[ecrea] CfP IPSA conference - RC10 Electronic Democracy, Madrid, 8-12 July 2012

I hope you had a wonderful summer break. IPSA conference in July 2012 is 
coming closer. We have now 4 panels (working titles) and chairs and I 
think these cover important topics and trends. Now we are looking for 
paper givers. Please think about presenting a paper or contact your 
colleagues and distribute the call for papers..
IPSA's Deadline for paper proposals and abstracts is October 7, 2011. 
Please use the IPSA internet website www.ipsa.org (registration on the 
IPSA website is free) to submit papers and link it to our panels. Or 
contact directly the panel chairs.
Please, let me know if do not fit in one of the panels or if we missed 
an important aspect.  We will try to accommodate you in our RC 10 program.
Looking forward to seeing you in Madrid (or in Muenster)

Norbert
Please use my new email address and the website http://rc10.ipsa.org/.

Prof. Norbert Kersting
University Muenster
Institute for Political Science
Scharnhorststr. 100
48151 Muenster (Germany)
Tel. +49251-83-25399 (phone)
Tel. +49251-83-24372 (fax)
(norbert.kersting /at/ uni-muenster.de)


Call for papers

*IPSA conference, Madrid (Spain), 8-12 July 2012
Research Committee on Electronic Democracy (http://rc10.ipsa.org/)
*

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

Use www.ipsa.org to submit a paper.

*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)) (to 
be confirmed)


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)>
Jose 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 the RC 16 Socio political pluralism

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?

The call is available on the RC10 website : http://rc10.ipsa.org/