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October 2017 Newsletter

The October 2017 newsletter from the PSA Parliaments Group

Welcome to the October edition of our newsletter, which includes:

  1. Register now for PSA Parliaments conference, 17 November
  2. PSA’s International Annual Conference – final call for papers
  3. Joint call for papers: populist parties in established party systems
  4. Our plans for 2018
  5. Recently on the blog

If you have any notices / messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know (including events, new research projects, grants, publications, etc.). Or other ideas for the group and feedback for us, they’re welcome too!

Best wishes,
Marc (@marcgeddes), Louise (@LouiseVThompson), Alex (@A_Meakin) and Leanne (@LeanneMarieC)

1.Registration open for our conference

We are happy to announce that registration for the PSA Parliaments 2017 conference is now open. Please follow this link to register.

Our conference will take place at the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh on Friday, 17 November (with an informal and voluntary gathering on Thursday, 16 November depending on demand).

The conference is open to members of the Political Studies Association and/or the Study of the Scottish Parliament Group. We welcome people working in different subject areas whose research can offer new insights into the study of parliaments and promote inter-disciplinary cooperation.

Please note that membership of the PSA, SSPG or SPG is required to attend (please contact organisers if this is a problem).

Our conference will take place at the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh on Friday, 17 November (with an informal and voluntary gathering on Thursday, 16 November depending on demand).

For further information about the conference, please click here, or get in touch with Marc Geddes (marc.geddes@ed.ac.uk) and / or Louise Thompson (louise.thompson@surrey.ac.uk).

2. PSA International Annual Conference

The PSA has announced details of the 2018 Annual Conference, which will take place between 26 and 28 March in Cardiff (City Hall). As always, we hope to put panels forward from our group to build on the great success of last year’s conference in Glasgow.

If you would be interested in presenting an individual paper as part of one of our group panels, please complete a Paper Proposal Form, with an abstract of not more than 250 words by Friday, 13 October. If you would like to put together a panel for the conference, please complete a Panel Proposal Form by the same date. We will be in touch within two weeks of this deadline to notify you if your paper / panel proposal has been successful.

The call is open to all members of the group. There are no panel themes, so all paper and panel proposals are welcome. Postgraduate students are encouraged to apply. Those who wish to present would be eligible to apply to the PSA Postgraduate Access Fund for financial support to attend the conference. Last year we also had a number of practitioner papers – we want to continue this trend.

We had a really successful 2017 conference, with more papers and panels than we’ve ever had before. So we look forward to hearing from you!

3. Joint Call for Papers: Populist parties in established party systems – impact, relationships and competition 

The Greek Politics, Nordic Politics, Italian Politics, French Politics, German Politics, Irish Politics, Rhetoric and Politics, Populism, and Parliaments Specialist Groups of the PSA invite paper proposals for joint panels.

In many parts of Europe and elsewhere populist parties have made great strides at elections. Some of these parties have entered parliament for the first time and thereby pose a particular challenge to established political actors. Some are long-established, but have gained significantly in strength. Some populist parties question norms, values and institutions which have seemed firmly rooted in the political DNA of liberal democracies. Other populist parties seem to contribute to a revival of politics and participation in an age that has been labelled “post political”. Certainly, the ascent of populist parties, whether left or right, has an impact on established parties and on long-established party systems. However, populist parties may also be ‘normalised’ through competition with other parties and participation in parliaments.

This panel seeks to bring together papers which scrutinize the relationship between populist parties and established parties. We invite single case studies, comparative papers, and theoretical explorations on the following and related themes to form joint panels – this list is by no means complete:

  • Policy reactions of established parties to the success of (newcomer) populist parties
  • The impact of ‘arriving’ – how do populist parties change in party competition
  • Populism on the level of the EU – party competition in and outside parliament
  • Populism and party politics in parliaments
  • Populist discourse and rhetoric in electoral competition
  • Populism and the impact on party systems

Deadline for paper proposals: 23 October 2017.

Please address all enquiries and email your paper proposal (title, 200-word abstract, institutional affiliation and full contact details) to: Marc Geddes and / or Louise Thompson.

Applicants will be notified whether they have been included in the GPSG’s panel proposals ahead of the final PSA deadline (3 November 2017). For full details of the Conference please visit the conference website. 

4. Our plans for 2018

We want to give you a flavour of some of the great things that we have planned for 2018, so here is a rough idea of events:

  • PSA Annual Conference in Cardiff – March 2018
  • Writing workshops – as a group, we will facilitate and coordinate small writing workshops of between 6-8 participants across the UK to facilitate research writing – we hope to organise these around May/June 2018 (though please let us know if there is a good time for these).
  • Qualitative Methods Workshop – due to demand earlier this year, we have decided to make this an annual event. Our privileged position and expertise – working with politicians – means that there is a lot of demand to share best practice in interviewing, survey research, etc. This is likely to take place in June.
  • Quantitative Methods Workshop – we hope to re-introduce a quantitative methods workshop this coming year, around September.
  • Our annual essay competition – details to be announced later this year, but the deadline is likely to be similar – summer 2018
  • Parliament Week – this will take place in November 2018. We have no concrete plans for this at the moment, but would welcome proposals from members.
  • Our 2018 Conference – we have already started thinking about our next conference. Due to unprecedented demand for this year’s conference, we are doing some thinking about how to improve this event in future and ensure accessibility.

For all of the events above, please note that we would welcome feedback, input, ideas and support (e.g. ideas for Parliament Week, volunteers to organise workshops, possible location for our next conference, etc.) If so, please email us. Also, if there are events that you would like to see supported by the group, again, please get in touch – we are happy to broaden our ideas and events further.

5. Recently on our blog