Université catholique de Louvain
The Centre de Politique Comparée focuses primarily on comparative institutional engineering. It aims at bringing together comparativists of different brands of political science to offer a locus of scientific exchange (research seminars dealing with new research projects, but also current or recently finalised projects), to promote collective and interdisciplinary research projects, to back training sessions methodological sessions, sessions around new approaches and discussions over recent publications), to exchange information on comparative databases and interesting web-sites, to spread information about scientific events, and, finally, to establish links with other similar centres around the world. Its academic staff and researchers are involved (as co-ordinators or core participants) in several international projects and networks such as the “Organised Civil Society and European Governance” (CIVGOV) project, the “Representative democracy at the regional level in Europe” project, the Manifesto Research Group, the “coalition governance” project, the “Ethno-regionalist Parties in Western Europe”, the “Parliaments in Western Europe” group and the inter-university “Agenda-setting in Belgium” project. Its members are regularly contacted as experts on the Belgian political system, especially on topics related to the ethno-linguistic conflict and conflict resolution/accommodation mechanisms. Together with several European partners, the UCL is involved in several European-level Ph.D. or post-graduate programmes, such as the ECPR Summer School on European Parties ands Party Systems and the SOCRATES intensive teaching programme on “Democracy in Europe”. The UCL also hosts a regular series of research seminars (methodological and applied) for Ph.D. students and visiting scholars.
The UCL will provide the Research Director of the project and supervise the overall coherence of the interdisciplinary approach. Lieven de Winter of the UCL will be Research Co-Director and Benoît Rihoux will be in charge of the co-ordination of methodological tools and instruments used throughout the project. The UCL will coordinate the project as a consortium leader and will also take leadership of WP 1 and WP 2.
Centre de Politique Comparée - UCL
Place Montesquieu, 1/7
B - 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve
cpc.spri.ucl.ac.be
Elise FÉRON
Benoît RIHOUX
Jana SCHILDT