2018 talks and presentations
Workshop on Electoral Integrity and Constitutional Democracy in Latin America
at the Clough Center for Constitutional Democracy, Boston College.
Source:: https://www.bc.edu/centers/cloughcenter/events.html
Dr Sarah Cameron talks at the University of Sydney's Department of Government and International Relations Colloquium on Citizens and the Crash: Political Protest and the Global Financial Crisis in Cross-National Comparison.
How did the global financial crisis—the greatest economic crisis since the depression of the 1930s—affect trends in political protest? Although the world saw several large mobilizations in response to the crisis, including Occupy Wall Street and the Indignados movement in Spain, we know little about how economic shocks affect protest participation trends more broadly. This paper presentation examines the impact of the crisis on protest participation, with data from the World Values Survey in 18 countries, alongside protest event data from the Integrated Crisis Early Warning System (ICEWS). The paper finds that although the crisis led to specific protest mobilizations, it depressed protest participation more generally in societies affected to a greater extent by the crisis.
In recent years, a growing number of parliamentarians, governments, and civil society organizations around the world have drawn attention to what are perceived to be rising levels of violence, abuse, and intimidation directed at political candidates and elected officials. Global practitioners, in particular, have highlighted that women in politics appear to be targeted more often and more viciously than their male colleagues. Responding to these trends, scholars in multiple disciplines – including forensic science, history, economics, and political science – have published studies on this phenomenon. Collectively, they have sought to theorize and operationalize ‘violence against politicians’ and ‘violence against women in politics’; document its forms and prevalence in different contexts around the world; and explore its impact both on politics and on society at large. To date, however, there has been little cross-fertilization across these literatures, undermining opportunities to better understand this phenomenon – as well as the degree to which it is gendered or not. This exploratory seminar seeks (1) to initiate a dialogue among scholars from these different disciplines, sharing theories and approaches to data collection and analysis, and (2) to bring them together with practitioners currently engaged in developing program and policy responses to this problem in different parts of the world. Desired outcomes include the publication of an edited volume and the creation of an international network of scholars and practitioners working on violence against politicians, which could continue to collaborate on these issues, both from a scholarly and a policy perspective.
Center for Integrated Life Sciences and Engineering (CILSE), 610 Commonwealth Avenue
Hosted by Center for the Study of Europe, University of Boston Co-hosts: University of Oslo(UiO:Nordic), Nordic Research Network (ReNEW) Harvard University (WFCIA/SCANCOR)
The Nordic region has attracted great interest during the last decade. The Nordic nations score high on global indexes of happiness, equality and welfare, transparency and economic competitiveness, environmental policies, trust, associational life and government effectiveness. Yet, the glowing idealization of the region has been tempered by the electoral success of populist parties and the treatment of asylum-seekers and migrants. The Nordic countries represent utopia to some but dystopia to others, in part due to very different assessments of the model of consensus and conformity embedded in Nordic institutions such as the welfare state. Whether as an object of admiration or criticism, the Nordic model remains a common reference point in comparative and global politics. The aim of this workshop was to provide informed discussion on the challenges and paradoxes represented by these small-scale, societies on populism.
Event website: http://www.bu.edu/european/news/calendar/?eid=216660
The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems in collaboration with the Electoral Integrity Project is holding a Plenary Session in conjunction with APSA 2018. The business meeting held from 9am-2:30pm is a closed event, but talks and discussions are open to the public from 3:00-5:30pm and all are encouraged to attend.
3:00 – 3:30 Presentation and Discussion: Electoral Integrity
The Burgeoning New Research Agenda on Electoral Integrity: Evidence from Expert and Public Survey Datasets. Pippa Norris.
3:30 – 4:15 Presentations and Discussion: Comparative Research
New Forms of Electoral Mobilization Across the World: Evidence from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. John Aldrich, Rachel Gibson, and Pedro Magalhães.
Lost in Translation - How Differences in Word Intensity Affect Citizens’ Satisfaction with the Working of Democracy. Stefan Dahlberg.
Meaningful Choice? The Party Choice Set and Satisfaction with Democracy. Ruth Dassonneville and Ian McAllister.
4:15 – 5:30 Presentations and Discussion: Single Country Research
The Hillary Hypotheses: Testing Candidate Views of loss. Stephen Quinlan and Michael Lewis-Beck.
Mexico 2018: Anti-Elite Sentiments as Defined by Module 5 of CSES and the Vote. Rodrigo Castro.
Voter Behaviour and Political Mobilization in Iran. Daniel Tavana and Kevan Harris.
5:30 – 5:45 Closing
6:00 – 9:00 Dinner – Harvest restaurant
The Executive Committee of the World Values Survey Association met in Boston for one day on Friday 31st August 2018 in conjunction with the APSA annual meeting. The event reviewed progress on the survey fieldwork and planned the next steps in the process of completing the 7th wave.
The WVS-7 questionnaire includes the battery of items monitoring public attitudes towards electoral integrity and confidence in elections, as well as measuring a broad range of social, economic and political values, such as support for democracy, trust in political institutions, and activism in politics.
The EIP project co-sponsored the event as part of its support for this major study.
Members of the EC:
1. Christian Haerpfer, President
2. Alejandro Moreno, Vice-President
3. Chris Welzel, Vice-President
4. Pippa Norris, EC
5. Marta Lagos, EC
6. Bi Puranen, EC
7. Ron Inglehart, ex officio, Founding President
8. Jaime Diez-Medrano, Data archive
9. Kseniya Kizilova, Secretariat
10. Juan Diez-Nicolas, SAC
11. Marita Carballo, SAC
12. Ian McAllister, SAC
World Values Survey EC at Sonsie after a long day’s planning meeting at APSA 2018.
Join us August 30 – September 2, 2018, in Boston for the 114th APSA Annual Meeting & Exhibition to address the latest scholarship in political science while exploring the 2018 theme, “Democracy and Its Discontents.” APSA and the 2018 Program Chairs Henry Farrell, The George Washington University, and Anna Grzymala-Busse, Stanford University, look forward to your participation in panels and sessions prepared by APSA’s 56 divisions and numerous related groups at the 2018 APSA Annual Meeting. APSA brings together individuals representing a range of geographic distribution, field of professional interest, methodological orientation, types of institutions where members are employed, race, ethnicity, gender and gender identity, sexuality, disability, and other important forms of diversity.
In 2017, election management bodies (EMBs) around the world were confronted with a number of new challenges: presidential elections in Kenya were declared invalid amidst allegations of problems with the electoral commission’s databases and computers; elections in Papua New Guinea were delayed in some areas due to striking poll workers and concerns about the accuracy of the electoral register; and a commission on voter fraud in the United States was thwarted by state electoral officials refusing to release data.
In response to these challenges, researchers from around the globe have renewed their focus on electoral management issues in both domestic and comparative perspective. This workshop aims to bring together scholars and practitioners to discuss major challenges in electoral management, and foster new collaborations.
This workshop was unique in facilitating the input of practitioners in these scholarly debates by inviting two discussants per panel: one from the scholarly community, and one from the practitioner community, in order to engage in better discussion with those working on the front-lines of electoral management.
Date: August 29, 2018
Location: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Co-Chairs: Holly Ann Garnett & Toby S. James
Organizer: Electoral Management Network, Electoral Integrity Project
Paper submission deadline: August 15, 2018
Event website: http://www.electoralmanagement.com/events/
Holly Garnett and Toby James presented new data on how how electoral officials evaluations of elections compares to other measures
The 2018 General Conference will be held at Universität Hamburg in northern Germany. ECPR’s General Conference remains Europe's largest annual gathering of political scientists, often attracting more than 2,000 scholars from throughout the world and at all stages of their career.
Jeffery Karp and Hanna Wass will be co-chairing the Democracies at Risk stream that includes the following five Panels:
1. Elections at Risk: The Dark Side of Political Communication and Mobilisation
2. Electoral Equality at Risk
3. Mitigating Electoral Violence
4. Rising Cynicism and the Participation Gap
5. You Can’t Fool All the People All the Time: Political Trust at Risk
The Electoral Integrity Project is also contributing to the panel Perspectives on Political Protest (2pm Saturday 25 August) where EIP Manager and Postdoctoral Fellow Sarah Cameron presents her paper Political Protest and the Economic Crisis in Cross-National Comparison.
Electoral Integrity panels at the Brisbane IPSA World Congress.
Dr Sarah Cameron, the Electoral Integrity Project Manager and Postdoctoral Research Fellow, presents an overview of the state of electoral integrity around the world across different types of political regime for the Harvard Club of Australia Monday Club Lunch. This draws upon the work of the Electoral Integrity Project assessing the quality of elections since 2012, covering 285 elections in 164 countries to date. The talk will delve into challenges from recent and upcoming elections, including Malaysia, the United States midterm elections, as well as Australia.
Join two of the United States leading political psychologists, Stanley Feldman and Leonie Huddy in a roundtable discussion hosted by US Studies Centre CEO Professor Simon Jackman, to talk about the role of populism, authoritarianism and gender in American politics, and the politics of democracies in Europe and Australia.
This event is jointly presented with The United States Studies Centre
Increasing partisan polarization has been one of the defining characteristics of American politics over the past two decades. We know that Democrats and Republicans have become more consistently sorted on ideology and issue preferences but the underlying dynamics of this sorting process are less well understood. Looking at national survey data from 1992 to 2016, Professor Stanley Feldman argues that people high in authoritarianism -- the desire for strong in-group cohesion and common social norms -- have responded to social change by becoming more consistently Republican.
The Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA) will host a research workshop that brings together scholars of diverse disciplinary backgrounds, such as for example political scientists, peace and conflict researchers, cultural anthropologists, and political sociologists.
Presentations will look at the causes, dynamics and consequences of electoral violence and contributions that empirically examine the wide range of measures usually suggested to prevent and reduce electoral violence, such as electoral security arrangements, institutional frameworks and electoral systems, or civil society initiatives and public awareness campaigns, and papers that more directly address the role and effectiveness of election observations missions.
Dr Thomas Wynter, the Electoral Integrity Project's Postdoctoral Research Associate and PEI Program Manager, will present on the Clientelism and Coercion in Emerging Democracies by drawing upon the Perception of Electoral Integrity dataset.
Authoritarian populists have disrupted politics in many societies, as seen U.S. and the UK. This event brings two leading scholars, Pippa Norris and John Keane to discuss their new books and the power of populist authoritarianism.
Professor Pippa Norris, Dr Sarah Cameron, and Dr Thomas Wynter presented the 2017 Year in Elections Report before a distinguished audience of parliamentarians and scholars at the NSW Chapter of the Australasian Study of Parliament Group (ASPG), Sydney.
