Candidate List
Biographical Sketches and Programmatic Statements
Candidates for C&M Chair & Vice-ChairChair: Frederic Schaffer / Vice-Chair: Andreas Schedler
Frederic C. Schaffer teaches political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and has previously taught at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research bridges the subfields of comparative politics and political theory, with a substantive focus on election fraud, the administration of elections, and - most germane to the work of the Committee on Concepts and Methods - translating political concepts from one culture to another. He is the author of Democracy in Translation: Understanding Politics in an Unfamiliar Culture (Cornell University Press, 1998), The Hidden Costs of Clean Election Reform (Cornell University Press, 2008), and “Ordinary Language Interviewing” (in Yanow and Schwartz-Shea’s Interpretation and Method, M.E. Sharpe, 2006). He is also the editor of Elections for Sale: The Causes and Consequences of Vote Buying (Lynne Rienner, 2007). Professor Schaffer is an active participant in the C&M committee. Currently, he is a member of the Concepts and Methods Working Papers editorial board, and has contributed a paper to the series (“Why Don’t Political Scientists Coin More New Terms?”). He also served as C&M program chair for the 2006 IPSA World Congress in Japan.Andreas Schedler is Professor of Political Science at the Department of Political Studies at CIDE in Mexico City. His extensive work on political concepts includes journal articles, edited books and book chapters on politics and antipolitics, political disenchantment, democratic support, democratic transition and consolidation, public accountability, vote buying, and electoral authoritarianism. His current empirical research focuses on the dynamics of electoral authoritarian regimes worldwide since 1980.
Programmatic Statements
Frederic Schaffer
Under the current leadership, the C&M committee has done much to create an intellectual community among its members, and to foster a discussion about concepts and methods that is international in dimension. The new committee website, newsletter, working paper series, and awards have been, in this regard, excellent innovations. As chair of the C&M committee, my main objective will be to preserve these gains and at the same time increase the visibility of the committee, and the work of its members, to the wider discipline. I look forward, for instance, to exploring in consultation with C&M board members the possibility of establishing a Concepts and Methods journal, which would provide an even more public venue for us to share and showcase our work. I also will continue to grow the C&M website, and look for ways to increase the exposure of the committee to a larger number of graduate students (perhaps by emulating at IPSA meetings something akin to the Methods Café now held at each meeting of the APSA). There are, too, many possible areas of collaboration with other research committees of IPSA and the Qualitative and Multi-Method section of the APSA.
Andreas Schedler
Over the past three years I have been serving as C&M vice-chair. Fundamentally, I have been working to consolidate the Committee. Its membership has grown from around 150 to around 250 members from around 40 countries on all continents. After staving off severe flood waves of SPAM, the website is now more secure and more functional. Our two high-quality series of working papers have been growing in numbers as well as visibility. The 3rd Award for Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Politics will be award at the upcoming IPSA World Congress. Despite structural difficulties, our Newsletter under the editorship of Bernhard Kittel has been surviving and publishing challenging methodological discussions. In the next three years, my basic impulse will continue to be conservative. If elected, I shall work to keep consolidating and improving our basic accomplishments. Still, together with Frederic Schaffer, the new board, and the network of committee members, I would like explore the possibility of expanding our activities in a cautious and sustainable fashion. The foundation of an international journal on concepts and methods would be the most ambitious project. We have to examine carefully whether and in what form it might be an attractive and feasible venture. Smaller initiatives I would like to undertake with our committee chair include the development of a database on methodological work at our website (with John Gerring), the establishment of regular board and committee meetings at the annual APSA meetings, and the opening of a collection of syllabi of conceptual and methodological courses on the C&M website.
Candidates for C&M Board
Amy Mazur
Amy G. Mazur is a C.O. Johnson Distinguished Professor in the Department of Political Science at Washington State University. Her research and teaching interests focus on comparative methodology and comparative gender and policy issues with a particular emphasis on France. She is co editor of Political Research Quarterly. Her recent books include: Theorizing Feminist Policy (Oxford, 2002); Politics, Gender and Concepts (edited with Gary Goertz, Cambridge University Press 2008); The French Fifth Republic at Fifty: Beyond Stereoytpes (edited with Sylvain Brouard and Andrew Appleton, Palgrave, 2008) and The Politics of State Feminism: Innovation in Comparative Research (with Dorothy McBride, Temple University Press, 2010). She has published recent articles in Comparative European Politics, Revue Française de Science Politique, Politics and Gender, Political Research Quarterly European Political Science, Review of Policy Research, and French Politics. She is co-convener of the Research Network on Gender Politics and the State and of the French Politics Group of the APSA. In 2007-08, she was a visiting professor at Sciences Po- Paris and in 2001 was the Marie-Jahoda Professor of International Feminist Studies at Ruhr University, Bochum. She has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, the European Science Foundation, and the French Ministry of Social Affairs.Programmatic Statement
Through my work on the analytical puzzle of how, why and to what end the contemporary democratic state has responded to demands for gender equality, I have grappled with methodological issues in comparative research. As co director of RNGS, I participated in designing a mixed methods study of women’s policy agencies in 17 post industrial democracies conducted by over 40 researchers. The issue of constructing meaningful and analytically sound concepts for comparative analysis has been a crucial, yet difficult, one for me, which led me to co edit a volume on concepts in gender and politics in 2008. I am also dedicated to the promotion of “problem driven” or “use-inspired” research through studying how to make democracies more democratic. As a result, I have made policy recommendations, based on my research, to government bodies in France, the USA and in the EU and the UN. As a member of the Board of the IPSA Committee on Concepts and Methods, I would continue to promote good multi methods research based on a problem driven approach and sound conceptualization as well as raise the issue of how to better take advantage of current innovations and developments in comparative gender and politics research.
Amy Poteete
Dr. Amy R. Poteete is an assistant professor of political science at Concordia University in Montréal. She has published articles on politics and policies in Botswana, natural resource management, and research methods in Agricultural Systems, Development and Change, Governance, Human Ecology, Journal of Development Studies, Journal of Southern African Studies, and World Development. Dr. Poteete’s substantive research explores the interactions between political competition, natural resource policies, and political development. She works on a broad array of natural resources, both renewable (forests, rangelands, and wildlife) and nonrenewable (minerals). Her work on research methods draws attention to the gap between methodological principles and practices, and seeks to understand the practical, institutional, and sociological factors behind that gap. She has developed these themes in a book manuscript with Marco Janssen and Elinor Ostrom, Multiple Methods in Practice: Collective Action and the Commons. Dr. Poteete received her doctorate from Duke University. She has taught at the University of New Orleans, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and Yale University. From 2000 to 2003, she served as the research coordinator for the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) research program at Indiana University. She has served one term on the Concepts and Methods board (2006 – 2009).Programmatic Statement
It has been an honor and a pleasure to serve as a member of the Concepts and Methods board since 2006. During the previous election, I promised to raise awareness of practical challenges that affect methodological practices, particularly for those of us who engage in field research. My concern is not simply that field-based research presents specific types of practical challenges, but that these challenges affect some types of research more than others. Universities, professional associations, and funding agencies could do more to help scholars overcome these obstacles. When members of the board were invited to represent our research committee at the 2008 IPSA conference on “International Political Science: New Theoretical and Regional Perspectives/La science politique dans le monde: Nouvelles perspectives théoriques et régionales” (in Montreal), I took advantage of the opportunity to deliver a statement on “Challenges of Broadly Comparative Field-Based Research.” I have also drawn attention to these challenges at conferences and in my publications and will continue to do so. I would be honored to continue to do so as a member of the Concepts and Methods board, should I be re-elected.
Bernhard Kittel
Bernhard Kittel holds a professorship for social science methodology at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. His research interests cover experimental political science, political economy, comparative politics, and political science methods. He studied political science at the University of Vienna and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna and holds a MA in Social Science Data Analysis from the University of Essex. Previous positions include a fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, a Junior Professorship at the University of Bremen and a professorship in social science methods at the University of Amsterdam. He is one of the two academic convenors of the ECPR Summer School in Methods and Techniques at the University of Ljubljana. His most recent publications include: „Eine Disziplin auf der Suche nach Wissenschaftlichkeit: Entwicklung und Stand der Methoden in der Deutschen Politikwissenschaft,“ Politische Vierteljahresschrift (3/2009); „The Dynamics of Political Protest. Feedback Effects and Interdependence in the Explanation of Protest Participation,” European Sociological Review (with Karl-Dieter Opp) (forthcoming); “A Crazy Methodology? On the Limits of Macro-quantitative Social Science Research,” International Sociology 21 (5/2006).Programmatic Statement
During the next board term, I would like to invest resources into two projects: Firstly, I would like to support the current efforts in exploring possibilities for a world-wide net of methods summer schools along the lines of the ECPR Summer School in Methods and Techniques, as is envisaged by IPSA. Secondly, I would like to take up plans discussed among members of the RC during the ECPR Joint Sessions in Rennes (2008) to found a journal for political methodology that covers issues of conceptualization, methodology, and methods, specifically targeted to problems relevant for political science. Such a project should explicitly address the various cleavages and divisions in social science methodology.
Daniela Piana
Daniela Piana is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science of the University of Bologna, Italy. She has a degree in philosophy of science and methodology and a PhD in Sociology. Her background is largely framed in methodology of social sciences. She has worked and published extensively on Italian and international journals on constitutional reforms, judicial reforms, rule of law and judicial accountability. She is author of essays published in international volumes. Among her most recent publications, Institutions in Mind (in Italian), Building democracy (in Italian and forthcoming in Romanian), Judicial Accountabilities in New Europe (forthcoming by Ashgate in Autumn 2009). Visiting scholar in several universities in Europe and US, as College of Europe in Natolin, Aix en Provence, Université Libre de Bruxelles, University of California, Berkeley. Rotary Fellow, Fulbright Fellow and Jean Monnet Fellow, in 2000, 2003 and 2007, she has spent the last years in conducted research on the relationship that exists between patterns of changes in judicial systems and patterns of change exhibited by judicial behaviors. Member of the International Sociological Association, of the Law and Society Association, of the Italian and the French associations of political science, and of the International Political Science Association.Programmatic Statement
My own interest is to explore and develop a better understanding of the relationship that exists between micro and macro levels of analysis in political science. In particular, I believe that social sciences have not finished to confront the issue of how changes happen at the micro level and how they occur at the macro level. Moreover, I am very much interested in bridging between theoretical analysis of concepts and empirical research. Concepts and Methods should be the space where scholars virtually encounter to discuss and to develop old and new methodologies, with a pluralistic methodological approach. In my view, C&M should also deal with the combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches in empirical research as well as with the confrontation of new empirical results and old concepts or concepts well established in our scholarship, as democracy, rule of law, accountability. Development of indicators, researchers conducted to prove these indicators profitable and adequate in exploring social reality should be taken into regular consideration by the review. I would also like to promote C&M in new democracies, in Europe and non European countries. Researchers conducted in these last countries may be of the utmost interest for the purpose mentioned here, namely to cast new light on pivotal concepts in political science and to clarify how change does take place in different contexts. Variation of contexts may help unfold mechanisms and explaining variables, in particular if comparative approaches are adopted by scholars.
Dvora Yanow
Dvora Yanow holds the Strategic Chair in Meaning and Method in the Faculty of Social Sciences, Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam, The Netherlands). Her research has been shaped by an overall interest in the communication of meaning in policy and organizational settings, having published How does a policy mean? Interpreting policy and organizational actions (Georgetown University Press, 1996); Conducting interpretive policy analysis (Sage, 2000); and Constructing "race” and “ethnicity" in America: Category-making in public policy and administration (M E Sharpe, 2003, winner of the 2004 ASPA and 2007 Herbert A. Simon-APSA book awards) and co-edited Knowing in organizations: A practice-based approach (M E Sharpe, 2003), Interpretation and method: Empirical research methods and the interpretive turn (M E Sharpe, 2006), and the forthcoming Organizational ethnography: Studying the complexities of everyday life (Sage, 2009). Current research investigates Netherlands integration policies and race-ethnic category-making, policy frames and framing, reflective practice, science museums, and US Institutional Review Board policies and practices. She has taught courses in interpretive methodologies and methods, in particular political ethnography and interpretive policy analysis, including at the ECPR Ljubljana Summer School; developed the Methodology Workshops at the Interpretive Policy Analysis international conference and the Methods Café at the Western and American Political Science Association meetings; manages the Interpretation and Methods listserve (http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/interpretationandmethods); and co-chairs the NSF Workshop on Interpretive Methodologies in Political Science (https://www.ipia.utah.edu/imps/index.html).Programmatic Statement
If elected to the IPSA C&M Committee board, I would build on the work done by its previous and current leaders in order to strengthen even further the position of interpretive and qualitative methods in political science, internationally. What C&M at IPSA does potentially sends strong signals to IPSA members worldwide, at both departmental/faculty curricular and individual research levels. With advances in the EU via ECPR activities, in North America via the American and the Canadian PSA’s, the Qualitative Research Methods institute, and the NSF Workshop on Interpretive Methodologies in Political Science, and in the UK via PSA activities, as well as in various arenas in Australia, India, Latin America, and New Zealand, qualitative and interpretive methods and their methodological similarities and differences are attracting increasing attention. Putting these matters front and center through the IPSA will help support researchers doing this kind of work, and I would like to explore other steps the Committee could take to muster its considerable human and social capital resources to achieve this. I look forward to bringing my background in these areas to the C&M Committee Board and to continue the development of its intellectual community, including through links to the growing interpretive methodologies/methods community worldwide.
Gary Goertz
Gary Goertz is professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona. He is the author or editor of eight books and over 40 articles and chapters on topics of international institutions, methodology, and conflict studies, His work on international relations includes "Contexts of International Politics" (1994), "War and Peace in International Rivalry" (2000), and "International Norms and Decision Making: A Punctuated Equilibrium Model" (2003). The topic of necessary conditions, their theory and methodology have also been a research agenda item for a number of years. He is co-editor of the anthology "Necessary Conditions: Theory, Methodology, and Applications" ( 2003) and "Explaining War and Peace: Case Studies and Necessary Condition Counterfactuals," (2007). He is editor of a special issue of Political Analysis entitled "Causal Complexity and Qualitative Methods" (2006). His most recent methodological work deals with the construction of concepts "Social Science Concepts: A User's Guide" (2006 Princeton University Press) and "Politics, Gender, and Concepts: Theory and Methodology" (2008 Cambridge University Press).Programmatic Statement
C&M plays an important role in organizing and stimulating discussion about concepts and methods. This is something I have been centrally concerned with through my career, in fact I often say that much of my research starts with conceptual innovation. For example, I am known in the international conflict literature for my work on "enduring rivalries"; this started with serious work on the concept of an enduring rivalry. I would work to make the Committee and its website more visible within the political science community in general, and the APSA qualitative methods section in particular.
Hans-Joachim Lauth
Born 1957, study of Political Science and Theology in Mainz and Bremen (Germany); 1991 received PhD (summa cum laude) at the University of Mainz, Doctoral thesis on Unions and Politics in Mexico (1964-1988); until 2002 Assistant Professor for comparative politics, University of Mainz 2002 „Habilitation“ with a work on „Demokratie und Demokratiemessung“ (Democratic Theory and Measuring Democracy); From 2002 to 2005 he worked as professor ad interim in political science at the University of Landau-Koblenz, campus Landau, and at the University of Heidelberg.• From October 2005 to 2008 he is professor in political science at the University of Hagen, responsible for the research field: Democracy and Development. Since April 2008 he is Chair of comparative politics at the Institute for Political Science and Social Research, University Wuerzburg His actual topics of research concern measuring democracy, informal institutions (as corruption and clientelism), rule of law and separation of powers, civil society and comparative methods. He is a speaker of the working group on “Research on Democracies” of the German Association of Political Science, member of APSA Since 2007 he is responsible editor of the Journal ZfVP (Comparative Governance and Politics).Programmatic Statement
Since several years I am working in the field of comparative politics with special interest on comparative methods and concepts. One result was the design of a concept of democracy which includes regular and diminished subtypes. A current research project deals with the classification of informal institutions as well as rule of law and their measurement (cf. Comparative Sociology, Volume 8, Number 2, 2009, pp. 165-201(37)). As member of the board I would like going on to intensify the exchange and to improve the communication between Germany and other regions inside IPSA. In my last term as Board member I arranged an international conference about “Heterogeneity and Democracy” which will take place, June 25-26, 2009, in Berlin, Germany at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). In 2007 was founded the bilingual Journal ZfVP (Comparative Governance and Politics), of which I am the responsible editor. This Journal should be understood as forum that can contribute to the research exchange inside the community of the IPSA Committee on Concepts and Methods.
John Gerring
John Gerring received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 1993. He is currently associate professor of political science at Boston University, where he teaches courses on methodology and comparative politics. His books include Party Ideologies in America, 1828-1996 (Cambridge University Press, 1998), Social Science Methodology: A Criterial Framework (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Case Study Research: Principles and Practices (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Global Justice: A Prioritarian Manifesto (under review), Centripetalism: A Theory of Democratic Governance (with Strom Thacker; under review), Concepts and Method: Giovanni Sartori and His Legacy (with David Collier; under review), and Democracy and Development: A Historical Perspective (with Strom Thacker; in process). His articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, Journal of Policy History, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Party Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Polity, PS: Political Science and Politics, Social Science History, Studies in American Political Development, and World Politics. He was a fellow of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study (2002-03). He is the former editor of Qualitative Methods: Newsletter of the American Political Science Association Organized Section on Qualitative Methods and president-elect of the Qualitative Methods section.Programmatic Statement
I would like to continue my affiliation with C&M. I would hope to serve as a link to APSA's section on Qualitative and Multi-Method Research (where I am serving out my term as president) and to the annual institute (now held in the summer at Syracuse University), where I teach. I think there are great synergies to be developed across these venues, and look forward to achieving them. In particular, I am interested in establishing a web site that offers a more or less comprehensive list of methodological work -- organized by topic, along with examples of each type of approach. This would be a boon for students and teachers, I think.
Kari Palonen
I am Professor of Political Science at the University of Jyväskylä since 1983, currently Academy of Finland Professor, Director of the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Political Thought and Conceptual Change and Editor-in-Chief of Redescriptions. Yearbook of Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory. With Melvin Richter I co-founded of the History of Political and Social Concepts Group (HPSCG) and was the chair of the European Science Foundation Network The Politics and History of European Democratization (PHED). Recent books: Quentin Skinner: History, Politics, Rhetoric (Cambridge: Polity 2003); Die Entzauberung der Begriffe: Das Umschreiben der politischen Begriffe bei Quentin Skinner und Reinhart Koselleck (Münster: LIT 2004);The Struggle with Time: A Conceptual History of 'Politics' as an Activity (Münster: LIT 2006); Re-thinking Politics: Essays from a quarter-century (edited by Kia Lindroos, Helsinki: The Finnish Political Science Association 2007); The Politics of Limited Times: The Rhetoric of Temporal Judgment in Parliamentary Democracies (Baden-Baden: Nomos 2008); Kari Palonen, Tuija Pulkkinen & José Marìa Rosales (eds): The Ashgate Research Companion to the Politics of Democratisation in Europe. (Aldershot: Ashgate 2008).Programmatic Statement
I am a scholar of history of political concepts, political rhetoric and continental political thought with the focus on Max Weber. I studied some 25 years the history of the concept of politics. My current Academy of Finland project is called The Politics of Dissensus. Parliamentarism, Rhetoric and Conceptual History, understanding the parliamentary style of politics as a paradigm of dissensual rhetoric. I will write a rhetorical history of the concept of parliamentarism (connecting the aspects of regime, procedure and eloquence) and studies on the reorientation of the history of political concepts with parliamentary debates as paradigmatic sources. The prelude of the project is a rhetorical-cum-parliamentary interpretation of Max Weber’s 1904 essay on ‘objectivity’ in terms of fair play. I am also engaged in plan for a comparative European conceptual history of the parliament and parliamentary concepts. As for the IPSA RC 1, I could serve as a link to the History of Political and Social Concepts Group (HPSCG) annual conferences, to the Concepta doctoral and post-doctoral courses in conceptual history as well as to the scholars of political rhetoric and of rhetorical studies on parliamentary concepts. I travel by train and could attend the RC meetings when this is possible.
Leonardo Morlino
Leonardo Morlino is professor of Political Science at the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane (Firenze) since 2006 and director of Graduate School in Political Science at the same Institute since 2005. In 2004 he was awarded the Jean Monnet Chair in European Studies. He was Bechtel Visiting Professor at Stanford University, Stanford (2002-3); Jemolo Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford University in 1998 and 2007; visiting Professor at Institute Juan March in Madrid in 1995-96; and visiting Professor at Institute d’Etudes Politiques in Paris in 1992-93 and 1993-94. He was deputy rector of the University of Florence (2003-6) and managing editor and, later, co-editor of Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica from 1977 through 1991. He is the author, co-author or editor of 25 volumes and author of more than 170 chapters in books or articles in journals, published in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Mongolian. His most recent books include: Introduzione alla ricerca comparata (Bologna, Il Mulino, 2005) (Spanish and French translations 2009); Democrazie e democratizzazioni (Bologna, Il Mulino, 2003) (Span. transl. 2009); and as editor and coauthor, Assessing the Quality of Democracy: Theory and Empirical Analysis (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); Party Change in Southern Europe (London, Routledge, 2007); and International Actors, Democratization and the Rule of Law: Anchoring Democracy? (London, Routledge, 2008).Programmatic Statement
Attention and development of specialized language and empirical concepts in different sectors of knowledge are still the purposes of conscious ways of conducting research, not only in political science. The "conscious craftman" Charles Wright Mills was advocating in the Fifties should still be our role model, although in a renewed way. The new aspects to keep in mind are suggested by the necessity of connecting the specific purposes of empirical research, concept development and theory included, and the old or new methods of research. My own interest would be to develop initiatives that complement quantitative data, some of them already existing at international level (World Bank, Freedom House and son on), and qualitative more detailed analysis that allow a more refined knowledge of the cases and allow stronger explanations of the analyzed phenomenon and of the differences among the specific cases.
Mark Bevir
Mark Bevir is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He was born in London, received his D.Phil from the University of Oxford, and worked in India and the UK before moving to Berkeley. Mark’s research interests include the philosophy of social science, political theory, and governance. He is the author or co-author of The Logic of the History of Ideas (1999), Interpreting British Governance (2003), New Labour: A Critique (2005), Governance Stories (2006), Key Concepts of Governance (2009), and Democratic Governance (forthcoming, 2010). He edited The Encyclopedia of Governance, 2 vols. (2007), and is the editor or co-editor of Critiques of Capital in Modern Britain and America (2002), Markets in Historical Contexts: Ideas and Politics in the Modern World (2004), Modern Political Science: Anglo-American Exchanges since 1880 (2007), Histories of Postmodernism (2007), Governance, Consumers, and Citizens: Agency and Resistance in Contemporary Politics (2007), and Public Governance, 4 vols. (2007). He has served as President of the Society for the Philosophy of History (US) and co-chair of the Interpretive Political Science specialist group (UK).Programmatic Statement
My main objective as a board member would be to support the work of the president and vice-president. I would hope to get a better understanding of the current resources and activities of the Committee, to help build on those, and thereby develop the profile of the Committee and facilitate international cooperation among political scientists interested in conceptual and methodological issues. I first attended an IPSA event as a young scholar working in India in 1992, and I would like to bring younger scholars into international networks. Finally, I would like to see the Committee on Concepts and Methods promote dialogues between political theorists and political scientists about the nature of politics and the diverse ways in which we might study politics.
Matthijs Bogaards
After undergraduate studies in Political Science and Public Administration at Leiden University in his native Holland, Matthijs Bogaards did his PhD in Political Science at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Since 2000, he has held positions at the Central European University in Budapest, the University of Southampton in England, and is currently based at Jacobs University Bremen. His reseach is in the field of comparative politics, with a special interest in political parties, electoral systems, the challenge of democracy in divided societies, and the question how to measure democracy and democratization.Programmatic Statement
As a member of an organ of the International Political Science Association, my aim would be to support the efforts of this organization to internationalize the discipline of political science. As a member of the board of IPSA Research Committee 1 on Concepts and Methods, my aim would be to further interest in concept formation as a crucial element in political science methodology.
Staffan I. Lindberg
Staffan I. Lindberg is Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science and the Center for African Studies, University of Florida. His dissertation won APSA’s Juan Linz Award for the best dissertation in 2005. He is the author of Democracy and Elections in Africa (Johns Hopkins UP, 2006), and editor of Democratization by Elections: A New Mode of Transition (Johns Hopkins UP, 2009). His articles on women’s representation, political clientelism, voting behavior, party and electoral systems, democratization, legitimacy of institutions in new democracies, and the legislature and executive-legislative relationships have appeared in the Journal of Politics, Political Science Quarterly, Electoral Studies, Studies in International Comparative Development, Journal of Democracy, Government and Opposition, Journal of Modern African Studies, and Democratization. Lindberg is also the co-principal investigator for a five-year consortium research program, “The State, Politics and Power in Africa,” which involves six other institutions from Europe and Africa. While his conceptual and methodological contributions have mainly been included as sections in the publications above, he has recently published a some of ‘pure’ conceptual papers, one of them as a C&M working paper (“Byzantine Complexity: Making Sense of Accountability, No.28, 2009).Programmatic Statement
I have been an active member of the C&M Committee for many years now. I first came in contact with the committee as a graduate student at Lund University, Sweden, shortly our current vice chair Andreas Schedler visited the department at Lund. It quickly became an important resource for me and has continued to be a very useful meeting place for us who are interested in developing concepts and methods in political science. I often use the working papers not only as inspiration for my own work, but frequently incorporate them as readings in the classes I teach. That leads me to what I would like to contribute with as a member of the board. The committee has developed greatly under the current leadership and the resources, meeting places, and exchanges within the section are now much wider and more intense than ever before. Yet, it is an under-utilized resource which I hope we can introduce to many more colleagues in the profession, and also not the least, to our graduate students. The committee’s working paper series offers an enormous wealth of insights and useful controversies that deserves a wider audience. Without losing sight of the core mission and sense of community among the members of the committee, I think we can all benefit from actively making our presence more well known in the wider political science, or even social science, community.
 back |
top