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Past Academic Events
Between Norms and Evidence: Connecting Normative Political Theory and Political Science
8-10 April 2026
University of Innsbruck, Austria
This year, Innsbruck was the setting for three days of intensive scholarly exchange at the ECPR Joint Sessions. This year’s workshop, directed by Sune Lægaard (Roskilde University) and Marina Vahter (Tallinn University), brought together twelve scholars to explore a simple but underworked question: how can normative and empirical approaches genuinely enrich one another? This question was discussed not only in the seminar room but also during an afternoon hike along the mountain paths of Innsbruck's dramatic Nordkette ridge, with the city spread below, making the group feel less like a workshop and more like an intellectual community.
Sune Lægaard argued that civility norms cannot be evaluated by standard free speech theory alone, because what counts as acceptable speech is irreducibly context-specific.
Francesca Chiarvesio complicated the picture by examining authoritarian co-optation and depoliticization.
Ophelia Nicole-Berva tackled the 'black box' between fieldwork and normative theorising.
Naima Chahboun diagnosed a dilemma at the heart of standard feasibility theory.
Edmund Handby reframed the strategic voting debate by asking not whether it is bad but whether it is that bad relative to the alternatives.
Marina Vahter discussed utopian reasoning as a philosophical tool for question-generation.
Sania Ismailee diagnosed India's Uniform Civil Code impasse as methodological.
Coline Rondiat mapped how legitimacy principles were invoked and reworked under crisis conditions.
Jonathan Floyd discussed what separates legitimate philosophical persuasion from mere rhetoric.
Lucas de Melo Prado presented an analysis of presidential campaign discourse in the US and Brazil over more than two decades.
Hidde Boonstra asked what civil servants should do when elected officials themselves erode democratic checks and balances.
Ciarán Ó Briain closed the workshop with a paper on climate displacement and methodological nationalism.
Across twelve papers, three mountain-framed days, and more than a few lively lunches and dinners, the workshop demonstrated that while the divide between political theory and political science is real, it is not insurmountable, and bridging it produces better questions and insight than either tradition generates alone.
Upcoming Academic Events
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 are co-organising the Section 38 Methods of Normative Political Theory.
The section will include 7 different panels, the schedule and the program is near to taking their final shapes at the moment of writing.
The role and status of democracy remain of central concern to political science, public policy, and political theory. The tension and juxtaposition between democratic and authoritarian modes of government, the maintenance of democratic norms and institutions, and increasing levels of democratic backsliding have long been considered in the literature. More recently, these concerns have been exacerbated by significant threats to democratic norms and institutions in various parts of the world, including Europe and the United States.
This proposed Section of Methods of Normative Political Theory provides a venue for methodologists to contribute to the ongoing project of examining democratic norms and institutions in light of methodological reflections. This section contributes to the methodological dimensions of normative political theory as a venue for rethinking democracy. Methodologists—those concerned with the logic, justification, and scope of political theorising—illuminate how our conceptions of democracy depend on underlying assumptions about what counts as valid reasoning, legitimate disagreement, or the proper relationship between theory and practice. The task of interrogating democracy, democratic norms and institutions, as well as their alternatives, can significantly benefit from a careful methodological investigation. While various disciplines and approaches (e.g. political science or democratic theory) raise concerns pertaining to the decreasing quality of common public debate, methodological approaches are better suited, as they have the specific toolset adequate to diagnose the changing character of plausible public argumentation. In addition, methodologists in normative theory have developed methodological tools and approaches for examining phenomena such as democratic backsliding. Democracy, broadly conceived, is a multifaceted political phenomenon: addressing it with a wide range of methods, approaches, and perspectives from various disciplines in the social sciences allows to better appreciate its complexity.
"If democracy is dying, isn't it time political theorists thought of something else?"
Friday, 11:15-13:00
Faculty of International and Political Studies, Floor: Ground, Room 39
Following some announcements from the four political theory standing groups, a little bit of fun opinion polling of those gathered on the day, and the announcement of the inaugural winner of the Onora O'Neill Book Prize, we will then start a debate in response to the question above. This debate will be chaired by our own Jonathan Floyd, and will feature Esma Baycan Herzog, Jochen Bojanowski, Markus Patberg, and Elise Roumeas as our key interlocuters, plus lots of Q/A involvement with the gathered audience. Having fought hard for this plenary event to take place on behalf of our subject, it would be great to see as many as possible of you there!
Political Theory Methodology Workshop on behalf of IPSA and the Waseda Institute of Political Economy
29/30 October 2026
Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
Featuring keynote lectures from Humeira Iqtida (KCL) and our own Jonathan Floyd (Bristol), this 2 day workshop will play host to a large number of early-career scholars keen to refine and develop their methodological thinking. Some funding is available for local accommodation expenses. Call for papers coming soon, and for any questions contact our much-valued member Kei Hiruta (Kei.Hiruta@Waseda.JP).
1. ICLRS Young Scholars Fellowship on Religion and the Rule of Law
Christ Church College, University of Oxford
Funded by BYU Law School
Sania Ismailee is one of the recipients of the International Centre for Law and Religion Studies (ICLRS) Young Scholars Fellowship on Religion and the Rule of Law funded by BYU Law School. As part of the Program, she will be spending three weeks at Christ Church College, University of Oxford. The program aims to help early career academics publish a journal article and train them to teach a course on Law and Religion. Sania will be developing her paper on the Karnataka hijab controversy titled “The Wrongs of the Karnataka Hijab Controversy: Beyond Religious Freedom”. Recently, she published an Opinion Piece “In Karnataka and Beyond, the hijab and the saffron shawl cannot be equated” for the Indian Express.
2. Keynote on 'What is the Point of Methodology in Political Theory?'
In May this year, our Standing Group Chair, Jonathan Floyd, gave a keynote lecture on this theme at the annual Brave New World graduate political theory conference held at the University of Manchester. Many thanks to Yonghao Huang and Anthony McMullin for hosting!
1. Empirical Political Theory: A Methodological Framework
By Nahshon Perez
Oxford University Press
Empirical Political Theory: A Methodological Framework establishes a systematic methodological foundation for empirically informed normative political theory. While political science has developed a rich methodological literature, political theory has often left its methods implicit. Yet political theory research involves methodological choices through case selection, argument-structure, or empirical claims, and making these explicit improves transparency, rigor, and consistency.
The book pursues two central objectives. First, it offers a typology of how empirical data function in political theory, including spotlighting, definition, conversion, institutional clarity, theoretical clarity, and theory improvement. This typology provides a structured way for scholars to recognize and refine their own uses of data. Second, it proposes a research template organized around three stages (description and patterning, evaluation, and prescription) linked by a feedback loop. This framework mirrors the methodological clarity available in political science while remaining compatible with diverse normative approaches.
Contents
Introduction: Why Explicit Methodological Awareness Is Crucial to Normative Political Theory
1: The Methodological Turn of Political Theory and the Rise of Empirically Informed Political Theory
2: Demarcating Normative Political Theory from Political Science: And Why It Matters Methodologically
3: The Various Uses of Empirical Statements/"Data" within Political Theory: A Typology
4: Empirical Political Theory: A Research Template
5: The Case for Methodological Naturalization: Between Political Theory and Political Science
6: Refuting Political Theories?: An Empiricist View
7: Is Empirical Political Theory Bent toward the Status Quo?
8: A Brief Look into the Future: Artificial Intelligence: The Changing Landscape of Empirical Political Theory
Conclusion: The Contributions and Future Directions of Empirical Political Theory
2. Time of Democracy History, Memory, and the Politics of the Future
By Timo Miettinen
Routledge
In Time of Democracy, Timo Miettinen takes readers on a fascinating journey through the history of democratic ideas, showing how our political systems are deeply shaped by the way we understand the past, imagine the future, and live in the present.
From Renaissance thinkers such as Machiavelli to modern ideas of crisis and revolution, this book traces how democracy emerged from a new understanding of change, human agency, and historical progress. Miettinen defends the openness of the future against both totalitarian visions and nostalgic retreats, showing how democracy withers when history is used to shut down alternatives.
Accessible, sharp, and packed with thought-provoking examples, Time of Democracy is perfect for students looking to connect big ideas from political theory, history, and philosophy to real-world issues, or simply curious about how time and history shape the way we live together. Whether you're studying democracy, European politics, or just curious about how time shapes the way we live together, this book offers fresh tools to think critically and creatively about the future of democratic life.
Contents:
Introduction
1. Breaking the Circle: Contingency, Fortune, and the Temporal Foundations of Democratic Thought
2. From Timeless Ideals to Temporal Orders: Raison d'État and the Birth of Political Time
3. History Accelerated: Democracy and the Revolutionary Imagination
4. The Invention of Democratic Time: Romanticism, Liberalism, and Historical Consciousness
5. After Providence: Democracy's Temporal Dilemmas in the Twentieth Century
6. Democracy's Lost Time: History without a Future. Conclusion: To Move Forward without Forgetting
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.
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”).