ECPR Joint Sessions Social Programme Taking Shape

With just two months to go until the 41st Joint Sessions of Workshops at Mainz, the local team is getting super-excited, if not slightly panicky. We have finally found funding for two drinks/finger-food receptions: a welcome bash at the university on Monday evening (5-7), and another reception on Wednesday night at Mainz City Hall following…

Banning Germany’s NPD – Not a Very Bright Idea

The NPD is Germany’s oldest surviving Extreme Right party. It has been around for about five decades. After merging with its long-time rival German People’s Union (DVU, the ruling mentioned in the post was finally squashed), it is also a serious contender for the coveted title of Germany’s daftest party (see exhibit number one). While…

Data: How many people are shot dead or otherwise killed in OECD countries?

As a follow-up to my recent post on the relationship between gun ownership and gun homicide in OECD countries, I have rolled my dataset (compiled from information published by gunpolicy.org) and my analysis script into a neat Stata package. If you want to recreate the tables and graphs, or otherwise want to play with the…

Joint Sessions 2013: Confirm your participation and book your hotel NOW

Was your paper proposal successful? Congrats from our end, we’re looking forward to having you with us! If you haven’t done so, can you please confirm your participation with your workshop directors? We need exact numbers (exact numbers, this is Germany, after all) as soon as possible so that we can plan ahead. We would…

More Local Information

From the Great Pyramid to Berlin’s shambolic airport experience, public building projects have a tendency towards overspending, confusion, and delay. Rather unsurprisingly, the new Social Science building in Mainz is no exception, and so we will in all likelihood hold the 41st Joint Sessions not in this shiny new temple of knowledge but rather in…

Party Identification in Germany: A Journey

I’ve just published a chapter on party identification’s continuing relevance for electoral choice in Germany (in German). I like the piece well enough, and it is full of nice graphs, but its intellectual history (if I may say so) is more than a little bit convoluted. It began its life some twelve years ago or…

Paper Proposals: What’s next?

The deadline for paper proposals has now passed. While everyone was watching the drama across the Atlantic, we’ve been quietly celebrating that many, many of you submitted your paper proposals for the 41st Joint Sessions of Workshops in March, sometimes quite literally at the 11th hour (or even  a little later). Thanks to everyone who…