[DemocracyNet.eu-list] ECPR General Conference 2020 - CfP Section Configurations of Democracy

Thu Dec 12 15:19:12 CET 2019

Dear colleagues,

please find below a CfP for the section (S 15) "Configurations of 
Democracy" at the ECPR General Conference 2020 in Innsbruck. We would be 
very pleased to receive submissions from you and would also be grateful 
if you could spread the call within your networks. Deadline for 
submissions is February 19, 2020.

Best regards,
Christoph Mohamad-Klotzbach and Norma Osterberg-Kaufmann

ECPR General Conference – University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

26 – 28 August 2020

Section: S 15 “Configurations of Democracy” 
(https://ecpr.eu/Events/SectionDetails.aspx?SectionID=959&EventID=132)

Section Chairs: Norma Osterberg-Kaufmann (Humboldt Universität zu 
Berlin) and Christoph
Mohamad-Klotzbach (Julius Maximilians University Würzburg)

The starting point of thoughts on configurations of democracy lies in 
the Meaning of
Democracy research. This research is based on the thesis that the 
actually prevailing meanings
of democracy go beyond the previously operationalized understanding of 
democracy. The
meanings of democracy are distinguished from understanding of democracy 
by the fact that
understanding of democracy individually mean different representations 
of a still identical
object and continue to enable uniform measurement, while meanings allow 
for conceptual
ambiguity. One of the most important tasks of comparative democracy 
research will be to
systematically record these meanings empirically and bring them together 
to form a common,
globally oriented and trans-culturally based democracy concept. The 
Western conceptual
history of democracy has already undergone several comprehensive 
transformations of
meaning. Probably the most serious transformation has been from 
small-scale, directdemocratic
models to large-scale, representative democracy models (Dahl 1989, Keane 
2009).
As the next major shift in meaning, the literature discusses the 
expansion of the discourse on
the meaning of democracy beyond the Western context of discourse, which 
is expected to
lead to a confrontation of globally different ideas of democracy 
(multiple meanings) (Little
2018).

Due to these developments, comparative democracy researchers have in 
recent years
increasingly criticized the universalist concept of democracy, 
standardized survey research as
a methodology, and a Eurocentric perspective. They refer to 
Eurocentrism-critical
developments in political theory and Dallmayr's (1997) demand to enrich 
their canon with
non-Western perspectives and to pursue comparative political theory 
(Ackerly/Bajpai 2017,
Little 2018). I.e. an extreme relativistic position, that considers any 
empirically detectable
meaning of democracy to be per se equivalent and incommensurable - 
because culturally
different - with the traditional concepts of democracy, makes a 
scientific, contemporary and
comparative study of democracy in the 21st century impossible.

An alternative approach is proposed, taking into account these strands 
of discussion. Through
the 'metatheoretical' perspective of perceiving democracy as a 
configuration of attributes, a
rigid universalist view can be overcome without exposing oneself to the 
problem of
conceptual stretching (Sartori 1991) by completely opening up the 
concept. The basic
question of this approach is: Which attributes are associated with 
democracy (subjectively
and objectively) and how can they be systematically compared and brought 
into dialogue?
The overall objective of the Section on “Configurations of Democracy” 
(ConfDem) is to identify
possible elements of meanings of democracy and the configurations 
resulting from them. This
enables us to explore commonalities and differences in content as well 
as the distribution and
expression of different meanings of democracy and to gain a deeper 
comparative
understanding of democracy as it exists empirically in the minds of 
citizens and political and
academic elites (worldwide). The focus should be on the measurement of 
meanings of
democracy, which must, however, be preceded by a theoretical discussion. 
The aim is to meet

the challenge of a mutual dialogue between theory and empiricism and to 
create a forum for
an open discussion between normative and empirical as well as 
theoretical and
methodological principles.

Panel 1: The Western Imprint of Meanings of Democracy &
Panel 2: The Non-Western Imprint of Meanings of Democracy
The first two panels will discuss possible basic elements of ConfDem. 
The central question that
we will address here is: Which basic democratic-theoretical ideas are 
elementary for
democracy? This question will be dealt with in the first two panels. The 
procedure is more like
an inductive logic, since we regard the existing literature as 
"empirical" material, which we
would suggest analyzing for potential ConfDems without concrete 
assumptions. In the first
panel (The Western Imprint of Meanings of Democracy), we focus on the 
existing literature of
classical and contemporary Western democratic theories, which are the 
basis of the concepts
of democracy in our discipline. These concepts of liberal democracy will 
be critically reflected
and will reveal the central elements of democracy by breaking down 
existing core principles
(freedom, equality, and control). The second panel (The Non-Western 
Imprint of Meanings of
Democracy) expands the search for central elements of democracy. This 
time, using the
perspective of Comparative Political Theory, we take into account 
non-Western concepts of
democracy to gain insights about meanings of democracy and their 
attributes, e.g. in Asia,
Africa, Latin America or the MENA region.

Panel 3: Methods to Measure the Meaning of Democracy
The discussions and potential issues of the first two panels provide us 
with insights into the
challenges of ConfDem's data collection and analysis. Our key question 
is: How can we
measure the meanings of democracy and identify key attributes? Papers 
proposing an
inductive or a deductive approach are addressed in this panel. As with 
inductive approaches,
deductive approaches pose different challenges, which will then be 
discussed in a problemoriented
manner on the basis of previous considerations and empirical research 
experience.

Panel 4: Empirical Findings on the Meaning of Democracy
Panel 4 is devoted to the question of whether and, if so, in what 
structural form the ideas on
ConfDem can be found in reality. This means that we want to know how 
consistent the
meaning of democracy is in reality. In this panel, we would like to 
discuss empirical data from
different regions of the world that have been collected through an 
inductive or deductive
methodological approach in order to capture the meaning of democracy on 
a global scale.

Please submit your paper proposal for S15 “Configurations of Democracy” 
via the ECPR
homepage by 19 February 2020 at the latest.

Panel 2 will be chaired by Sophia Schubert 
(Sophia.Schubert at fu-berlin.de) and Alexander
Weiß (1weiss at web.de), please contact them directly to submit your paper 
in panel 2.

-- 
Dr. Christoph Mohamad-Klotzbach
University of Würzburg
Institute of Political Science and Sociology
Wittelsbacherplatz 1
97074 Würzburg

Tel.: +49 (0)931 31-80095
Fax:  +49 (0)931 31-84893
E-Mail: ch.mohamad at uni-wuerzburg.de
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5078-5393
Homepage: https://go.uni-wuerzburg.de/mohamadklotzbach
LoSAM (FOR2757): https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/for2757/startseite/