The Political Economy of Reforms
Quantitative research on European integration has proliferated in the past decade. Today, many scholars use information from “official” databases which offer online-documentaries about legislative, transposition and infringement activities. Furthermore, the computerized analysis of political texts allows extracting information from official documents about political issues and viewpoints of the various types of actors involved, i.e. representatives from governments, political parties, experts, interest groups etc. Despite this enormous progress, the data generating process raises a number of methodological questions. These questions comprise the validity of the source of information, the method to extract information from online-documentations, the coding of the information and the handling of missing values, the selection of cases etc which may be heavily influencing our insights and conclusions about the way European integration functions.
This conference intends to bring together specialized scholars for an insightful discussion and deliberation on the pros and cons of this kind of data-generation process. We invite scholars with interest and experience on the related problems and their potential solutions in the context of European integration research. We are interested in papers on European integration and all its subfields, such as legislation, transposition or infringements as well as scholars studying computerized analysis of political texts, which are used for European integration research.
The conference will take place at the Collaborative Research Center – SFB 884 – “The Political Economy of Reforms” in Mannheim (Germany) on 13. – 14. December 2010.
To apply, please send an abstract (max. 200-300 words) of the paper you want to present by 30. October 2010 to publicrelations(AT)reforms.uni-mannheim.de. Short papers (10-15) pages are encouraged for further publication in an international journal. We will contact you with final information in the beginning of November 2010 about acceptance. Travel and accommodation costs will be supported with max. 500 Euros per participant.
For more information, please see here.
