The Department of Political Science, ELECDEM and the Political Behavior Research Group (PolBeRG) cordially invite you to a Workshop on Comparative Studies of Voting Behavior and Public Opinion, September 12, 2011, 14:00 - September 13, 2011, 15:00. The event is sponsored by ELECDEM, Marie Curie Training Network in Electoral Democracy.
Panel 1, September 12 – 2:00 – 3:40, Gellner Room
Prof. Paul Allen Beck, Ohio State University - Global Patterns of Political Intermediation
Prof. Ruediger Schmitt-Beck, University of Mannheim - Conditions for Dyadic Partisan Agreement and Disagreement: An Analysis of Voters' Social Networks at the 2009 German Federal Election
Coffee break: 3:40 -4:00
Panel 2, September 12 – 4:00 – 5:40
Diana Burlacu, CEU: Public Attitudes Towards Government Responsibility in a Comparative Perspective
Paul Weith, CEU: Gene by Environment Interactions of Political Knowledge and Socioeconomic Status
Session 3, September 13 – 1:00 – 2:40
Daniela Sirinic, CEU – Are the Kids Alright - Does unequal participation make a difference?
Sebastian Popa, CEU – The Role of Political Information in Attitude Congruent Electoral Decisions
Prof. Gabor Toka, CEU – Do Politically Biased Media Make Citizens Better Informed about Politics
Bio of the presenters:
Prof. Paul A. Beck (AB, Indiana; PhD, Michigan) is a Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at The Ohio State University, where he has been a professor of Political Science since 1987. He also holds professor appointments in Ohio State’s School of Communication and Department of Sociology. Beck’s research and teaching focus on voting behavior, political parties, and political communications in the United States and cross-nationally. His work has been published regularly in leading professional journals, including a total of 15 articles in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, and the British Journal of Political Science. His books include 5 editions of Party Politics in America (1988, 1992, 1997, 2001, 2003), a leading textbook on political parties, and Electoral Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies (1984). His current research focuses on the mass media, interpersonal discussion networks, and secondary organizations as intermediaries in elections in modern democracies, including the United States. Currently, he is working as co-editor on a CNEP book project and on a book on recent American electoral politics.
Prof. Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck is the director of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), chairman of the German Society for Electoral Research and a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Public Opinion Research (IJPOR). His work has been published regularly in journal outlets such as Electoral Studies, British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research and German Politics. He published and edited books with leading publishing houses such as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Routledge. His current work and scientific interests range from social trust, social networks, mass-media and campaign effects to political communication in general and electoral behavior.
Diana Burlacu is a PhD Student at the Doctoral School of Political Science, Public Policy, and International Relations, Central European University, Political Science, Budapest and an Early Stage researcher at ELECDEM (Training Network in Electoral Democracy funded by the European Commission 7th FP) since September 2009. She holds a MA in Political Behavior from the University of Essex, UK and a BA in Political Science from the National School of Political Science and Public Administration, Bucharest. Her dissertation focuses on the relationship between voting behavior and the quality of governance. Research interests: voting behavior, public opinion, comparative politics, and quantitative methods.
Paul Weith is a Marie Curie Junior Research Fellow and a PhD candidate in the Comparative Politics track since October 2009. He received his MA from CEU in July 2009, with a major in research methodology. He is currently investigating the effect of the citizens' level of political literacy on their political attitudes and voting behavior. His main research interest is in political behavior (mostly voting behavior), but he is also interested in quantitative research methodology and in the emerging field of behavior genetics.
Daniela Sirinic is a 3rd year PhD student at CEU, a member of the Political Behavior Research Group (PolBeRG) and of the Center for the Study of Imperfections in Democracies. She graduated from the CEU MA program in 2009 and is currently working within the field of political behavior. Her research interests range from the quality of democracies and political participation to the inequalities in political representation.
Sebastian Popa is a 3rd year PhD candidate and has an MA in Political Science from the Political Science Department at CEU. His research covers a variety of topics such as: the determinants of political information; the role that political knowledge plays in voting behavior; measurement of political information; data quality; and the influence of genetics on political attitudes and behavior. The common denominator of all these projects lies in the fact that they all are based on the analysis of large datasets.
Prof. Gabor Toka's research interest is primarily in the interaction between voting behavior and the performance of democratic institutions. He is also interested in public opinion, survey methodology, and East European politics. He is co-author of Post-Communist Party Systems: Competition, Representation, and Inter-Party Cooperation (Cambridge University Press, 1999), author or co-author of over five dozen articles on electoral behavior, public opinion, political parties and democratic consolidation in edited volumes, political science and sociology journals.
