The 2024 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA) took place on 5-8 September in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The theme of this year’s event was ‘Democracy: Retrenchment, Renovation, & Reimagination’.
The EUI Department of Political and Social Sciences had a large representation at the APSA convention, made up of both professors and researchers. The EUI 29-member delegation also included representatives from the Robert Schuman Centre, the Max Weber Programme, as well as former EUI scholars.
Professor Filip Kostelka, member of the APSA Committee on International Political Science, presented his paper on ‘Election Frequency and Electoral Abstention Approval’, Professor Simon Hix contributed a paper on ‘New Young Liberals: The (Re)Emergence of a Political Force in European Politics’, and Max Weber Fellow Virginia Rocha presented on ‘Familial Political Ties and Public Transparency’.
"Attending the APSA 2024 meeting was an exciting opportunity to receive detailed and useful feedback to improve my research and get inspired by other researchers in my field, especially on the panel I presented in", commented Rocha.
With more than 7,000 political scientists, scholars, and experts across the discipline, the APSA annual meeting represents one of the largest and most important gatherings in the field of political sciences. This large event allows EUI researchers to present their papers to senior scholars and to make connections for future job opportunities, after the completion of their PhD at the EUI.
“We highly encourage doctoral researchers to attend top conferences like APSA and it is fantastic that many of them are often selected by the organisers to present their work,” said Kostelka.
Notably, EUI researcher Victor Ellenbroek received the John Sullivan Award for his research article 'The Effect of More Choice on Voter Turnout: Causal Evidence from Germany', published in German Politics and presented at the 2023 APSA annual meeting.
Professor Jeffrey T. Checkel ran two short courses during the convention: the first on ‘The Logic and Best Practices of Process Tracing’, and the second on ‘Interpretive Process Tracing’. The courses gave students advice and examples to enable them to use this method in their social sciences work. Moreover, Checkel presented his paper ‘Process Analytics in Political Science: How, Why & Where Next’ in the panel on ‘Foundational Concepts and New Directions in Qualitative Research’.
The Director of the EUI Robert Schuman Centre Erik Jones chaired two panels at the APSA convention: one on ‘Ideational Contributions to State-Building’, which examined the role of ideas in state-building and political development across historical and regional contexts; and the second on ‘Italian Politics in a Comparative Context.’
The American Political Science Association (APSA) is the leading professional organisation for the study of political science and serves more than 11,000 members in more than 100 countries. APSA has announced that next year’s annual meeting will be in Vancouver, Canada, on the 11-14 September 2025 and that the theme for 2025 will be ‘Reimagining Politics, Power, and Peoplehood in Crisis Times’.