Discover Groups

The ECPR Standing Group on (Anti-)corruption and Integrity brings together scholars from different disciplinary, national and cultural backgrounds to further promote and deepen academic knowledge on: (i) corruption, an issue of increasingly significant public and political concern across the globe; (ii) on the strategies and policy solutions that seek to address the problem; as well as (iii) on the evolving concept of public integrity, both as an end in itself and as a corrective to the dominant anti-corruption approaches of the last quarter century that have delivered disappointing results. The perceived stagnation of existing work and approaches, coupled with the ever-increasing recognition that corruption poses a threat to political trust and stability and underlines a growing need to move (anti-)corruption studies in a new direction. There has been a growing number of new developments in this regard, both in policy and research, thereby making the foundation of this group very timely, but there remain core questions that need to be addressed.

The Research Networks on Affective Polarization emerges as a natural development of the 2021 Joint Session workshop on the same topic. Although studied for more than two decades in the USA, a strong scholarly interest for affective polarization is only now emerging in Europe. Researchers now investigating this topic aim at establishing a stable network to exchange ideas and strengthen lines of research. Although studied for more than two decades in the USA, a strong scholarly interest for affective polarization is only now emerging in Europe. Researchers now investigating this topic aim at establishing a stable network to exchange ideas and strengthen lines of research. 

The Research Network has connections with several existing Standing Groups such as the ones on Public Opinion and Voting Behaviour, Political Parties, Political Psychology and Political Methodology.
However, this new network would at the crossroad of all these groups, with the aim of gathering scholars on this specific topic. 

Analytical politics combines systematic theoretical thinking and rigorous empirical testing. One major source of inspiration is the literature on collective choice problems, which examines the relationship between individual and collective interests. Another line of interest is generated by studies that link developments in a formal theory with sound empirical research strategy. We welcome like-minded scholars who would like to use this forum for discussion and exchange of ideas. A number of activities facilitate an exchange, including a newsletter, regular meetings as part of ECPR and other international conferences and a summer school.

While we know a lot about the effect of democracy in international relations, less is known about the role that autocracies and processes of autocratization play in global politics. However, a range of scholars from different sub-fields have started to work on different aspects of the topic over the last years. Studies address to what extent authoritarian regional institutions promote illiberal practices and stabilize and diffuse autocracy in their regions. They analyze the role of authoritarian states as global actors who aim to challenge, contest and reshape international norms and institutions. Further work has focused on the consequences of regime type and autocratization processes for the institutional design, decision-making, and legitimacy of international organizations. Others try to unpack to what extent authoritarian powers, especially China and Russia, provide alternative institutional fora for cooperation, and how competitive regime creation challenges established institutions. Particular attention is also given to the disrupting effect of authoritarian states for international peace and security in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Research Network therefore aims to focus on autocracy in global governance to understand the causes and consequences of rising authoritarianism for the transformation of international politics. 

The Standing Group aims to strengthen relations between all scholars interested in Central and East European politics. The Standing Group organizes Sections, Panels and Workshops at the ECPR events which help to develop specific lines of research on post-communist societies and encourage the formation of specialist research groups and projects. These have generated, and continue to generate, a range of publications.

Citizenship is one of the most dynamic areas of politics. This is especially apparent today in the context of globalisation, digitalisation, migration, colonial debates and international crises vis-à-vis the continued prevalence and exclusionary tones of nation-state-based political communities. The Standing Group (SG) on Citizenship offers an inspiring and welcoming space for critical conversation about citizenship and related concepts. It welcomes queries about the genuine relevance of citizenship across personal, cultural, social, economic and political facets, articulations, practices, policies and implications in theory and in practice. Our members are invited to investigate these issues through research from multiple disciplines and diverse geographical regions - in and beyond Europe. Through these vital conversations, our members seek to address whether and how citizenship shapes the relationship between political communities and individuals, as well the factors and processes that influence citizenship at various levels, including micro, meso, and macro-level explanations.We are especially interested in unpacking citizenship’s seemingly relentless linkages with exclusionary socio-political, economic and environmental themes and practices. Such issues may be addressed through, for example, the articulation and challenges of rights, duties, participation and identities in off/online spaces. In the context of increased diversity, varied forms and levels of (political) participation and growing distrust, we are also interested in exploring and researching changes in young people’s politics. We therefore study citizenship along educational debates, including for example the role of educational institutions, actors and curricula in preparing ‘future’ citizens. The SG on Citizenship was established in 2013. Its membership has continually expanded since and now encompasses members from diverse academic fields and institutions.

The ECPR Comparative Political Institutions Standing Group brings together hundreds of researchers interested in how political institutions affect public policy, performance, and the behaviour and attitude of citizens and elites, and how these actors shape political institutions in return. It covers a diversity of approaches and fields such as comparative politics, political behaviour, and political economy. It also covers various methods such as observational data analysis, formal modelling, and experiments.

We believe that fostering dialogue and collaboration across different perspectives and methodological approaches can help address key problems in the study of political institutions and democratic politics more broadly.

Critical Peace and Conflict Studies is primarily concerned with the quality and nature of peace in cultural, social, economic, and political terms, ranging from the international system to the state and communities. It requires interdisciplinary investigation into peace and conflict dynamics, connecting post-colonial studies, anthropology, sociology, critical geography, critical development studies, and international relations. The Standing Group focuses on local peace agencies, infrastructures for peace and non-violent state formation dynamics. It examines how critical peace agencies can assert itself against different types of power in order to defend needs and rights that may otherwise be ignored in internationally-led peace processes.

The focus of the Standing Group is on innovations that aim at deepening 'thin' representative democracy and their impacts on communities, structures, systems, policies and democratic participation. Despite a fundamental triumph of democracy, several tendencies in contemporary democratic systems give rise to concern, e. g. declining voter turnout and the support for populist parties or policies. Many scholars have called for more participatory forms of democracy where citizens are effectively included in political decision-making. By now, several democratic innovations have been tried out – different forms of citizen deliberation, direct democracy or governance with citizens’ associations. The focus of the Standing Group is to evaluate the benefits, disadvantages and shortcomings of democratic innovations. The SG organizes sections at the ECPR General Conference, and sponsors Workshops at the Joint Sessions.

The Research Network on Differentiated Integration in the EU provides a collaborative network and infrastructure for junior and senior scholars working on different aspects of differentiated integration broadly conceived, including its empirical, legal and historical mapping, its normative theorising and broader reflection on what differentiated integration means for processes of European integration. The group is methodologically plural and welcomes scholars whatever their theoretical or methodological orientations, also beyond the field of political science.

Digital authoritarianism is defined as the ‘use of digital information technology by authoritarian regimes to surveil, repress, and manipulate domestic and foreign populations’ (Owen Jones, 2022). However, we believe that this kind of malicious activity is not limited to authoritarian regimes. Digital technologies, such as social media, could be employed by non-democratic forces in each country to manipulate public opinion and propel nefarious aims, such as stirring social conflicts and dividing societies. Such malicious activities, whether in democratic contexts or non-democratic societies, have been on the rise in recent years. Non-democratic forces now employ a variety of tactics, including sharing disinformation and agents, like social bots, to manipulate social media communication and protests worldwide. The rapid advancements in AI technologies, like Large Language Models, add to the complexity of this picture.

The primary goal of the Standing Group on Elites and Political Leadership (SGOEPL) is to provide a formal framework to communicate, meet, share and disseminate research, ideas and data among scholars whose interests extend to the realm of social and political elites and political leadership. These elites include but are not restricted to executive-level political elites, non-elected elites (e.g. bureaucrats), judicial elites and legislative elites (party leaders, parliamentary leaders and officers), media elites and business elites. SGOEPL is committed to the creation, promotion and dissemination of rigorous, empirically tested research. SGOEPL will draw together scholars researching elites and political leadership to provide an intellectual space for the development and dissemination of scholarly activity across the broad range of leadership and elite study. There are naturally synergies between research on political leadership and elites.