Recap of the IPSA World Congress - Day 2 (11 July)

Plenary Session: New Nationalism in a Global Perspective

Liah Greenfeld and Adam Hanieh kicked off the first Plenary Session of the 2021 IPSA World Congress of Political Science. The Plenary, titled New Nationalism in a Global Perspective, was chaired by the Program Co-Chair Hasret Dikici Bilgin.

Prof. Greenfeld’s Plenary lecture, “Globalization of Nationalism”, presented the nature of nationalism: national consciousness, national identity, and the organization of communities as nations. Her presentation also analyzed the reasons for the continued appeal of nationalism in the context of an increasingly open world, attributing this appeal to the dignity with which nationalism endows personal identities of common people.

Through a historical perspective of social transformations in France, the United States, China, and the UK, Prof. Greenfeld confirmed the effective power of nationalism in modern politics. Her analysis of nationalism was established under several claims. She emphasized the beginning of the “nation” in the 16th century when societies changed their status.

Prof. Greenfeld specifies that dignity requirements appeared and transformed the nature of consciousness in society. People became members of the same community, sharing a similar identity: “Individualist civic consciousness became collectivist civic consciousness.” Thus, the definition of nation is intrinsically linked to the notion of democracy.

Furthermore, Prof. Greenfeld introduced nationalism as a social progress and consciousness trigger. In modern times, globalization is considered to be the opposite of nationalism. However, it’s a product: “The world starts to be unified by sharing cultural and national consciousness,” and the world is ‘naturally divided.’ Nationalism, therefore, brought us equality, inclusion, personal dignity and revealed itself as a “brick of the word wall.”

Adam Hanieh’s continued with his Plenary Lecture titled “Migration, Methodological Nationalism, and the Global Political Economy: Thinking Across Borders”. He discussed the key theoretical approaches to migration in Political Science. He made the case for renewing and developing a global political economy perspective that is grounded in a critique of methodological nationalism. Prof. Hanieh divided his presentation in three main themes: 1) How migration is understood through the economy; 2) How migration challenges conception of social classes; 3) What this might reveal about the border and state management.

Indeed, the connection between capitalism and migrant labour is not new and was shaped by the concept of the worker class. This last notion changes our view about borders, increasing exaggerated fears. In fact: “without borders, the category of migrants will not exist. We will only see mobility”. Migrants are more than ever seen as a “passive object of humanitarian aid and support” or as a “simple result” of historical events and not as a “vital part” of the working class. Thus, migration analysis must be a part of economic and social research.

Award Session: Juan Linz Prize Award Lecture 

Chaired by IPSA Vice President Yuko Kasuya, the Juan Linz Prize Award Lecture session gathered the 2018 and 2021 Juan Linz Prize Recipients: Adam Przeworski and Thomas Risse.

Prof. Przeworski’s lecture, “the 2020 US Election and the Study of Comparative Politics”, explored the US 2020 election and its impact. The lecture responded to questions including: Are the US conditions so exceptional that we can just ignore this event, or does it indicate that lessons from history are a poor guide to recent developments across several countries, most importantly the phenomenon of “democratic backsliding”?

Prof. Risse’s award lecture, “New Nationalisms, Liberal Orders, and the Challenges for Political Science”, discussed the challenges to liberal orders, both domestic and international, and reviews various explanations as well as their weaknesses. It also suggested ways to overcome the fragmentation in Political Science, particularly in comparative politics and international relations.

Special Session “IPSAMOOC: New Digital Scenarios for Global PS Education”

Chaired by Mauro Calise and IPSA Executive Director Kim Fontaine-Skronski, this roundtable focused on the IPSAMOOC project and its evolution. The participants included Fortunato Musella, Valentina Reda, Ana Figueroa, Max Steuer and Andressa Liegi Vieira Costa.

Dr. Fontaine-Skronski detailed IPSA’s new online project IPSA Digital, a new service proposed by the RC Liaison Representative and developed by members of the Executive Committee. IPSA Digital offers IPSA’s Collective Members and Research Committees free and privileged event planning and technical consultation with a professional event planner from the IPSA Secretariat. The service also gives access to virtual meetings and webinar rooms for hosting conferences, research meetings and other activities held in a virtual format.

Next, Prof.  Musella stressed that IPSAMOOC represents a unique media for research and dissemination, and it has set the goal to create a virtual academic hub connecting academics and spreading research.

Dr. Reda presented the outputs of the IPSAMOOCs since their creation in 2017. What started as single courses have now shifted to full programs, and focus more on skills and competencies rather than critical thinking. As a result, the courses have proved to be an extraordinary success with the global MOOC audience, registering more than 70,000 enrolments from more than 150 countries.

Finally, Dr. Figueroa, Dr. Steuer and Ms. Vieira Costa shared their analysis of the partnership between IAPSS, IPSA and Federica Web Learning by collecting learner’s perspectives, creating focus groups and observing learner’s reactions.

Special Session: The Future of Political Science 

The Future of Political Science roundtable discussion gathered IPSA’s four Past Presidents: İlter Turan (2016-18), Aiji Tanaka (2014-16), Helen V. Milner (2012-14) and Lourdes Sola (2006-2009).  

The session examined the phenomenon of new nationalism as it manifests itself in the Global South. The speakers talked about the features of new nationalism; the factors behind its rise; how it is different from earlier nationalisms; whether it is different from the new nationalism in Western Europe and the United States, and whether it is uniform or varies across countries and social groups within countries; how is it related to religion and ethnicity, to populism; how it has transformed the domestic and international politics of societies.

Prof. Tanaka’s presentation explored the legitimacy of the political system and argued that it has been damaged by politicians such as Donald Trump, who not only damaged the legitimacy of American democracy but also damaged the legitimacy of the country’s electoral system. Prof. Tanaka emphasized that the significance of each research should be evaluated not only according to scientific rigour alone but also according to relevance to political reality.

Prof. Milner emphasized that liberal democracy stagnates around the world, and this trend applies not only to developing countries but also to stable democracies like the US. She mentioned that globalization has many positive effects such as growth, development and technological advancement but at the same time poses challenges to democracy and deepens inequality. Prof. Milner also touched on multinational companies that became even more powerful due to globalization and started challenging states.  

In her speech, Prof. Sola highlighted the current social and political problems and the role and responses of the governments, especially in the emerging market democracies. In the face of climate change, the impact of artificial intelligence on the job market, and disruptive pandemics, governments stand out important actors. She also mentioned China’s growing economic power and its pressure on emerging market democracies.

Finally, the Chair of the roundtable, Prof. Turan indicated that more and more political leaders tend not to rely on the institutions of government. He also pointed out the divide in the Political Science community emerged in certain countries such as Turkey. Certain political scientists use their academic titles and express their views publicly without any evidence to defend the government and use Political Science as a propaganda machine. Prof. Turan also highlighted that more and more politicians use Ph.D. Political Science degrees to advance their careers, but some of them face plagiarism allegations.

Award Session: Karl Deutsch Award Lecture

Chaired by IPSA Vice-President Yasmeen Abu-Laban, the recipient of the 2020 Karl Deutsch Award, Jane J. Mansbridge, gave an award lecture titled “Three Responses to the Nationalism within Your Country”.

She first defined the settings for new nationalisms: the increasing need for free-use goods (common defence, clear rivers, stable climate, etc.) that lead to the free-riders problem and finally increased government coercion. The first postulate about free-use goods came from people’s voices not being heard by the government. This triggered the growing need for regulation and coercion. Thus, the challenge will be “finding a way to make that state coercion increasingly legitimate.”

Prof. Mansbridge presented new nationalisms as a response in three themes: negotiation mindset (looking for the interest behind the positions and listening to each other), the totality of government mindset and a place-based mindset. By using an example and a well-presented methodology, Prof. Mansbridge redefined nationalism and replaced it in contemporary times.

Research Method Courses

The Research Methods Courses (RMC) has long been a tradition at the IPSA World Congress. These courses, given by renowned international instructors, offer state-of-the-art information concerning recent advances in research methods across various fields. They usually draw junior and senior scholars with interest in these fields and in recent developments that help enhance their research networks.

This year, two courses were offered. The first course, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), was taught by Dirk Berg-Schlosser. This course provided a short introduction to the main variants of the QCA method: crisp-set QCA, multi-value QCA, and fuzzy-set QCA.

The second course, Mixed Methods, was taught by Max Bergman. The Mixed Methods Research Course explored when, how, and why to mix qualitative and quantitative methods within one research design.

Contributing editor: Angelina Parmentier