[Air-L] CFP RC10 Electronic Democracy - IPSA World Congress - July 8-12, 2012

[Stephanie Wojcik]

Call for papers - RC10 "Electronic Democracy" - International Political
Science Association (IPSA)World Congress
Madrid (Spain), July 8-12, 2012

The 22nd World Congress of the IPSA will take place in Madrid (Spain) from
8 to 12 July 2012.

Use www.ipsa.org to submit a paper.

Deadline for paper proposals and abstracts is October 7, 2011.

Panel 1. Open government

Chairs: Richard Engstrom, Duke University (USA) - richard.engstrom at duke.edu

Stéphanie Wojcik, University of Paris Est Créteil (France) –
stephanie.wojcik at u-pec.fr

Discussant: Albert J. Meijer, Utrecht University (A.J.Meijer at uu.nl) (TBC)

Calls for governments to provide open, easy-to-use and largely
free-of-charge access to public data have grown in recent years - such as
the 'Transparency and Open Government' programme initiated under Obama’s
presidency in the US or the Public Data Corporation supported by the UK
Cabinet Office (2011) while the European Commission, through the SEMIC.EU
platform, is promoting the idea of Linked Government Metadata (2010).

Making public information and data more widely available is indeed thought
to support democratic citizenship by increasing transparency and
accountability in government, allowing individuals and groups to monitor
and evaluate particular policies, services, and the performance of
government in general. While little systematic research has been done on
open government so far, initiatives associated with the term have
generated opposing views.

This panel issue is concerned with the concrete benefits and the downsides
of the various opendata initiatives worldwide. Which public policies and
strategies of implementation are known? Are European initiatives adopting
such strategies or are there new instruments?

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

- Surveillance, data privacy and regulations

- Transparency, accountability and civic engagement

- Production of services and public goods and changing roles of
government, public authorities, business, civil society and citizens

- Technological and organizational challenges of open government

Panel 2. E democracy and deliberation

Chairs: Raphael Kies, (University of Luxembourg) - raphael.kies at uni.lu

Norbert Kersting, (University of Münster, Germany),
-norbert.kersting at uni-marburg.de

Dialogical deliberative instruments are vitalizing democracy.
Participatory budgeting, deliberative polls, forums and other
participatory instruments are implemented . These instruments are often
combined with e-participation tools. Internet conference, open space
online, participatory budgeting online, e-petitions, blogs, web forums
etc. are implemented to support or to substitute traditional instruments
for participation. This raises the question about the quality of
deliberation in the internet. The panel will try to categorize, analyze
and evaluate the different tools.

Panel 3. Electronic voting re-vitalized?

Chairs: Richard Niemi, (University Rochester, USA) - niemi at rochester.edu

Josep Reniu, (University of Barcelona, Spain) - jreniu at ub.edu

Discussant: Alexander Trechsel

Electronic voting and internet voting seems to be reinvigorated. This
panel discusses strategies of national and supranational institutions such
as Council of Europe regarding Electronic and internet voting. New
experiments in Mexico, Argentina, new trends in India etc will be
presented. Latest developments in Norway in the local election will be
analyzed. New experiences in Estonia, Switzerland, USA, Russia evaluated.

Panel 4. e-Revolution and Pluralism in Countries of the 2011 "Arab
spring": Egypt and Tunisia

joint panel with RC 16 Socio political pluralism and RC 10 e-democracy

Chairs: Rainer Eisfeld (RC 16) (University Osnabrueck, Germany)
-rainer.eisfeld at uni-osnabrueck.de

Norbert Kersting (RC 10) (University of Münster, Germany),
-norbert.kersting at uni-marburg.de

Paper or discussant: Jason Abbott

A pluralist alliance of various civil society groups – workers, women,
urban professionals, moderate islamists, underemployed (particularly from
among the youth) – with different, sometimes overlapping, grievances,
ousted the previous regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. Largely mobilised via
the Internet, these groups have different interests and pursue differing
political projects for their countries’ post-revolutionary future. The
panel will trace sources of several important Egyptian and Tunesian
protest groups’ politicization and subsequent mobilisation, also
attempting to spell out implications of their projects for the post-Ben
Ali and post-Mubarak eras. Are there lessons to be learned for the rest of
the world?

RC10 website : http://rc10.ipsa.org/
Contact : Norbert Kersting (norbert.kersting at uni-marburg.de)