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During 1969 and 1970, Jean Blondel and Stein Rokkan, working with Peter de Janosi of the Ford Foundation and other prominent European scholars, shaped the concept of a ‘European Consortium for the Promotion of Political Science’.
With eight founding universities, the ECPR was born and quickly got to work, supporting summer schools, establishing the Joint Sessions of Workshops and the European Journal of Political Research within its first three years.
Half a century later, we have grown to become a global organisation of 350 institutional members, providing training, research opportunities and professional development to more than 30,000 individual scholars.
Our 50th anniversary marks a golden opportunity to reflect on the development and growth of the political science discipline and ECPR's role within it, and to look towards an exciting future.
50-year timeline of ECPR's development
We have used this half-century milestone as an opportunity to refresh the ECPR brand and to place you, our members, at the heart of it. You'll notice that we have retained our familiar and long-established logo, but refreshed it in a smart square block. We'll be rolling out our fresh new monochrome branding across all our materials, print and digital, over the coming months.
As part of our celebrations, we have commissioned a special anniversary volume, taking stock of how the discipline has been built, what state it is in, what its achievements are, and what challenges it faces. Gathering contributions of leading political scientists across Europe and North America, the book will be published by Rowman & Littlefield International in August and available to buy at our General Conference in Innsbruck.
We have also asked the editors of all our co-published journals to select a number of articles they feel either embody the vision and aims of their journal; stand out as defining a particular theme; or serve as milestones in the development of the discipline. We will bring these articles together in one special virtual journal issue, available free of charge via the publisher platforms for the duration of the year. Look out for it later this spring.
Premiering at the General Conference in Innsbruck this August will be a specially commissioned film charting the history of the ECPR and of political science in Europe, including interviews with ECPR founder members Jean Blondel and Richard Rose, and featuring other key voices from the political science community. You'll be able to view the film online from late August.
Current ECPR Chair Kris Deschouwer recently unearthed his name badge from the Joint Sessions in Paris an astonishing 30 years ago. Former Executive Committee member Richard Katz was spotted at a recent ECPR event toting a cotton bag from the 1987 Universiteit van Amsterdam Joint Sessions! What ECPR memorabilia might you have lurking in the attic? If you have vintage treasures squirrelled away – think bags, programmes, leaflets, T-shirts – dig them out and let us know on membership@ecpr.eu We'll bring them all together for a special display at this year's General Conference.
A key aim of ECPR's founder members was ‘to break down the barriers between the national traditions of the discipline and create a truly international community of scholars within Europe…’
Despite all our achievements, that goal remains valid today. To this end, the Executive Committee has set up a 50th Anniversary Fund dedicated to supporting political scientists around the world facing economic, political, social or other barriers to joining our activities and events.