly invite submission that offer an innovative angle to established research areas or have the capacity to open new fields of research. This specifically includes submissions which treat obvious and often neglected problems of comparative research such as heterogeneity among the units of analysis and spatial dependence not as a nuisance but as theoretically and substantively interesting.