Call for Papers
Final Conference by PIREDEU/ European Election Studies 2009
www.piredeu.eu

Auditing Electoral Democracy in the European Union
18-19 November 2010
Brussels, Belgium

The collaborative project on "Providing an Infrastructure for Research on Electoral Democracy in the European Union", PIREDEU, hereby invites paper proposals for its final conference, which will take place in Brussels on the 18 and 19 November 2010.

PIREDEU is a design study, funded by the EU’s 7th Framework Programme, to provide an infrastructure for research into citizenship, political participation, and electoral democracy in the European Union. It involves a fully-fledged study of the European Parliament elections of 2009, comprising of a voter study (European Election Study), a candidate study and media study, a manifesto study, and a contextual data study across all 27 member states. The advanced release of these data is now available via the website (www.piredeu.eu) and an integrated database will be launched later this year.
The objective of the conference is to evaluate the PIREDEU pilot study and its added value for the European social science community and other stakeholders. Scholars are invited to present papers on electoral democracy in the EU, to provide suggestions concerning a permanent infrastructure for European research on elections, and to participate in a training session on the PIREDEU integrated database. The conference will be held in parallel with the annual dissemination conference of the European Union Democracy Observatory (EUDO).
We invite papers covering all aspects of the electoral process in the EU, including voters, campaigns, parties, candidates and policies. There will be a preference for papers employing data from the PIREDEU project (and/or previous European Election Studies) or data that can usefully be linked into the proposed permanent infrastructure (e.g. national election studies, manifestos and MEP surveys).

Paper submission
Abstracts of paper proposals (approx. 300 words) should be submitted via the PIREDEU conference website (http://www.piredeu.eu/public/FConf2010_cfp.asp) by Monday 24 May 2010. Programme decisions will be announced by the end of June 2010. Paper givers will be expected to submit a paper at least 10 days before the conference.

Financing
All paper givers will be offered two nights of accommodation in a hotel in Brussels; lunches and a conference dinner for all conference participants will also be covered by PIREDEU. Limited financial assistance will be available for covering the travel costs of paper givers.

PIREDEU training sessions
We also welcome conference participants to register free-of-charge for a 2-hour PIREDEU training sessions, which will introduce the integrated PIREDEU database (of voter, candidate, media, manifesto and context data) and provide hands-on training on how to use the database.

Questions about this conference can be directed to the PIREDEU Programme Manager (PIREDEU@EUI.eu)