The Loop Workshop

In July of 2021, The Loop - the blog arm of the ECPR, began a series of short essays on the "science of democracy". Their series formalises an international discussion, and now global debate, that emerged after the publication of Jean-Paul Gagnon's essay "Words of Democracy: Rescuing an Abandoned Science" (https://www.abc.net.au/religion/words-of-democracy-an-abandoned-science/13386940). To date, more than 35 essays have been published in response to Gagnon's proposal to resume democracy's "abandoned science" and many more are in train. This Joint Sessions Workshop seeks to gather the authors, current and forthcoming, of The Loop's essay series to discuss what should happen next. Some questions include: 1. How are we to study democracy's many thousands of meanings? 2. What does this look like, institutionally speaking? 3. Why is this work significant - why, more specifically, should large pro-democracy bodies and pro-democraxy activists care? This "Loop Edition" workshop follows the format of a series of pre-established questions which are designed to lead a semi-structured discussion for the authors to participate in. The discussion will itself generate new questions which will be taken up when the authors reconvene, session to session. It is expected that this workshop will result in an extension of the ECPR short essays into journal articles of about 3500 words each which will form the basis of a special issue.