"Party Leaders and the Media" - call for papers

UK Political Studies Association (PSA) Annual Conference, 1 - 3 April 2008

The Media and Politics Specialist Group and the Italian Politics Specialist Group of the PSA are seeking to organise panels on "Party leaders and the Media":

The ability of political parties to select charismatic, media-savvy leaders is often crucial to electoral success. Scholars have debated the increasing tabloidisation of media outlets, which in turn means that attention-seeking, spectacular initiatives and the use of unorthodox language all enjoy prominence in the media and manage to capture public attention. The process is exacerbated by (and possibly contributes to) the simultaneous, and increasing, disaffection towards traditional party politics shown by large sections of the electorate.

These panels discuss how the media affects key-words, strategies of communication and language employed by political leaders, i.e. what has the media done to leadership. While we are interested in the discussion of single country case-studies, comparative papers will be particularly welcome.

Proposals, in the region of 200 words, should be sent, by 21 September, to Daniele Albertazzi, d.albertazzi@bham.ac.uk.

Call for papers on southern European politics

UK Political Studies Association (PSA) Annual Conference, 1 - 3 April 2008

CALL FOR PAPERS

A major theme in comparative European politics in recent years has been the decline of southern European 'exceptionalism' - the theme that various similarities that differentiated the southern European countries from their northern European counterparts have progressively disappeared or at least become considerably less pronounced. In order to explore this thesis (and expecially the factors that may be responsible for it and the sectors in which it does, and does not hold up), the Greek Politics Specialist Group and the Italian Politics Specialist Group are seeking to organise a panel or panels on the theme of southern European politics. Papers focussing on any of the following topics will especially welcome:

• Security and/or foreign policy


• Public administration and/or the welfare state


• Party and electoral politics

Papers may have a case-study focus, and thus focus on one southern European country, or else they may focus on more than one country.

Proposals, in the region of 200 words, should be sent, by 21 September, to Dimitris Tsarouhas, Antonios Aggelakis and James Newell