August 12-15
University College Dublin, Ireland

The 2024 ECPR general conference in Dublin, will take place this August. The section proposal “Methods on Normative Political Theory”, endorsed by the standing group, has successfully found its place in the program. Section chairs, Simon Stevens (De Montfort University) and Esma Baycan-Herzog (University of Geneva) proposed 7 different thematic panels exploring methodological topics on experimental methods, public political philosophy, political theory and other disciplines, fictional narratives and storytelling, general vs theme-specific methodologies and more. Simon and Esma are looking forward to see all former and future methodologist friends! You can find the program here.

The program will also feature a keynote address from Professor Lisa Herzog, as well as responses from Jonathan Floyd and representatives from the other political theory groups in the ECPR, as part of a roundtable discussion. The abstract for Lisa’s talk is:

Why Theorize During a Climate Crisis?

Why be a political theorist in times of the climate and biodiversity crisis? While theorists have long contributed to discussions about climate justice, in this talk I suggest that the “anthropocene” (or arguably, “capitalocene”) raises far more fundamental questions about how to understand the political, social, and economic realms and their interrelations. Some of the most basic assumptions about how these realms are organized need to be challenged, and this requires theory. To do so, political theory benefits from crossing three boundaries: the boundary between political theory and other social scientific disciplines, the boundary between Western and other traditions, and the boundary between the academic world and broader public discourses. I will exemplify this approach by discussing some questions about value creation in the economic realm and who has the political right to decide about it. I argue that to turn our societies onto a sustainable path requires a thorough-going democratization – of the economy, but also of democracy as it currently exists as a political system – , and discuss the role that political theorists can play in this project.