Summer School on Methods for the Study of Political Participation and Mobilization

Summer School on Methods for the Study of Political Participation and Mobilization

ECPR Standing Group on Participation and Mobilization COSMOS – Centre on Social Movement Studies at the European University Institute Political and Social Sciences Deparment, European University Institute   16 – 27 September 2013 EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE Florence, Italy

Applications for the Summer School are due on April 15th 2013.

Objectives

The Summer School focuses on how to analyze present and past forms of grassroots participation activated by social movement and civil society actors at the local, regional and transnational level. More in general, it aims at disseminating knowledge on how to investigate processes and mechanisms that sustain the active citizens' participation to and mobilization in the realm of politics.

Grassroots participation and radical democracy have been at the center of the public and political debate in 2011 and 2012, when a new wave of contention crossed the entire world: from the Arab countries to North America; from Latin America to European countries. The emergence of a new wave of contention requires scholars to reflect on the research strategies and methodologies that are employed to study grassroots participation and radical democracy.

Although there is a considerable amount of research done on how social movements and civil society actors mobilize, specialized literature on how to actually investigate this phenomena is rare, although increasingly necessary with the recent wave of contention that mobilized citizens in the Arab, European and American countries. The Summer School addresses this gap discussing how to apply the most common methods in the social sciences to investigate political participation and mobilization.

For more information about the application procedure, participation fees and academic programme, please visit the Summer School webpage and/or contact the Summer School organizing committee.