12th Development Dialogue (DD): Rethinking Democracy
Call For Papers

** For query you can mail to dd12(AT)iss(DOT)nl

Events in the recent years, and throughout the globe, are signs of a certain common civil discontent with contemporary forms of government. Massive demonstrations have taken place in the main squares and avenues of several cities, particularly in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America, against authoritarian rule, massive corruption and government’s failure in providing employment and social welfare. Since 2009, the world has witnessed, among other happenings, the ousting of ruling regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya; the formal birth of elected governments in Pakistan; the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement against corporate influence in politics in more than 35 cities in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia; the allegations of repression against civilian protesters in Iran, Syria, Turkey, Venezuela and Ukraine and the uprising of social mobilizations in Brazil against government’s expenses in the hosting of FIFA’s World Cup.

From academia, last year’s special issue of World Development, a leading journal in the area of development studies, focussed squarely on the dynamics of decentralization and governance. The general agreement among scholars – at least from those inscribed in what Ravi Kanbur has called the mainstream of development economics1 -, is that democracy is a requirement for the emergence of accountable and responsive forms of government2. This idea has become widely accepted and has served to nourish local and global debates around the sustainability and desirability of democratic regimes. For instance, the May’s 2014 edition of The Economist magazine was devoted to the reflection of What’s gone wrong with democracy, which departed from claiming some presumably stylized facts that raise its status to the hallmark of political organization; ‘democracies are on average richer than non-democracies, are less likely to go to war and have a better record of fighting corruption. More fundamentally, democracy lets people speak their minds and shape their own and their children’s futures. That so many people in so many different parts of the world are prepared to risk so much for this idea is testimony to its enduring appeal’.

Submission of abstracts

The 12th Development Dialogue (DD) invites young scholars, activists and practitioners from all over the world to submit abstracts responding this year conference’s theme: Rethinking Democracy: Challenges for global and local governance. We welcome both quantitative and qualitative based studies from disciplines that are at the core of development studies (i.e. political science, international relations, economics, anthropology, sociology, social-psychology and legal studies), but we give priority to multidisciplinary research.

The selection will take into account ISS’ main research lines3 to assure an open dialogue between different ontological, epistemological, theoretical and empirical perspectives
1 Kanbur, R. (2002). Economics, Social Science and Development. World Development, 30 (3), 477–486.
2 Faguet, J. P. (2014). Decentralization and Governance. World Development, 53 (Special Issue), 2-13.
3 http://www.iss.nl/education/phd_programme/research_programmes/

CALL FOR PAPERS

surrounding the theme of the conference. These clearly derive in multiple subtopics; for instance, works in areas such as health, education, social security systems, social movements, land grabbing and food sovereignty, environmental studies, finances & microfinances, world and domestic trade and production systems, conflict studies, legal and institutional reforms, among others - all of which should be aligned with at least one of the following indicative questions/topics:
a. How can we understand and define contemporary democracy?
b. What are the political, economic and social requirements for democracy?
c. What is the impact of democracy or the existence of democratic institutions on the livelihoods of people and societies?
d. What are the possible trade-offs between democratic and non- democratic institutions or regimes in relation to issues such as social and economic development, social security, environmental protection/conservation and civil and international conflicts?
e. Explicit deep methodological, epistemological and ontological debates in social research that deal with any of the previous (and related) questions.

Deadlines and important dates

The Conference will take place at The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague, The Netherlands, 16th & 17th October 2014. All abstracts should be written in English, in Times New Roman 12 (singled spaced = 1.0) and should not exceed 500 words (excluding titles and subtitles but including any kind of referencing). All of the abstracts should include the name of the researcher’s institution and will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
a. An appealing and provocative title
b. A reference to the context and/or motivation of the research
c. A clear reference to the research objective and question(s)
d. A clear reference to research methodology
e. If the research has already been conducted, an overview of the main findings and conclusions regarding relevance of the study in academic and practitioner’s debates
f. If it is a work in progress, a reference to possible or expected results and their possible relevance to academic and practitioner’s debates
g. The implicit or explicit link of the paper’s topic with the theme of the conference

The deadline for the submission of abstracts is May 16th 2014 at 24:00 (Central European Time Zone) and they must be sent via e-mail to [email protected]. Authors of selected papers will receive an acceptance decision by the first week of July. The deadline for submitting completed version of accepted papers is August 30, 2014. Papers should have a maximum of 10,000 words (including references) and should be submitted in PDF or Word format to the above email address. Abstracts of selected papers will be made available on the conference website as soon as possible.

Funding4

For the selected papers, limited amount of money will be allocated for accommodation during the conference and transportation to and from ISS (The Hague). Those who require a travel grant should indicate so when sending the abstract. Information on the cost and place of origin of flight should be included.

4 Special funding is available for PhD students from Ruhr University Bochum. Contact person is Anja Zorob at the Institute of Development Research and Development Policy of Ruhr-Universität Bochum: [email protected]