APPLICATION FORM FOR PROSPECTIVE WORKSHOP DIRECTORS
To apply for running a workshop at the Joint Sessions in Turin, Italy, 22-27 March 2001, send the form below as the cover sheet and a separate workshop proposal to the ECPR Central Services. You can do this by either emailing both documents as an attached file (in word format .doc or rich text format .rtf) to the ECPR Central Services at [email protected]. Alternatively, you can print up the information and send it as a fax to the Central Services, fax: +44 1206 872500. The deadline for applications is 15 October 2000.
Title of proposed workshop:
OPPOSING EUROPE: EUROSCEPTICISM AND POLITICAL PARTIES
Name of workshop director(s): DR ALEKS SZCZERBIAK, DR PAUL TAGGART (maximum of 2 persons)
Name and address of institution(s):
SUSSEX EUROPEAN INSTITUTE UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX ARTS A BUILDING FALMER BRIGHTON BN1 9SH
Telephone number/s: ALEKS SZCZERBIAK (-44-(0)1273-678443) PAUL TAGGART (-44-(0)1273-878292)
Fax number/s: -44-(0)1273-678571 e-mail address/s: [email protected]; [email protected]
Please note that the information above is VERY important as it will be used in all future correspondence and printed in the academic programme.
The proposal should be typed with 1.5 line spacing on three/four A4 pages using this sheet as the first page, and should cover the points outlined in the guidelines (http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/jointsessions/jsguidelines.htm).
For further information, please contact either:
ECPR Central Services Dr Vincent Hoffmann-Martinot University of Essex (Workshop Committee Chair) Wivenhoe Park Institut d’Études Politiques de Bordeaux COLCHESTER CO4 3SQ Domaine Universitaire, BP 101 Essex, UK F-33405 TALENCE CEDEX Tel: +44 1206 872501/2497 France Fax: +44 1206 872500 Tel: +33 5 56 84 42 88 E-mail: [email protected] Fax: +33 5 56 84 43 29 Web: www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr Email: [email protected]
WORKSHOP PROPOSAL
OPPOSING EUROPE: EUROSCEPTICISM AND POLITICAL PARTIES
Outline of the topic
There has been a growth of interest in research on the nature of support and opposition to the European Union in both member and prospective member states and particularly its impact on party systems. The workshop would attempt to develop scholarly analysis of party-based Euroscepticism by taking an explicitly comparative and pan-European approach and seeking to integrate the EU level of politics explicitly into the domestic politics of European states. The objective of the workshop, therefore, would be to bring together country experts in order to pool empirical material and expertise on a range of countries and continue the development of a framework for analysing comparative party-based Euroscepticism. The aim is to use the research to illuminate the importance of party systems in structuring the debate about European integration and to use the issue of European integration to tell us about the changing structures of contemporary European party systems.
In terms of output, the aim for the workshop is to produce an edited book and to further develop the research agenda through constructing a research project and seeking funding.
There are three important developments that make a comparative project on Euroscepticism timely and pertinent. The first is that there is an increasing concern with the ‘comparative politics’ of the European Union and the attempt to link domestic politics with the EU. The second development is that there have been a number of articles recently that have explicitly dealt with the comparative understanding of party attitudes towards European integration (e.g work by Matthew Gabel, Leonard Ray, Paul Taggart, Gary Marks, Lisbet Hooghe, Carole Wilson, Mark Aspinwall, David Baker, Susan Milner). The third is that there are a number of doctoral researchers conducting research on Euroscepticism in both EU member- states and applicant states. Combined with the political factors of growing Euroscepticism in both member-states and applicant states, there is a strong case for both an interest in and need for research on the Euroscepticism.
There is an increasing number of researchers undertaking research on Euroscepticism both its manifestation as a popular backlash to the European project and, more explicitly, on its impact on European party systems. But the study of Euroscepticism is also an important component of and feeds into the broader research agenda on a number of issues including:
(1) Party studies more generally. Euroscepticism seems to be related, at least partially, to parties' positions in their party system, so highlighting a core-periphery distinction. This distinction mirrors an emergent split between cartel parties and non-cartel parties where parties at the core of party systems are benefiting from being in a cartel of governmental parties with the concomitant access to state funding while parties at the peripheries are largely excluded.
(2) Protest politics. Negative party responses to European integration at the domestic level may be expressions of diffuse protest sentiments about issues other than the EU. The legitimacy of domestic politics and political institutions has an effect on levels of Euroscepticism and Euroscepticism may therefore be partially a measure of domestic political legitimacy.
(3) The nature of European integration. Understanding Euroscepticism does help us understand parts of the process of European integration. Early works on support for integration stressed the roles of parties in this process while more contemporary studies have focused on the nature of public support and the effects of an international institutional architecture that allegedly create an 'democratic deficit'. In this sense the study of Euroscepticism is the continuation of existing trends. In another sense, it is a shift in emphasis. By focusing on domestic conflict and party systems in the process of integration, this reflects a shift from the dominance of polity (i.e. institutions) and policies in the study of the EU to a focus on the politics of European integration.
(4) Europeanisation. By mapping and comparing levels and types of Euroscepticism in domestic party systems, it is possible to fit it into the larger consideration of how far different member-state systems are resilient towards or receptive to adaptation to 'European' models of politics. It also relates to a wider process of Europeanisation that includes the effects of non-EU European institutions on domestic polities and the effects of the EU on non-member-states in Europe.
Participants
The workshop will be open to any interested scholars and would explicitly be used to extend and entrench an existing network on ‘Opposing Europe’. This network of scholars was established at a June 2000 seminar at the Sussex European Institute and is organised by the prospective workshop directors. The seminar included specialists in both West and East European party systems and explicitly drew in established researchers with doctoral researchers. The seminar was organised as the founding event of a semi-formal pan-European network of scholars working on the issue of support for and opposition to European integration. One of the explicit objectives of the network coming out of the concluding discussions was to provide the basis for an ECPR workshop at the 2002 Joint Sessions. The prospective directors want to use the ECPR to broaden the range of comparative cases to include a wider range of scholars working on Western, Eastern and Central European cases. The network is not a closed or established network but is an open and nascent structure that would significantly benefit from being included as part of the Joint Sessions. The proceedings of this seminar are available at: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/ssfj3/oppeuro.html
The network currently includes the following (with indications of country specialisations):
Dr. Mark Aspinall (University of Durham, UK) – UK, Italy and France
Dr. Nick Aylott (Keele University, UK) - Scandinavia
Dr. David Baker (Warwick University, UK) - UK
Agnes Batory (Cambridge University, UK) - Hungary
Giacomo Benedetto (LSE, UK) – France, Italy and European Parliament
Philip Burbidge (University of Central Lancashire, UK)- UK and Denmark
Giovanni Capoccia (European University Institute, Italy) – Western Europe
Dr. Catherine Fieschi (Aston University, UK) - France
Heather Grabbe (University of Birmingham, UK)- Eastern Europe
Dr Sean Hanley (Brunel University, UK)- Czech Republic
Karen Henderson (Leicester University, UK) – Slovak Republic
Dr Simon Hix (LSE, UK)- Western Europe and the EU
Elena Iankova (Cornell University, USA)- Bulgaria
Dr. Petr Kopecky (University of Sheffield, UK)- Czech and Slovak Republics
Alenka Krasovec (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)- Slovenia
Jacek Kucharczyk (Institute of Public Affairs, Poland) - Poland
Dr. Paul Lewis (Open University, UK)- Poland
Dr. Jose Magone (Hull University, UK)- Spain and Portugal
Bonnie Meguid (Harvard, USA)- Western Europe
Evald Mikkel (University of Tartu, Estonia)- Estonia
Dr. Susan Milner (University of Bath, UK)- France
Dr. Cas Mudde (University of Edinburgh, UK)- Belgium and Eastern Europe
Prof. Geoffrey Pridham (University of Bristol, UK)- Southern and Eastern Europe
Madalena Pontes Resende (LSE, UK)- Poland
Dr. Nick Sitter (Norwegian School of Management, Norway)- Scandanavia
Nick Startin (Brunel University, UK)- France
Dr Aleks Szczerbiak (University of Sussex, UK) - Poland
Dr Paul Taggart (University of Sussex, UK)- Western Europe
Simon Usherwood (LSE, UK)- UK
Professor Paul Webb (University of Sussex, UK)- UK
Dr. Kieran Williams (School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UK)- Czech and Slovak Republics
Type of paper
We would hope to attract two kinds of papers:
1. A broad range of empirical case studies of individual or groups of parties or party systems.
2. Theoretical papers that contribute towards the development of a theoretical framework for understanding the impact of Euroscepticism on party systems.
Funding
The network is currently in process of applying to the ESRC and Leverhulme Trust to fund future seminars, working papers and other research activities. The prospective directors are also keen to investigate the opportunities for seeking funding from the European Commission.
Biographical note
Dr Aleks Szczerbiak has been a Lecturer in Contemporary European Studies at the Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex since October 1998 specialising in Comparative Central and East European politics (especially Poland). His main research interests lie in the field of political parties and party systems and impact of EU membership on the domestic politics of EU candidate countries. He has recently published articles in Party Politics, Europe-Asia Studies and the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics.
Dr. Paul Taggart is Lecturer in Politics and Jean Monnet Lecturer in Contemporary European Studies at the Sussex European Institute. His main reasearch has been on the comparative study of West European parties and he has published one book comparing protest parties (The New Populism and the New Politics, Macmillan, 1996) and one on the concept of populism (Populism, Open University Press, 2000) and is the author of an EJPR article on comparative Euroscepticism. He is co-editor of the journal POLITICS.