International Projects
Faculty and Student Exchanges and Joint Research ProjectsThe Center for the Study of Democracy has a number of cooperative arrangements with other universities and research centers outside the United States. These ties facilitate interchange of scholars, including both faculty and graduate students, and foster research conferences and other collaborative projects. The Center regularly hosts a number of faculty and graduate student visitors each academic year, most from universities and research centers outside the United States.
Cooperation with the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CDI), Australian National University, Canberra
Ben Reilly, Director of CDI,
has collaborative ties to several CSD faculty. CDI has ongoing projects
on political party development, and on strengthening of parliaments in
new democracies with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region. CSD faculty
also have ties to scholars, such as Jon Fraenkel, involved in the study
of State, Society and Governance in Melanesia.
Cooperation with Renmin University, China
The Sociology Department at Renmin University is, along with CSD,
a part of the international consortium that sponsors the RESEARCH
PROGRAM IN COLLECTIVE ACTION & SOCIAL MOVEMENTS. The contact person
at Renmin is Shizheng Feng,
associate professor of Sociology. He works in the fields of social
movements and collective action, political transition, social
inequality, college education, state and economic development in China,
with comparing China to Western countries, and especially the former
communist countries. He is now working on projects on protest control
in Beijing campuses and stratification in education attainment in
Chinese Universities.
Cooperation with the Centre for Voting and Parties, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
The Centre for Voting and Parties (CVAP) is a research centre that
focuses on the study of the central institutions of modern
representative democracy (elections,
voters, electoral systems, parties, parliaments, governments,
constitutions, etc.), and of the processes taking place subject to
these institutions.
CVAP is part of the Department of Political Science at the University
of Copenhagen and the Executive Director is Professor Peter
Kurrild-Kitgaard. The Centre brings together researchers from the
University of Copenhagen and other universities in Denmark and abroad
around common research projects and activities.
Cooperation with the Institut de
Recherche sur la Gouvernance et l'Economie des Institutions (IRGEI) at
the University of Paris, II (Pantheon)
In
conjunction with IRGEI, directed by French economists Bertrand
Lemennicier and Bruno Jérome, CSD is coordinating a set of
scholars to study historical patterns/cycles of party strength in
national legislatures in the U.S. and Western Europe in the post WWII
period, and in the European parliament. A panel on this topic, jointly
organized by CSD and by IRGEI, will take place at the Annual Meeting of
the Public Choice Society, in Las Vegas, in March 2009, and a follow-up
conference is expected to be held in France in 2009 or 2010.
Cooperation
with the Electoral Analysis Section (Le Groupe d'Analyse Electorale -
GAEL) of the French Political Science Association
CSD's contact person at GAEL is Professor Annie Laurent,
Center for National Scientific Research (CNRS), University of Lille 2.
CSD has co-organized two conferences with GAEL in Summer 2009, one in
Paris, on "Reforming the French Presidential Election System," and one
in Frejus, France on "The Legacy of Maurice Duverger." Each has
involved the participation of CSD faculty and affiliates, and each is
expected to result in either an edited volume or a minisymposium issue
of an academic journal.
Cooperation with the International
Graduate School of the Social Sciences – BIGSSS, a shared unit of the University of Bremen
and Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany
Beginning in 2009-10, in conjunction with UCI’s Center for Research on
International and Global Studies (RIGS), CSD will offer a graduate student
exchange program with BIGSSS for students who are Fellows at either CSD or RIGS
whose interests overlap those of BIGSSS. Research in BIGSSS centers on
globalization, European integration, cultural change, and changing life
course
patterns, and they also have a strong research methodology program in
both
quantitative and qualitative methods. Visits to Bremen will
normally be for the duration of one academic term or an academic year.
Exchange students will
continue to receive financial support from their home institutions, but
only very limited additional funding is
available. Exchange students are free to
enroll in any part of the academic program of their host institution.
The
coordinator of this program Christian Welzel, at Jacobs University, is
a CSD
International Affiliate.
Cooperation with the Berlin Science Center, Germany (Wissenschafts Zentrum, Berlin)
For a number of years Professor Hans-Dieter Klingemann, a past Research Director at the WZB, and past president of the German Political Science Association, has been a visiting scholar at UCI, hosted by CSD and the Political Science Department. Professor Klingemann has compiled extensive data sets on post-Communist elections in Eastern Europe, political values, and the development of party systems, and he has worked closely with several Center members. Center faculty also have strong links to economics research at the WZB through Kai Konrad, who directs a WZB program in political economy.
Cooperation with the Center for the Study of Imperfections in Democracy
(DISC), Central European University, Budapest
The Central European University, like its counterpart in western Europe,
the European University Institute in Fiesole, Italy, is sponsored by the
European Union. DISC, whose first Director is Carsten Schneider, is
concerned with issues such as efficiency, corruption, and public
accountability in governance.
Cooperation with the Department of Political Science, University of Bologna, Italy
A formal agreement to foster joint research and exchange of faculty was negotiated in 2004 between the Department of Political Science at the University of Bologna and three research centers within the University of California system,
the Institute for Government Studies (IGS) at UC Berkeley, the Center for American Politics and Policy (CAPP) at UCLA, and the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at UCI.
The first research project under the rubric of this agreement
(supported in part by funds from the Italian Ministry of Education,
under a grant of which Prof. Giorgio Freddi is the principal
investigator) involves the comparative study of the long run effects of
the similar major electoral reforms that took place in the early 1990s
in both Italy and in Japan. A planning conference was held at UCI
in mid-March 2008, and a follow-up conference is taking place at the
University of Bologna in November 2008. A number of faculty from the University of
Bologna are visiting one of the three UC campuses in 2007-09 for
periods ranging from two to four months. CSD is hosting two of those
faculty.
Cooperation with the Faculty of Sociology, University of Trento, Italy
The Sociology Department at the University of Trento is, along with CSD, a part of the international consortium that sponsors the RESEARCH PROGRAM IN COLLECTIVE ACTION & SOCIAL MOVEMENTS. The contact person at Trento is Professor Mario Diani, Department of Sociology & Social Research. He works in the field of social movements and social networks and has coordinated the Graduate School of Sociology and social research since 2002. The Faculty of Sociology is the oldest higher education institute in sociology in Italy. It consists of two departments, Sociology and social research (DSRS) and Human and Social Sciences (DSUS), hosting academics from Sociology, History, Political Science, Philosophy, Economics, Psychology, and Anthropology. Apart from collective action, major areas of research within the Faculty include sociological theory, comparative stratification, inequality, and labor market, global governance, the transformation of the state, contemporary history, modern social history, migration processes, science and society, organizations and culture, and youth.
Cooperation with the International Master's Program, Vrije University, Amsterdam
The Sociology Department at the University of Vrije, Amsterdam, along
with CSD, a part of the international consortium that sponsors the
RESEARCH PROGRAM IN COLLECTIVE ACTION &
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS. The contact person at the Free University is P.G.
(Bert) Klandermann, Professor of Applied Social Psychology & Dean
of Faculty of the Social Sciences. He works in the field of collective
action and social movements. The FSW encompasses six disciplines: communication science,
organization sciences, political science, public administration, social
& cultural anthropology, and sociology.