In response to the results of the members’ survey, the organizational structure of EPSS 2027 has been revised. The conference will comprise 20 sections, with the addition of a new section dedicated to Politics and AI.
- Climate Politics: We invite submissions of high-quality work on any topic related to climate change politics, including environmental and energy politics. Cross-cutting themes: Green economic policy and green industrial policy; Geopolitics of energy transitions and climate relations; Environmental vulnerability and justice issues;Electoral politics of climate change, including green backlash; International climate cooperation and climate governance.
- Comparative Politics: Our section welcomes papers that analyze political institutions, processes, and policy decisions comparatively across political systems worldwide, including their horizontal and vertical interlinkages. We are particularly interested in work examining the structures, preconditions, and quality of political rule, as well as multi-topic or transregional research (e.g., East-West) that applies rigorous methods to core theoretical and empirical problems.
- Comparative Politics of Development: This section welcomes work on any topic in the political economy of development (PED) or comparative politics in low- and middle-income countries. Alongside substantive PED topics (e.g., autocratization and democratization in the Global South, state capacity, economic and social inequality, distributive politics, political violence, among others), we also welcome papers exploring topics such as ethics in PED research, PED research and policy influence, PED research in contexts of democratic backsliding, or the implications of funding cuts in development and democratic aid.
- Conflict, Violence & Security: This section welcomes work on conflict, violence and security, including but not limited to peace and conflict research, studies of human rights violations and state repression, using qualitative or quantitative methods, and single-country or comparative studies.
- Electoral and Voting Behaviour: Our section welcomes work on elections and referendums examining opinion formation, political participation and mobilization, and vote choice. We are open to research investigating political,institutional, socio-economic, group- and cleavage- based, or psychological effects on electoral behaviour. The section welcomes research that makes a clear theoretical, methodological, or empirical contribution using qualitative or quantitative approaches, whether single-country or comparative.
- European/EU Politics: This section invites paper proposals on politics, institutions, decision-making, public opinion, and legitimacy in and across the European Union and its member states. We welcome theory-testing and theory-generating empirical work; qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods designs; single or comparative case studies; and research on the EU’s and Europe’s future in the current challenges of geo-politics.
- Formal Political Theory: Our section aims to bring together work advancing & applying formal models of all types (game theory, behavioral, computational, structural) across all substantive areas of political science. Submissions as individual papers that use formal theory to study politics are welcome.
- Gender & Sexuality Politics: Our section welcomes high-quality papers that advance the study of gender, sexuality, and intersectionality in politics. We welcome submissions that make clear and novel contributions, whether theoretical, empirical, or both. Submissions that use innovative methods and/or data and pathbreaking research designs, both descriptive and causal, are particularly welcome.
- Historical Political Economy: This section welcomes work with historical data, strong quantitative or mixed-methods designs, theoretical contributions applicable to historical cases, or meta-analyses. We welcome submissions that use history to inform our understanding of past and present political processes are welcome.
- International Relations: The section invites theoretical and empirical work across the study of international relations, including security studies, international political economy, foreign policy analysis, global governance, international institutions, peace and conflict research, human rights and international law. Contributions from all methodological traditions are welcome.
- Judicial Politics: The judicialization of politics has made courts central political actors. Courts shape public policy and place limits on majoritarian politics. However, they also face increasing public scrutiny and attempts to curb their authority. Understanding judicial politics is therefore more important than ever. We welcome theoretically grounded and empirically rigorous proposals on any aspect of judicial politics, including judicial behavior, judicial impact, legal mobilization, and public opinion on courts and their rulings. Proposals on domestic and international courts are equally welcome.
- Migration Politics: Our section brings together research on the politics of migration, including internal and international migration flows, government policies to manage mobility, and the politics of forced displacement. It also covers work on sending, transit, and receiving societies, including questions about citizenship, immigrant integration, political representation, and public attitudes toward migrants and minorities.
- Party Politics: This section welcomes work on party strategies, parties in government, party systems and organizations, as well as electoral, behavioral, or institutional consequences of party strategies. Submissions with comparative perspectives, innovative uses of methods and data, or strong empirical research designs (causal or descriptive) are particularly encouraged.
- Political Communication: Our section welcomes submissions on contents and effects of political communication, broadly conceived, and media-politics relations.
- Political Economy: Our section welcomes submissions examining how economic & political processes, institutions, policies and outcomes influence each other. We welcome studies from both comparative (CPE) and international (IPE) political economy that take an individual, group, or country level perspective. We encourage submissions that study a political economy topic in a variety of regions, in and beyond Europe.
- Political Methodology: Our section welcomes quantitative and qualitative work that develops, evaluates, or applies methods for the study of politics. This includes, but is not limited to, causal inference, research design, measurement and latent variable models, survey and experimental methodology, text and computational approaches, and case selection and multi-method designs. We particularly welcome papers which use new methods to answer substantive questions, no matter the subfield.
- Political Representation: Our section welcomes work that addresses various aspects of political representation, including the factors that enable or hinder representation, such as electoral institutions, political (party) recruitment processes, public opinion, and legislative dynamics; descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation in various institutions, including (but not constrained to) legislatures, and their outputs; and the representation of marginalized groups. We particularly welcome research which advances our theoretical understanding, uses methodological innovations, and offers new empirical evidence.
- Public Policy & Administration: Our section welcomes research that addresses today’s most pressing issues in public policy and public administration. We especially encourage contributions that employ rigorous empirical methods to deliver robust policy-relevant insights or advance groundbreaking fundamental research.
- Public Opinion: Our section welcomes work on the formation, dynamics, measurement, and analysis of public opinion, as well as its role in politics, policymaking, and public debate. We welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions across political contexts.
- Politics and AI (NEW section): Our section welcomes work in which AI is central to the research question or method: how AI affects politics, how politics affects AI, or how AI can be used and evaluated as a tool for political science research. We welcome diverse forms of scholarship on AI, including qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, theoretical, and policy-oriented research.