The DVPW (German association for political science) meeting of the section on comparative politics (twitter #DVPWGIGA) was held in my hometown Hamburg at the GIGA (German institute for Global Area Studies) in February 2015. Once again (after the IDCAR confernce in december '14) a pleasent reason for me to return to my hometown for professional reasons.

In general the conference had attracted more than 220 researchers from all over Europe. This alone can probably already be judged quite a success. The wide -range of panel themes to some extend resembled the diversity of topics within the subfield of comparative politics (find the program of the conference with all paper titles & authors here). However there was some clear centres of gravity that could be identified. 

Overall there were four panels with a total of 28 papers dealing with authoritarian regimes. A clear sign that the trend towards political science research on non-democratic contexts is still ongoing. Other main themes at the conference were political behavoir and attitutes, regionalism and regional institutions as well as democratization and transitology.  I participated in the conference with two papers in two different panels both dealing with non-democratic regimes.

The first panel was entitled: "Legitimation, policy instruments and policy performance in autocracies" and organized by Steffen Kailitz (Hannah-Arendt-Institute Dresden) and Stefan Wurster (University of Heidelberg). Most of the contributions in this panel aimed at improving our conceptual understanding of legitimacy and legitimation processes under non-democratic circumstances and to increase our ability to operationalize and measure different types and mechanisms of legitimacy. I presented a paper dealing with legitimation strategies via the institutional reform process initiated by the Morrocan regime in the aftermath of the 2011 demonstrations (working paper paper can be found here).

The second panel was organnized by the IDCAR initiators Christian von Soest and Thomas Richter (both GIGA). Accordingly the panel was named: "Democracy Prevention by International Means: Diffusion and Cooperation of Authoritarian Regimes". In this rich panel with contributions on the post soviet space, the Gulf countries, Sub-Sahara Africa and the Middle East by scholars from all career stages I presented a draft outline on my conceptual dissertation chapter entitled: "The Influence of Authoritarian Learning on Regime Survival in times of Contentious Politics" (the working paper can be found here).

“Researching legitimacy only makes sense if investigated in combination with power or authority”[1]

During April 10th-15th the 2014 ECPR[2] joint Sessions were held in Salamanca, Spain. Host of the Sessions was the University of Salamanca, one of the oldest Universities in the world (established 1218).

I was happy to present my paper: The Impact of Authoritarian Learning on Reforms & the Legitimacy of Contested Regimes at the session on Regime Legitimisation Through Institutional Reform: Analysing its Dimensions and Effectiveness organized by Magnus Feldmann (University of Bristol) and Honarata Mazepus (University of Leiden).

The two convenors selected 20 papers from participants representing universities all across Europe and even as far as Australia. The topics were as manifold as the approaches to the rather broad topic. The overarching aim was to account for the recent re-emergence of legitimacy as a subject of investigation within political science. Reflecting upon the literature common approaches were mapped and categorized. The distinction between normative and empirical assessments of legitimacy and legitimation was the central outcome. Most participants agreed that normative approaches remain important signal posts but do barely wield advantages for assessing legitimacy and legitimation processes in the ‘real word’ due to their subjectivity. We agreed on a need to develop further the empirical approaches to legitimacy with regards to their underlying concepts and operationalization for empirical assessment.

Fundamental typologies of legitimacy and legitimation from Weber, Easton and Schumpeter were intensively discussed in the workshop. Furthermore most of the participants agreed that a focus on the processes of legitimation promises a more fruitful angle to the issue than studying levels of legitimacy at a certain moment in time. A number of papers focussed on legitimation processes in non-democracies –primarily through case studies- whereas others focussed on comparative perspective on legitimacy across the range of rather established OECD democracies.

The format of the Joint Sessions offer truly a great possibility to discuss papers and ideas under a common theme with peers from all over Europe that are working in this field. The fixed workshop belonging generates an intense working atmosphere in which scholars get to know each other and can develop thought together over the course of the 5 days. Despite differences in terms of the positions of the participants the discourse in the workshop was largely ‘Herrschaftsfrei’. Which means that there was no difference being made between me (as a first year PhD student) and distinct Professors amongst the participants.

The collegial atmosphere of the workshop contributed to getting to know each other and enjoying Spanish tapas together after the hard work was done.


All in all I can only recommend the ECP Joint Sessions as a place of scientific deliberation and debate of ones research and ideas. The comprised and intense form of working together across all hierarchical structures is a great chance to receive feedback and comments to your own work, to get a grasp of what scholars within one’s topic of interest are doing, to discuss current state of the art approaches and concepts and finally to get to know other scholars in your field.


[1] Quote form the opening presentation of the convenors
[2] European Consortium for Political Science Research

On Decemeber 1st Mr Hamadi Jebali the former Tunisian prime minister gave a keynote speech at the campus of the Free University of Berlin.
The topic of the talk was an analysis of the current situation of Tunisia.
Unfortunately Mr Jebalis picture of the situation in Tunisia remained very superficial. On the contrary he went on at length about the international environment around Tunisia and the imminent dangers and problems connected with it. His sometimes involute speech (maybe this was also due to the translators) Mr Jebali painted a picture of Tunisia as an isle of democracy in the middle east that is endangered from all sides (geographically) and dimensions (political, economic, security). the notion of terror triangles situated close to Tunisian boarders was the highlight of this talk (see foto).

The whole story telling finally concluded in Mr Jebali teklling teh audience at the FU that Tunisia is in desperate need for support from Germany & Europe and it could not cope with the challenges it is facing without European support.

To be honest I would have preferred a keynote focussing on the primarily domestic issues and ongoing political developments in the post-revolutionary Tunisia. The challenges do not only lie at Tunisias boarders as implied by Mr Jebali but also in the very heart of Tunisias capital and its constitutional assembly. Three years after the ousting of the cleptocratic autocrat Ben-Ali Tunisia is still struggling to give itself a new jurisiticial foundation for its new polity. Alongside this long lasting process political violence against members of the non islamic political elite is growing. None of these challenges were sufficiently addressed in Jebalis speech.