Recent Developments In Central And East European Politics

Following recent political and social developments in the CEE politics, the graduate students’ conference will focus on the explanation of the broad diversity in the current state of democracy in the region.

The event will be an excellent opportunity to get in touch with other graduate students of the consortium of the European Master program with similar research interests in what concerns the Central and East European politics and societies.

The conference aims at:

(1) strongly promoting the presentation and critical discussion of papers regarding the quality of democracy in the CEE region and

(2) including important methodological debates providing students with necessary tools in order to grasp a changing and sometimes volatile social and political reality.

Looking at the example of the “new democracies”, and in line with all the recent changes in the development of CEE politics, the graduate conference papers should scrutinize (through case studies or comparative researches) aspects that are illustrative for the quality of democracy and its challenges.

We expect both empirically driven and theoretically informed papers dealing with one of the following aspects:

Political regime change – Constitutional reforms, presidentialisation of politics, the expansion of the judicial power

Electoral politics – Electoral laws and their impact on voting patterns, territorialisation of politics, etc.

Party politics – Party system institutionalisation, the pertinence of classical cleavages, party organisations, party ideologies etc.

Interest articulation – social actors’ effectiveness, internal democracy, NGOs’ role in the policy making

Main challenges to the quality of democracy: Corruption, Patronage, Clientelism

The impact of Europeanization on new democracies: the strengths and the limits of the EU conditionality in transforming politics and societies in CEECs

Conference web site: http://www.politologia.uni.wroc.pl/eng/index.php/news-a-events/13-news/50-students-conference

For further information please contact: Ramona Coman Ramona.coman@ulb.ac.be