Name Responsible Activity "Antwerp Centre for Institutions and Multi-Level Politics (ACIM)" "Jan Beyers" "ACIM's main focus of study is the impact of multi-level institutional configurations on changes in government and governance, policies and politics, and state-society relations. Typical for contemporary politics is its 'multilevelness'. This concept refers to the fact that interest representation, policymaking processes and accountability relations are no longer primarily confined to one single jurisdiction, i.e. the nation-state, but that political issues increasingly belong to multiple venues and may shift from one venue to another. The overarching starting point for ACIM is that during the past decades, institutional arrangements have been in a state of flux, meaning that many policy areas and government sectors seem to be in a state of permanent reform trying to adapt to all sorts of external pressures. Terms such as Europeanization, federalization or devolution, governance, privatization, globalization and so on, all refer to the broad array of institutional changes contemporary politics is undergoing. The growing importance of the EU as a supranational layer of governance, the regionalization of Belgium and devolution elsewhere in Europe, the increasing importance of international policy regimes are all concrete manifestations of these trends. We thus conceive of the multi-layered institutional context as one with multiple actors who compete and cooperate in order to shape public policymaking and who may shift from one venue to another in order to realize their political objectives. How this institutional context affects the nature of politics will make up the core of our research program. With respect to its disciplinary focus, ACIM will pursue an agenda that bridges the sub-disciplines of comparative politics, international relations and international political economy, covering EU politics, multilevel decision-making, non-state actors and interest groups in European, US and international politics, the latter especially in the field of trade and regulatory politics. Institutions, political organizations and multi-levelness are the key concepts that drive the research plan. ACIM will structure its research projects in three research lines, namely the politics of multi-level government, the politics of interest representation, and regulatory and judicial politics." "Politics & Public Governance" "Koen Verhoest" "The first research axis is labelled 'Diversity and equality in politics & public governance'. It studies how different needs and interests are mobilised, recognized and represented in political and administrative decision-making, how groups organize to compete for influence, and how politics and governance (re-)produce equality and inequality. Focus is on how societal, political and administrative institutions and practices bring about intended and unintended inequality, discrimination and exclusion on the basis of social markers such as gender, ethnicity, disability and sexuality. The second research axis is called 'Knowledge and information in and through politics & public governance'. It studies how politicians, policy-makers and public administrators make decisions. On the one hand there is the increasing use of indicator-based information in public decision making to make governing more evidence-based and technocratic. On the other hand and in contrast to this, non-technical, layman information is emphasized more and more in processes of co-creation and co-production. In this context, we also study how (future) policy-makers can learn to cope with complex decision-making environments and how such skills-teaching can be embedded in academic curricula. The third research axis, called 'Politics & public governance in a European multi-layered and multi-actor context'. It focuses on the horizontal and vertical complexity of contemporary politics and public governance. Supra-nationalization, decentralization and decades of administrative reforms have dispersed public authority into institutional constellations that are governed by combinations of hierarchy, market and networks. Boundaries between public, non-profit and private responsibility for public governance have blurred. Increasingly, parliaments, cabinets, administrations and agencies at EU, national, regional and local level as well as private actors have to collaborate when making and implementing policies, regulations and service delivery. We focus on how political and public governance actors and systems deal with the changing and often conflicting institutional logics and how interest groups mobilize, organize and implement strategies to generate impact." "International Politics" "Tom Sauer" "A first large research theme is global governance, and more in particular rule-making beyond the state (Kerwer), with international finance standards as case-study [book in 2012; possible grant from Germany]. Further, an interdisciplinary project on theorizing international organizations as associations of states has been set up. A second research theme is international security (Sauer), more in particular research with respect to nuclear proliferation (e.g. speed and threat [ISA panel 2012], and a PhD about the causes of (non)proliferation), and arms control (e.g. influence of missile defense – with a book published in 2011). A new research line regarding the impact of the emerging states (Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Egypt) on the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime has been started up. Further, a political theoretical PhD about the concept of (democratic) peace from a historical-sociological/constructivist approach is in the making. A third and last research theme is diplomacy (Melissen), more in particular public and economic diplomacy, partly focussed on Asia (China, East Asia). Also the topic of substate diplomacy is analysed. Different book projects have recently been completed, or will be finalized in the near-term future. Four PhD students write their thesis under this heading. The postdoctoral researchers of the research group deal with the following themes: geopolitics and energy; and East Asia (with a special interest in Japan). Methodologically speaking, most of the members of the research group use qualitative methods (esp. case-studies, sometimes in a comparative perspective), and most of the research can most be defined as theory-oriented empirical work." "Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)" "Stefaan Walgrave" "The research group Media, Movements, and Politics (M²P) covers a broad but distinct field. M²P investigates different forms of political behavior both by individual actors (e.g. citizens, journalists etc.) as well as by collective actors embedded in institutions (e.g. political parties, social movements, etc.). Most research deals with the non-institutional side of politics; the group focuses on the input side of politics; on the groups and actors situated at the beginning of the policy-making cycle. Most of the group's research is situated on the edge of several disciplines: political science, communications, and sociology. Agenda-setting—investigating people's attention to issues—is M²P's most employed theoretical approach. In all its research, M²P has the ambition to generate output at an international level, embedded in international networks and in collaboration with international colleagues. Three research domains stand out: (1) Media & Politics. (2) Social Movements & Political Participation. (3) Public opinion & Campaign effects." "Department of Comparative sciences of culture" "The research programme seeks to address the following challenges: How does one get beyond these constraints and develop alternative descriptions of the West and India? How can one conceptualize the Indian traditions in a way which shows their characteristic contribution to human knowledge, rather than making them into variants of biblical religion? How could one make sense of cultural differences and different cultures, if they are not variations on one single model of religion, society, law, ethics? What makes a difference into a cultural difference, rather than a biological, psychological or social difference? How does our understanding of human beings and societies change, once we see that cultures can differ in different ways? To address these issues, the research programme takes a unique entry point: the western descriptions of India are approached as expressions of the western culture and its experience of human beings and societies." "Legal Development - Comparative Law - European Law" "The department is a consortium of three major research inputs: 1. The interaction of Law and Technology, with the emphasis upon law and information systems. Projects cover the areas of privacy protection. Internet and liability, electronic surveillance techniques and security law on information systems. The Schengen and Europol data protection aspects are also studied. 2. The confrontation between law, sciences and social development. One project aims at the further theoretical investigation of the relationship between law and sciences. What can be the effect of technical and scientific developments and truth-claims upon the law at the age of scientific uncertainty and in the light of the findings of the new epistemology and sociology of sciences. Equally under investigation is the role of the law in managing social diversity (a diversity of values, views, cultures, ethical/religious convictions, interests, ...) in contemporary societies. It will try to describe the occurring tensions and conflicts against the background of Occidental legal and political thinking concerning human rights (more specifically rights of collectivities and woman rights). Finally, this sub-group studies legal and institutional remedies for sustainable mobility in urban and suburban environments. 3. The European law group is involved in general research on the following topics: the state aid policy of the European Community; judicial protection and judicial enforcement in the European Union; and the acquis communautaire. One research project concerns the relations between the EU and the Middle- East. Another research project involves the differentiation in the legal order of the EU." "Public Administration & Management" "Both the practice and the discipline of public administration underwent a fundamental transformation over the last decades. Under the banner of New Public Management (NPM), a multitude of reforms has been initiated in public sectors globally. Competition, 'agencification' and organizational autonomy, performance-based contracts, measurement, flexibility and privatisation are some of the keywords of this globalization of reform ideas. It is an explicit anti-thesis against Weberian bureaucracy. The controversy around managerialism in the public sector is a fertile ground to develop the focus of our research group. However, rather than to engage in the dispute between 'old' public administration and 'new' public management, we want to develop a theoretical understanding of the tensions that NPM has provoked. Moreover, we want to understand how NPM elements have supplemented bureaucratic values and instruments and how the Post-NPM emphasis on interorganisational coordination and collaboration creates tensions with NPM reform strategies. In our view, four inter-related perspectives remain underexposed in managerialism. Law and administration Administrative law is the tailpiece of Weberian bureaucracies. The administrative law serves to regulate the delegation of authority to bureaus as well as the rights and duties of the citizen vis-à-vis government. NPM not only introduced more contractual relations in the public domain, it also shifted roles; citizens become clients and administrations become providers. We study whether and how public law incorporates these changes. We additionally study how the current emphasis on interorganisational collaboration between levels of government and between public and private actors impact upon the nature of public law. Politics and administration The separation of politics and administration can be seen as one of the proverbs of public administration. NPM has taken the separation of politics and administration to the extreme. Empirical evidence does however not support a clear-cut separation. Politicians interfere in the machinery of government and bureaucracies assume considerable political roles. This crossover of tasks is even more prominent in the current era of internationalisation as well as multi-actor and multi-level governance. We thus have to bring politics into the analysis. Performance and administration Although being an NPM mantra, two aspects of the concept of performance remain in our view understudied. First, we are doing research on how performance indicators in the public sector are being used in practice. Secondly, we study the performance of performance measurement and management. Do such managerial PA styles have an impact, either positive or negative, on results of organisations? Multi-actor and multi-level nature of administration in a globalizing world Current public sector reform trends (both NPM and Post-NPM) are disseminated at a global scale, affecting both developed and developing countries. Together with trends of supra-nationalization, global reform ideas tend to disperse public authority into multi-actor and multi-level constellations that are governed by mixes of hierarchy, market and networks. By international comparative research, we study how such global reform trends impact upon domestic administration and how administrative-political regimes and country-specific idiosyncrasies influence the adoption of reforms." "Political Representation in Diverse Societies" "Political representation is a crucial concept in political science. In essence, representation entails something or someone (the agent) standing for an absent thing or person (the principal). Political representation thus places an intermediary (agent) between citizens (principals) and political decision-making. These agents are called representatives. The fact that every society contains different interests and nodes that want to be represented at the government level is clearly part of all democratic processes. Political parties and their parliamentarians and ministers stand for different perspectives on society, and citizens vote for the party or person that best represents their vision. This representation of classic groups and group interests is a familiar notion: liberal parties traditionally appeal more to the liberal professions and the self-employed; socialist parties speak to the working classes; and regional parties address issues that concern specific ethnically, linguistically, or geographically identifiable groups. The political representation of societal groups that have surfaced more recently is a great deal more problematic. This concerns groups that are distinguished on the basis of gender, age, ethic/cultural background, or sexual orientation. Classic fault lines such as class or education also rear their heads in this regard. Different studies show that these groups are often insufficiently represented in political structures. This political underrepresentation of socially disadvantaged groups is now more and more seen as a societal and political problem undermining the representativeness of political institutions and, by implication, the democratic integrity of the decision-making process. The underrepresentation of societal groups and the lack of representativeness of the political decision-making process can however manifest in different ways. The literature points to the (im)possibility of participating in elections, the physical absence/presence in representative institutions, and the (lack of) substantive representation of certain groups' interests as possible manifestations. These manifestations concern, respectively, the formal, descriptive, and substantive dimensions of representation as a concept. There has not yet been much research into the political representation of societal groups in Belgium, and the studies that do exist have often been the work of one or a handful of researchers. In the last few years, however, several researchers have started to engage with these matters (or elements thereof). By joining the forces of different researchers in this developing research domain we hope to further build on the scientific research in this field and on the expertise these two partners have accumulated. This would then also solidify and further develop the leading role of both partners in this research domain. By joining their potential, the concerned partners aim to realize three matters in their research: First, to continue, structurally secure, and, where possible, advance the existing collaboration between their two research groups. Researchers from both partner institutions will, where possible and when opportune, work jointly on journal articles, conference papers, and book chapters. (Further) co-advisorship of PhDs and joint memberships to supervisory research committees will also be sought where possible. Second, the partners wish use their alliance to initiate new joint research into the political representation of social groups. Joint research proposals will address the following well-known sources of funding: the specific research funds of both their institutions, the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO), the research projects of the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office, as well as ad hoc sources of policy-related funding. We here envisage research that is more theoretical in nature, but also empirical research in Belgium and, as much as possible, research that takes up an international-comparative perspective. The researchers concerned already have access to existing scientific networks and wish to further develop these to use them for research purposes (e.g. ECPR Standing Groups on Gender & Politics, Committee on Political Sociology of International Political Science Association, ECPR Standing Group on Political Parties). Third, to realize these research objectives, investments will have to be made to further familiarize the two research groups with each other's expertise. Meetings and discussions will make the partners more familiar with each other's research domains and current research projects. The mutual consultation through these meetings and brainstorm sessions will also result in working out a joint research agenda and concrete initiatives in terms of project proposals. Possible connections to the international research agenda will here too, as noted above, be an important criterion. The main research themes for this joint research about the representation of social groups are rooted in the three dimensions of representation: - Formal dimension: this, among other matters, concerns the election regulations and techniques that are used to determine citizens' preferences and to convert those to the appointing of representatives. Relevant themes include the discussion about active and passive voting rights for certain social groups, the extent to which these voting rights are exercised, and the extent to which political parties push forward candidates from these social groups so that voters can express their thoughts on this. - Descriptive dimension: this takes a closer look at who the representatives are, what their characteristics are, and to what extent they/these mirror the population composition. Research themes here include mapping out underrepresentation, studying the roles of parties and voters in the underrepresentation of certain groups in parliament, and examining the desirability and effects of introducing quota. - Substantive dimension: This concerns the way the interests of social groups are represented in terms of content. The study of this dimension was long limited to analyses of the ways parliamentarians take up their mandate in terms of content and of the actions representatives take to look after the interests of the people they represent. Recent developments in the literature, however, argue for a broadening of this approach. On the one hand, scholars are suggesting studies look beyond the parliamentary arena and include other actors that take part in substantive representation - this would mean including civil society organisations, civil servants, and the media. On the other hand, some scholars defend the argument that representation need not always be a one-way process that runs from the voter to the representative; representatives can also themselves define interests and constituents that they wish to represent. Research around this dimension quite logically explores both these fields not just by mapping out to what extent (other) actors engage in representation, what the effects of this are, and which factors influence this, but also by studying which new groups are addressed by representatives, how this is done, what effects this has, and how people in these groups deal with this 'reverse' act of representation." "Citizenship, Equality & Diversity (CED)" "The research group focuses on issues of inequality and equality in relation to the diversity characterising our contemporary society, mainly within a political science frame, but also connecting to social and human science more broadly. Our research is driven by a concern for detecting, analysing and understanding mechanisms and causes of inequality and by the question of how to define and promote the equality of social groups in our contemporary society. This central topic brings our different research projects together and is also the common ground for the future research of the group. This said, we are aware of the normative undertone underlying the research agenda and therefore consciously choose to keep the understanding of what should be seen as inequality and what has to be understood by equality open for discussion. Important in our research on inequality and equality is the concept of diversity. Issues of inequality and equality are studied with respect to the socio-demographic diversity characterising society, unpacking the notion of the citizen, and how the lack of recognition of diversity or a specific understanding of diversity (re)produces inequality. Research focuses on both one and more aspects of diversity and how this relates to axes and processes of inequality, whereby particular attention is paid to issues of intersectionality. While the research initially concentrated on issues of gender, the focus has been broadened to other mechanisms of discrimination and exclusion, including LGBT, ethnicity and disability. A last central concept in our work is that of citizenship, embedding the concept of social groups in a relation to the state, its institutions, practices and policies. Citizenship refers to the political and policy dimension in issues of diversity and (in)equality, and the way in which politics and policies (re)produce equality and inequality. The broad lines of current research projects of the group comprise: • diversity and equality in and through processes and stages of political representation • equality and diversity in and through public policies and the underlying processes • equality as a structural component of society" "Leuven International and European Studies (LINES)" "Katja Biedenkopf" "Leuven International and European Studies (LINES) is the KU Leuven’s institute for the study of international politics and European affairs at the Faculty of Social Sciences. It hosts research in political science and international relations and fosters exchanges between scholars working on a broad range of topics, including the European Union’s foreign policy, the external trade policies of the European Union and the United States, climate change and energy policy in Europe and China, the regional and multilateral dimensions of global governance, peace and development, the politics of nationalism and minority protection, and current affairs in Eurasia, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Balkans.For more information see the research groups: - Centre for Peace Research and Strategic Studies (CPRS) - Research Group European Union - Research Group Central and Eastern Europe"