Announcement of a Special Meeting:
Founding a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC)
for election studies
The Consortium for European Research with Election Studies (CERES)
has recently learned of a new opportunity for European national
election studies to be placed on a “roadmap” to infrastructure
status. A proposal would need to be submitted by the end of August
2017. Details are given in an addendum appended below.
ADDRESSEES
This Call is addressed to you as a CERES member or as someone
identified as a past or present election study Principal
Investigator (please forgive duplicates). If your term as PI has
ended would you PLEASE bring this Call to the attention of your
successor(s). In any case please do forward it to anyone who you
think might wish to receive it.
DATE OF MEETING
In order to consult with likely beneficiaries of the proposed
infrastructure, a meeting will be held on Saturday April 8th at the
University of Vienna for which we solicit requests for invitations
by current PIs of national election studies in Europe and other
members or would-be members of CERES. Priority will be given to the
PIs of election studies or their delegates (one individual per
election study per country). Additional participants will be invited
as space allows.
A fallback date of Saturday April 21st is envisaged in case the
number who can attend on April 8th would not be sufficient. We ask
you to please indicate your availability on both dates (and, if you
are unable to attend on one or both dates, the availability of a
delegate of your choice).
The reason for the short notice is the brief amount of time
available before universities in Europe start to shut down for
summer vacations. We envisage a need for perhaps extensive
consultation by PIs with their institutional administrations and
with the government agencies that fund their electoral research
activities. We picked two Saturdays because we suppose that these
are days that are less likely to be already booked for meetings and,
above all, for teaching duties.
PLAN OF MEETING
The idea is that conference invitees would assemble on the Friday
evening in time for dinner and depart on the Sunday after breakfast.
There would be a meeting of the CERES Board on the Sunday morning to
which some additional participants might be co-opted as needed.
A critical topic for discussion at the conference is how far to
extend the remit of the proposed infrastructure beyond the conduct
of traditional survey-based post-election studies. The PIREDEU
design study (see Addendum) additionally included components
studying candidates, manifestos and the media. We might want to
extend our reach to include those who study parliamentary behavior
and perhaps even agenda-setting.
A further urgent matter is to find an institutional home for the new
infrastructure, should one be founded. We need an institution
willing to make an administrative investment in the preparation of a
proposal that, if successful, could pay off for that institution in
terms of millions of Euros per year. For a mixture of administrative
and legal reasons it seems that the Robert Schumann Centre for
Advanced Studies at the EUI (the institution that provided the
administrative home for PIREDEU) will not be able to play this role
when it comes to an ERIC.
We also need to find individual scholars willing to spend at least
some of their time overseeing steps to be taken in particular
countries towards acquisition of roadmap status. Generally these
will be individuals already involved in election study activities
but might be scholars who would like to lay the groundwork for the
eventual foundation of an election study in their country. The
conference will devote a session to discussing what would be
involved for anyone committing to such activities.
There will be space for at least one additional session, perhaps
several if they were made to run concurrently. Please mention any
requests you may have for topics that you feel should be addressed.
FUNDING
A meeting room and catering will be provided but we as yet have no
other funding. So individuals soliciting invitations should
preferably be in a position to fund their own travel and
accommodation. We are attempting to acquire supplementary funding
with which to cover travel and accommodation for a small number of
individuals whom we would like to invite but who have no
institutional or grant-based support. We should know about this by
the time we issue invitations. So if you have no prospect of funding
but really want to be invited, please tell us that.
(Signed)
Mark Franklin (Founding Chair) and Sylvia Kritzinger (Current
Chair), Consortium for European Research with Election Studies
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark N. Franklin, Independent
Scholar
Phone: +1 860 995-5722
Co-convener of the Harvard Center for European Studies
Elections Monitor
Inaugural Stein Rokkan Professor
European University
Institute
mark.franklin@eui.eu
John R Reitemeyer Professor
Emeritus
mark.franklin@trincoll.edu
Trinity College,
Connecticut
www.trincoll.edu/~markfranklin
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Sylvia Kritzinger
Department of Government
University of Vienna
Rathausstraße 19/1/9
A-1010 Vienna
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AGENDA
Friday 7th April
1930-2200 Welcome dinner
Saturday 8th April
0900-0920 Registration and morning coffee
0920-1000 Background briefing: CERES, ESFRI and an ERIC
for election studies: steps toward infrastructure status
1000-1020 Coffee break
1020-1200 How big an infrastructure? Post-election surveys,
manifestos, candidates, media, plus what?
1200-1330 Lunch break
1330-1510 Tasks to be performed in order to attain ESFRI
Roadmap status (Presentation by GESIS delegate(s))
1510-1530 Coffee break
1540-1700 Closing discussion
Sunday 9th April
0900-1100 CERES Board meeting
ADDENDUM
The GUIDE to achieving roadmap status specifies that, to be placed
on the roadmap of the European Strategy Forum on Research
Infrastructures (ESFRI),
New Projects must demonstrate an adequate maturity level, i.e. a
proposal must:
(1) have successfully completed a design/feasibility study;
(2) have planned its business case/delivery strategy;
(3) provide proof of political support, i.e. Expression of political
Support (EoS) by the lead country . . . signed by the national
ministries responsible for Research Infrastructures;
(4) provide proof of financial commitment, i.e. Expression of
Commitment (EoC) to financially contribute to the preparation and
implementation phases by an authority from the lead country;
(5) provide proof of an inter-institutional and multi-lateral
agreement, e.g. a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the
core partners - being research institutions - formally involved in
the consortium.
European national election studies have a number of advantages when
it comes to meeting these requirements:
1. They have indeed successfully completed both a design and a
feasibility study, products of the 2008-10 PIREDEU project
(Providing an Infrastructure for Research on Electoral Democracy in
the European Union) that was funded by the EU’s DG Research to the
tune of 2.3 Million Euros as an Infrastructure Design Study;
2. Have a well-developed delivery strategy produced by PIREDEU;
4. Have a number of countries in which election studies are
regularly funded by national funding agencies that should be
interested in the prospect of sharing infrastructure costs across
countries;
Requirements 3 and 5 (above) still need to be fully addressed, but
this is a small part of what would be needed had we been starting
out from scratch.
To discover the advantages that an ERIC might bestow on national
election studies, please visit the CERES Interim Home Page at
http://www.trincoll.edu/~markfranklin/CERES.html
To see a “delivery strategy" prepared on the basis of the PIREDEU
design study click on "Response to ESFRI call for proposals for
integrating and opening existing national research infrastructures",
a link available on the CERES Interim Home Page. That call was only
asking for information, needed for planning purposes, but our
response to that Call constitutes a pretty full draft of a delivery
strategy.
On the CERES Interim Home Page you will also find links to much else
about CERES and about European Research Infrastructures.