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Between Norms and Evidence: Connecting Normative Political Theory and Political Science 7-10 April 2026 University of Innsbruck, Austria We are pleased to announce that our Standing Group’s workshop proposal for the Joint Sessions has been accepted. We are now accepting abstract submissions for the workshop Between Norms and Evidence: Connecting Normative Political Theory and Political Science.
Organised by Sune Lægaard and Marina Vahter, this workshop is endorsed by the Methods of Normative Political Theory and the Analytical Politics and Public Choice standing groups. The Joint Sessions format allows for in-depth engagement with every paper over the four days. Each paper will have a dedicated discussant, assigned by the workshop directors, Sune and Marina. Thus, every paper will receive detailed feedback.
Have a look at the workshop outline here.
Methodological Reflections on the Status, Norms, and Institutions of Democracy 8-11 September 2026 Jagiellonian University, Kraków
The 2026 ECPR General Conference will be held in Jagiellonian University Kraków, Poland from 8 to 11 September 2026. Esma Baycan-Herzog and Ed Handby will be co-organising the Section for ECPR 2026. The deadline for paper and panel proposals is 5 January.
The Section provides a venue for methodologists to contribute to the ongoing project of examining democratic norms and institutions in light of methodological reflections. The theme of the Section proposal for 2026 continues the work started with the 2025 Section, by applying recent innovations in methodology to the role and status of democracy. We encourage proposals that approach questions of method in the context of challenges to democracy: how to understand or model democracy in a way that strengthens norms and institutions, or propose viable alternatives. This includes papers on how to understand democracy in theory and practice, such as the role of democratic institutions, forms of justification in democracy, and the nature of democratic consent. Furthermore, the Section examines various core features of democracy, such as the nature of the democratic citizen, and how their investigation changes depending on the methodology and the kind of normativity employed. In this way, the focus of the Section is not only democracy more broadly, but its constituent parts. Finally, the Section examines the place of democracy and democratic ideals. It invites comparisons between democratic and non-democratic forms of government, the online dimensions of democracy, and the very nexus between democracy and the study of methods itself.
We are delighted to announce that nominations for the Onora O’Neill Political Theory Prize are now open.
Sponsored by the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (CRISPP), this prize honours the best book in political theory published in the last three years (from January 2022 onwards). The prize cuts across all traditions, orientations and approaches in political theory, political thought, and political philosophy, and does not take into account whether the nominated works are first book publications or not.
The winner will receive £250, and their book will be the subject of a panel at the 2026 ECPR General Conference, with potential publication as a symposium in CRISPP. Nominations, including a book abstract and PDF, should be submitted to ecproopt@gmail.com with the jury chair in CC (a.poama@fgga.leidenuniv.nl) by 31 January 2026.
Click here for details.
Edmund Handby is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Political Science at Duke University. His research examines methodological questions in the history of political thought, empirically informed political theory, and politics, philosophy, and economics. His work has appeared in The Journal of Politics, the European Journal of Political Theory, and The Journal of the Philosophy of History.
Glorianne Wilkins is a Ph. D. student at the department of Political Theory at the University of Potsdam. Her thesis is on 'Uncertainty and Decision Making in a Political World'. Her research engages with the theoretical disciplines of political philosophy, political epistemology, and liberal democratic theory. She is particularly interested in the nature of unquestioned assumptions as it relates to particular concepts taken as fundamental to contemporary politics: truth, (liberal) democracy, among others. In recent times these values have wavered in their ability to unite decision makers, instead becoming conceptual weapons wielded by all sides. Through her research she considers how engaging with these concepts and their assumptions can inform how we make decisions under greater conditions of uncertainty.
Sania Ismailee is an Assistant Professor at the School of Law, BML Munjal University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of political philosophy, law, and religion. Sania’s research interests also include critically examining the methodology of Indian political theory debates. Her dissertation examined normative justifications around diverse religious family laws in India (the Uniform Civil Code Debate) from perspectives on secularism, gender justice, and religious freedom. She was a Fulbright Nehru Doctoral Researcher at Columbia University and a Commonwealth Split-Site Fellow at the University of Oxford. Sania has published on the Karnataka hijab controversy, comparing V D Savarkar’s and B R Ambedkar’s comments on Muslims, affective approaches to justice, along with several book reviews on religion and political theory.
Lucas de Melo Prado is a PhD candidate at University College Dublin, specialising in applied political theory and distributive justice. His current research examines the last seven presidential elections in the USA and Brazil to evaluate candidates’ rhetoric of inequality from a liberal perspective. Before his PhD studies, Lucas worked for nine years as a lecturer of Moral and Legal Philosophy at three Brazilian law schools (Uniavan, Sinergia, and Univali). He also published in various Brazilian peer-reviewed journals, such as the Brazilian Journal of International Law and the Brazilian Journal Law and Politics (“Revista Eletrônica Direito e Política”).