Call for Papers: ‘Corruption and Democracy in Europe: Public Opinion and Social Representations’

ECPR GENERAL CONFERENCE, PISA, 6 8 SEPTEMBER 2007

CALL FOR PAPERS

‘Corruption and Democracy in Europe: Public Opinion and Social Representations’

We wish to organise panels for the ECPR General Conference in Pisa, 6 8 September 2007. The panel(s) will be entitled ‘Corruption and Democracy in Europe: Public Opinion and Social Representations’. Anyone who would like to give a paper should e-mail Oscar Mazzoleni (oscar.mazzoleni@ti.ch), Jim Newell (j.l.newell@salford.ac.uk) or Odette Tomescu-Hatto (odette.hatto@sciences-po.org) by no later than 10 February with a short abstract (circa 300 words) describing the paper they want to present.

The point of departure for the panel is three-fold: 1) awareness of the importance of public confidence in the standards of conduct of the holders of public office as a key variable impacting on the stability and effectiveness of democratic regimes; 2) awareness that concerns about such conduct have come to be an increasingly prominent feature of public life in European societies over the past two decades; 3) awareness that there are few studies of the expectations and perceptions of general publics in relation to the standards of conduct of public office holders.

At the most general level, therefore, the purpose of the panels will be to explore, on a cross-national, comparative basis: (1) the kinds of conduct/practices have been made visible to the public and how; (2) the current ‘state of the art’ regarding research into public norms and values, and into perceptions and evaluations of the conduct of public office-holders; (3) the related theoretical and conceptual issues that require addressing in order to advance beyond the current position and enable us to establish (a) what publics regard as acceptable and unacceptable on the part of public office-holders and how such attitudes vary; (b) how far the behaviour of public office-holders is in fact perceived as acceptable and how such perceptions vary; (c) how far publics believe that public office-holders will be held to account when their behaviour is unacceptable and how such beliefs vary; (d) how office-holders (or office-seekers) try to use (anti-)corruptive rhetoric in political competition.

Within these broad themes, we welcome papers focussing on any specific aspect of corruption and related behaviours; their social representation; policy makers’ responses to concerns about corruption and related behaviours.

Details of the conference can be found on the ECPR’s web site