International Projects

Faculty and Student Exchanges and Joint Research Projects

The 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.

ausparl

Cooperation with Renmin University, ChinaRenmin 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, DenmarkCopenhagen photo
 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)
Pantheon Photo
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.

Eiffel TowerCooperation 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 

photograph of Bremen
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) germanp

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, BudapestHungarian Parliament

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.  

bologna 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, ItalyUniversity of Trento

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, AmsterdamAmsterdam

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. UC Irvine Center for the Study of Democracy