Eu centers proposal submission guidelines

April 2012 – Conference 3:
Elite Policymaking and Financing in the EU and US: Accountability or Paralysis?
A central question in EU countries and the US today is the extent to which policymaking latitudes of government, state administrative, business, trade union, and other key elite groups are being constricted by globalization, climate change, resource costs, weak economic growth, high unemployment, ethnic communal tensions, and many other difficulties. Enthusiasts of unfettered democracy applaud and seek more constricted elite latitudes, believing this increases accountability to citizens’ needs and wishes. Others see in constricted latitudes a creeping paralysis of policymaking that will produce protracted economic stagnation and heightened social conflict. These competing views are abiding themes in theories and research about political elites in EU countries and the US: selectivity in recruitment, forms of social distinctiveness; rates of circulation; structures of policy networks; magnitudes of accord and discord on major policy questions; in short, the policymaking capacities and qualities of political elites in these countries. Relevant theories are, however, diverse, and research findings tend to be piecemeal. It is therefore proposed to convene a symposium at the UT in early April 2012 to aggregate and assess what we know and do not know about the capacities and qualities of elite policymaking. A dozen senior scholars who have long studied political elites in EU countries and the US, augmented by several prominent media observers, will be assembled. The symposium will be organized by the Center for European Studies and Department of Government at the UT in collaboration with the International Political Science Association’s Research Committee on Political Elites, whose current chair, Prof. John Higley, is a UT faculty member. Prof. Higley will later edit a volume containing symposium papers and discussions. Strong efforts to attract coverage of the symposium by National Public Radio, Deutsche Welle, The Economist, The New York Times, Financial Times, etc. will be made.
Proposed 16 participants:
EU Participants:

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  Heinrich Best, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Collaborative Research Center, University of Jena, and an expert on European parliamentary elites
  
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  Maurizio Cotta, Professor of Political Science, University of Siena, and Director of the 17-country EU-funded project on elite and citizen views of European integration
  
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  Jean-Pascal Daloz, Professor & Research Director, C.N.R.S., France, and an authority on the social distinctiveness of historical and contemporary European elites
  
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  Patrick Dumont, Professor of Political Science, Univ. of Luxembourg, and a specialist on the recruitment and circulation of cabinet ministers in EU countries
  
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  William Genieys, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Latin European Studies, Univ. of Montpellier, and an expert on French policymaking elites
  
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  Ursula Hoffmann-Lange, Professor of Political Science, Univ. of Frankfurt, leader of three studies of German policymaking elites and a fourth study now being launched
  
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  Miguel Jerez-Mir, Professor of Political Science, Univ. of Granada, and a leading student of Spanish ministerial and parliamentary elites.
  
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  György Lengyel, Professor of Sociology, Corvinus University, Budapest, and a leading scholar of East European business elites
  

US Participants:

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  Michael Burton, Professor of Sociology, Loyola Univ. Maryland, and co-author of Elite Foundations of Liberal Democracy (2006)
  
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  G. William Domhoff, Professor of Sociology, Univ. of California Santa Cruz, and author of six editions of Who Rules America?
  
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  Michael Lindsay, President of Gordon University, Boston, and director of a large new survey study of US elites
  
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  Gwen Moore, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, State Univ. of New York Albany, and an expert on the networks and gender compositions of US and European political elites.
  
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  John Higley, Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin
  

EU and US Observers:

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  A senior EU official in the US to be chosen in consultation with the EU Commission
  
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  One commentator on elite policymaking in Europe.
  
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  One commentator on elite policymaking in the US.