Agenda

CEE General Seminar "Personalised Politics in the Age of the Cartel Party: Opportunities for Participatory Renewal"

The paper examines the prognosis for partisan politics in the era of the cartel party – and era in which party leaders reign supreme, party democracy is illusory and policy differences between parties are muted. It challenges the view that the personalisation of politics, or personalised politics, stands in opposition to political parties as organisations and threatens their role as mechanisms of linkage between citizens and the state. Rather, it explores the possibilities for partisan democratic renewal and increased citizen engagement that arise with a shift to more individualised, or personalised types of political participation. In doing so, the paper draws on perspectives from social movement and media and communications literatures to argue that personalised politics can be seen as a phenomenon that applies not only to political elites (party leaders, elected representatives, candidates etc.) but one that can also be used to understand the changing role and participatory preferences of party members, supporters and citizens. The paper is structured in three parts. The first outlines the characteristics and empirical markers of personalised politics, moving away from a focus on elites to the engagement profiles of individual citizens – both in the online and offline arenas. The second section examines how political parties have accommodated these new patterns of participation within their organisational arrangements, focusing on the key party functions of candidate selection, policy development and campaign communication. The final section explores how these new organisational structures and processes are reshaping the role of parties as mediators between citizens and the state, and the challenges involved in reconciling personalised politics with collective identity. The primary contribution of the paper is intended to be theoretical and conceptual, but the argument will substantiated with a comprehensive range of comparative illustrative examples from various established democracies.

Tuesday 12 November 2019, 12.30-2.30 pm

Sciences Po, Salle du Conseil, 13 rue de l'Université, 75007 Paris

More information on the seminar here.

The Opening Ceremony of the seventieth academic year of the College of Europe, Bruges campus, takes place at the Concert Hall ('t Zand, Bruges), on Wednesday, 13 November 2019, in the presence of Mr Donald Tusk, President of the European Council.

Bruges, Belgium

13 November 2019

More information about the ceremony available here.

From a non-existent player fifteen years ago, China has now become one of the largest senders of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows in the world. By and large, this new provenance of capital has been welcomed by host countries, especially given the drop in other sources of FDI in the wake of the American financial crisis and Euro crisis in the late 2000s. The exponential growth of Chinese direct investment, however, has also been accompanied in some cases by controversy and even resistance, both in developing and in developed economies. In some countries of the European Union (EU), critics have expressed fears and denounced some of the potential dangers of this investment, such as lowering of local labor standards, hollowing out of industrial core through repatriation of assets, and acquisition of dual use technology. The ensuing political backlash has received considerable media attention and increased scrutiny over subsequent deals, notably through the tightening of inbound FDI screening procedures. In other EU countries, however, Chinese FDI has been received with open arms and host countries have become advocates for Chinese interests inside the EU. This talk explores the political challenges posed by the recent explosion of Chinese direct investment in the European Union. First, it considers two alternative explanations for these peculiar political challenges. Second, it explores the implications of these challenges on European unity and policies.

Thursday 14 November 2019, 12.30-2.30 pm

Sciences Po, Room TBA, Paris

More information available here.

The conference discusses the challenges of realizing the full potential of the Internet of Things (IoT), focusing on the emergence of models to produce, transfer and commercialize innovation in this context and the implications for technological advancement and competition policy.

European University Institute, Florence

15 November 2019

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A one-week interactive journey focusing on the life of EU projects, from programming through to tender writing, project implementation and evaluation.

Bruges, Belgium

18-22 November 2019

Read more about this course here.

The purpose of this five-day training course is to provide a practical insight into the mechanisms and dynamics between and within the EU institutions.

Bruges, Belgium

18-22 November 2019

Read more about this training course here.

The aim of the seminar is to raise awareness and explore the potential to tackle local and global challenges based on Croatia/EU cooperation with Japan. The seminar will promote common values that EU and Japan share and explore potential emerging from cooperation between Croatia, the EU and Japan to achieve EU priorities until 2024: protecting citizens and freedoms; developing a strong and vibrant economic base; building a climate-neutral, green, fair and social Europe; and promoting European interests and values on the global stage. These priorities are coherent with bilateral agreements between the EU and Japan, namely the Strategic Partnerships Agreement (SPA) and the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).

The seminar will include three sessions. The first one will deal with common values as a basis for cooperation and common actions. The second session will outline opportunities emerging from the Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement and the third will focus on global issues and link them with SPA.

The House of Europe, Zagreb, Croatia

19 November 2019

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IRMO is organizing a three-day workshop for museum and other heritage professionals in Croatia with the aim of promoting knowledge transfer concerning the issues of digital skills necessary for developing quality digital cultural content and services. The workshop is planned in cooperation with the UK partner - Culture24 - that has extensive experience in successfully developing digital skills among UK heritage institutions.

The planned workshop is very much needed, as it is necessary that Croatian cultural institutions develop their digital skills, confidence, and literacy in order to begin to exploit digital opportunities and to develop stronger cooperation on the European level.  The workshop represents a first step in ensuring further collaboration with partners having expertise in developing digital culture that would provide for enhancing digital skills among cultural heritage professionals in Croatia in the future. The workshop has received financial support from the Croatian Ministry of Culture, the British Embassy Zagreb and British Council Croatia and logistical support from DARIAH.HR, ICARUS.HR and the Museum Documentation Centre. The workshop will have two moderators and it is intended for 20 participants. It will be held at the Central Office for International Cooperation at the University of Zagreb, Zvonimirova 8. The working language will be English.

Zagreb, Croatia

20-22 November 2019

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Seminar Cities are back in town "Launch of the book Routledge Handbook of Middle Eastern Cities".

Speakers: Haim Yacobi (UCL, DPU) and Eric Verdeil (Sciences Po, CERI).

Wednesday 20 November 2019, 5-7 pm

Sciences Po, LIEPP’s Conference Room, 254, boulevard Saint-Germain, 75007 Paris

More information here.

Prominent scholars have viewed the Great Reform Act as a concession made by incumbent elites in order to defuse a revolutionary threat. In this essay, we argue that the threat from below did not entail a significant risk of regime overthrow and was addressed by establishing professional police forces in all provincial towns and half the counties. Such forces had been stoutly opposed by the gentry since the Glorious Revolution, on the grounds that they would increase Crown power too much. To make professional police forces palatable to the middle class required first reforming both budgets and elections at all levels of governance (national, municipal and county), so as to ensure taxpayers that their representatives would control the finances of the new forces.

Friday 22 November 2019, 12.30 – 2.30 pm

Sciences Po, Salle du Conseil, 13 rue de l’Université, 75007 Paris

More information available here.

Globalization is underpinned by international organizations—intergovernmental, non-governmental, or private—that develop norms to diffuse around the world. This article presents an integrative model for understanding how boardroom dynamics within international organizations impact the content of global norms: we argue that these processes are determined, initially, by board members’ education and careers—both a function of the dominant norm apparatus of globalization—and, subsequently, by boardroom interactions between these individuals. To document these processes, we focus on the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a body that decides on economic policy issues impacting the lives of billions. First, we trace the education and career trajectories of all 727 board members—that is, state representatives—between 1980 and 2009. We find that they are homogeneous in terms of academic training, but heterogeneous in terms of professional backgrounds. Second, we document how the aforementioned attributes of Board members impact the way they behave in the boardroom, and—by extension—organizational output. Our findings reveal that global norm-making is driven by professionalization and elite socialization dynamics in apex communities, even in formal intergovernmental contexts where the primacy of state interests is commonly assumed to dominate

Co-organised by Sciences Po, MaxPo & Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics.

Monday 25 November 2019, 12.30-2.30 pm

Sciences Po, LIEPP’s Conferences Room, 254 boulevard Saint-Germain, 75007 Paris

More information available here.

CEE General Seminar

Speaker: Peter John, King's College London

Tuesday 26 November 2019 at 12.30 pm

Sciences Po, Salle du Conseil, 13 rue de l'Université, 75007 Paris

More information available here.

Seminar Cities are back in town: "Presentation of the book The Upper Limit: How Low-Wage Work Defines Punishment and Welfare"

Speaker: François Bonnet

Wednesday 27 November 2019

Sciences Po, Room Goguel, 27 rue Saint-Guillaume, 75007 Paris

More information available here.

Conference: "5th The Role of State in Varieties of Capitalism (SVOC)"

The SVOC2019 conference is organized by the Institute of World Economics of the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Center for European Neighborhood Studies, Central European University.

Date: 28-29 November 2019

Venue: Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

Organization lead: Gyula Gaal

Deadline for abstract submission: July 31, 2019

Read more about this event here.

On November 28-29 2019, Mercator-IPC Fellows Maissam Nimer and Jannes Tessmann, within the framework of their Mercator-IPC Fellowship, will be organizing an international conference on “Exploring the Dimensions of Refugee Inclusion” at Consulate General of the Netherlands, Istanbul, Turkey. The conference aims to explore the structural, institutional, and strategic determinants of refugee inclusion into various domains of host societies.

Consulate General of the Netherlands, Istanbul

28-29 November 2019

Find more information here.

Séminaire POPAR (POlitique & PARlement) "Anthropologie du Parlement" - discussion d´une recherche en cours

Saisir l'Assemblée à partir de son infrastructure de communication. Le projet d'une anthropologie tant politique que technique.

En ce début de 21e siècle, l'Assemblée nationale française montre une volonté forte de "modernisation" de ses procédures et des activités qu'elle accueille, qui prend appui sur une dite "révolution numérique". Le programme de recherche dont il est question ici vise à questionner et à décrire comment la mise en œuvre technique de ce projet politique participe à réinventer l'institution parlementaire. Il interroge ce qui fait l'essence de l'Assemblée, quelles conditions sociales et matérielles sous-tendent aujourd'hui son existence et par quels moyens celle-ci assure sa pérennité dans le temps long. Ce programme de recherche conduit à reconstruire l'histoire de l'infrastructure de communication de l'Assemblée et à interroger les activités qui se déploient dans le Palais Bourbon, dans une perspective où l'anthropologie sollicite les acquis de la science politique, de la sociologie et des sciences de l'information et de la communication.

Vendredi 29 novembre 2019, 12h30 – 14h30

Sciences Po, Salle Goguel, 27 rue Saint-Guillaume, 75007 Paris

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This technical and interactive training programme presents the purpose of M&E and useful practices. The objective of this course is to ensure that participants are thoroughly acquainted with the main principles and techniques of M&E of EU-funded projects.

Bruges, Belgium

8-10 June 2020

More information available here.