Dear colleagues,

I would like to draw your attention to the call for papers for the section that I co-chair with Christine Arnold on “Public Opinion, Social Movements, Interest Groups, Political Parties and Policy Change” at the forthcoming ECPR conference in Montreal, 26-29 August. It would also be most helpful if you forward it to relevant lists/FB pages/colleagues for wide advertising.

We would welcome paper proposals from scholars who are working on the intersections of public opinion, social movements, interest groups, agenda setting dynamics and policy responsiveness research. We will welcome both theoretical and empirical contributions, comparative or focusing on single case studies, quantitative and/or qualitative. We envisage organizing the section around 6 panels that would focus around the following (suggestive) intersections:

1. Responding to competing messages: how parties and elected officials react to multiple pressures from the public [Panel chair and discussant: Laura Morales, University of Leicester, laura.morales@leicester.ac.uk]

2. Party-movements interactions and the policy process: beyond the movements vs. parties dichotomy [Panel chair and discussant: Michael Heaney, University of Michigan, mheaney@umich.edu]

3. (How) Do elections matter? Studying the conditional effect of elections on political and policy change [Panel chair and discussant: Laurie Beaudonnet, University of Montreal, laurie.beaudonnet@umontreal.ca]

4. Winning the public opinion battle: how parties, interest groups and protestors shape the opinions of the public [Panel chair and discussant: Christine Arnold, Maastricht University, c.arnold@maastrichtuniversity.nl]

5. Public opinion, media landscapes and institutional settings as moderators of movement success in policy/political change [Panel chair and discussant: Marco Giugni, University of Geneva, Marco.Giugni@unige.ch]

6. Agenda Representation: How government agendas respond to public opinion and pressures from social movements [Panel chair and discussant: Isabelle Engeli, University of Ottawa, Isabelle.Engeli@uottawa.ca]

These are, nevertheless, open panels that will adapt to the open call for panel and paper proposals, rather than closed panels at this stage. We invite all colleagues interested in these research topics to approach the section chairs and the relevant panel chairs with their proposal. The section chairs will ensure that all panels have a chair and a discussant so that all paper-givers will receive sufficient feedback at the conference.

The Standing Groups on Political Parties and Interest Groups support this Section proposal.

If you are interested in presenting your work at this exciting section, please send your paper proposal to the relevant panel chair, as well as to Christine and me by 1st February.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes for the festive season,

Laura Morales