Professor Ellen M. Immergut, Head of the Department of Political and Social Sciences, has been invited by the University of Bergen, Norway to deliver the 2022 March/Olsen Honorary Lecture, on 2 June 2022. The lecture is hosted by the university’s Department of Administration and Organizational Theory.
This annual lecture series pays tribute to the great scholarly contributions by James G. March and Johan P. Olsen within the fields of organisational and institutional theory. Immergut states in her preview to the talk:
"March and Olsen’s pathbreaking 1984 article launched an institutionalist wave in political science as well as political sociology. Nearly forty years later, we are now in the midst of a behaviouralist wave. The question for us now is whether this will be a reverse wave or a wave forward that unites the insights of the institutionalist and behaviouralist perspectives. This lecture will focus on both classical theory and contemporary examples to argue for the great potential inherent in synthesising these approaches."
Immergut’s own contributions to pushing the field forward include coordination of a transnational research programme on Welfare State Futures and the recent publication of the Oxford University Press handbook, Health Politics in Europe (co-edited with Karen M. Anderson, Camilla Devitt and Tamara Popic), a multi-author work that traces the development of health politics and health policies in 35 European countries from 1989 to 2019. Her follow-up study, currently under way, investigates the impact of the design of COVID-19 restrictions, pre-existing policies, as well as political leadership and political communication on public acceptance of these policies and trust in government.
Register here to attend the lecture.