Call for Participants
EUROPEAN NETWORK FOR THE ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL TEXT (ENAPT) WORKSHOP
Keele University (Claus Moser Research Centre, Room CM0.12)
Thursday, 25 June 2009, 9:30am-4:00pm
Download the workshop brochure from here.
The European Network for the Analysis of Political Text (ENAPT) will be organising an one-day workshop at Keele University on estimating parties’ policy positions with the use of party manifestos. The workshop will primarily discuss the methodological issues arising from a new method for coding political text which was originally proposed by Pellikaan et al. (2003) and which is currently used by a number of voting advice applications including EUprofiler.
The workshop is open to researchers interested in estimating parties’ policy positions and/or the qualitative or quantitative analysis of party manifestos. If you would like to participate, please contact Kostas Gemenis by 18 June 2009. Refreshments, lunch, and lively debate will be provided. A limited amount of travel funding for graduate students is available.
The workshop is generously supported by the Keele European Parties Research Unit (KEPRU) and the Keele University Graduate School Networking Fund.
WORKSHOP PROGRAMME
9:30-10:00 Registration and welcome
10:00-11:00 Session 1: Theory and methodology
Estimating parties’ policy positions by using the ‘confrontational’ approach: the advantages over the Comparative Manifestos Project – Kostas Gemenis (Keele)
‘The lost Atlantis of objectivity’: concerns about the reliability of measures of party manifesto data – Elias Dinas (EUI)
11:00-11:15 Coffee break
11:15-12:45 Session 2: Empirical findings from the 2004 EP election
The extreme Right in France: issues and problems in manifesto coding – Sofia Vasilopoulou (LSE) & Nathalie Brack (ULB)
Green parties in Central Europe: the cases of Austria and Germany – Zoe Lefkofridi (Vienna) & Juan Casado Asensio (Vienna)
The policy positions of parties in Great Britain and Northern Ireland – Michalis Moutselos (Oxford), Kostas Gemenis (Keele) & Pollyanna Jones (Keele)
12:45-14:00 Lunch break
14:00-15:00 Session 3: Related approaches
Referenda and party representation: the case of the Dutch EU referendum – Tom Louwerse (Leiden)
Obtaining sources and positioning parties: reflections from the EU Profiler Project – Elisabeth Carter (Keele) & Gemma Loomes (Birmingham)
15:00-15:15 Coffee break
15:15-16:00 Roundtable discussion
