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ISSN 1682-0983
© 2003 European Consortium for Political Research

Organising the ecpr Joint Sessions 2002

When we met for the first time to discuss the organisation of the Joint Sessions in Turin, we had very little idea of how deeply we would become involved in the enterprise over the following months; of how much time we would have to spend taking care of the many small details that have to be seen to in order for a conference to work, or of how much we would get out of the experience in terms of personal enjoyment. In what follows we describe our experience. We do this both for the pleasure of revisiting the experience ourselves, and because we believe we have learnt a lot from it.

We therefore hope that our reflections may be of use to others who may be thinking of hosting the Joint Sessions, or mounting similar events, in the future. Before discussing the issues we think need to be taken into account by anyone who is considering ‘going for it’, we should mention that the availability of the three of us (supervised by Alfio Mastropaolo, who had special responsibility for the funding and for the ‘diplomatic’ side of the job) cannot be regarded as having been equivalent to the availability of a full-time organiser. Being able to count on one is surely advisable.
The period of most intense work began just after we had attended the previous Joint Sessions in Grenoble, where we had been alarmed to discover just how much work still remained to be done. At that time, Franca was teaching her usual courses in locations scattered throughout Piedmont; Fabio, besides carrying a heavy workload, was also about to have his first child; Anna, while living in Turin, was teaching some 750 kilometres away and commuting every week.

This meant that the Joint Sessions were a genuine product of the recent innovations in communications technologies, with their e-mails, mobile phones and such like. For more than a year, however, we also had weekly, face-to-face meetings, usually lasting a whole morning. We now actually miss the occasions these meetings offered for the four of us to get together – so much so that Alfio is thinking of finding another task for the team (in fact he bravely thought about it the day the Joint Sessions ended), but for the moment we are happy to look for rather less tiring reasons to meet up (such as, for example, to have tea).

If you decide to accept the challenge of organising a meeting as complex as the Joint Sessions while being essentially one of four people working on it on a strictly part-time basis, then make sure you have available someone like Laura Cereja, the Administrative Head of the Department of Political Studies at the University of Turin. Horribly busy though she was, Laura could be found in the Department most of the time and was ready to take over when trains were late, classes could not wait and so on. Actually, one of the most enjoyable aspects of the job was the opportunity it afforded for interaction with departmental personnel, who joined in with great enthusiasm and who ended up doing a lot of work in the final, most hectic weeks even when their other work could not wait and needed to be done in addition to the extra load created by the Joint Sessions. As usual, people made the difference and this was also very much true of the students who helped in the weeks following Christmas and whom everybody who took part in the Joint Sessions had the chance to meet.

If you think that funding is the most problematic aspect of arranging an event like the Joint Sessions, then try organising, in university buildings, about twenty-five workshops to take place while classes are being given at the same time. This was something we were obliged to do because, in our case, the Easter break lasts only a few days and in any event did not start until the Joint Sessions were over. We were lucky that the Faculty of Law had a new building that was not being used at the time, and the Head of Political Science was kind enough to arrange things in such a way as to let us use another building. Had it not been for the skilful negotiation of Alfio, we might have had to find a different place, far from the city centre. The latter is an aspect to which we gave great importance. We were all convinced that the opportunity for participants to get to know the city would make a big difference, and in the event we think it really did. Obviously the beautiful, summer-like, sunshine helped as well, but this was something we could only be grateful for.
The fact that Turin City Council is very keen on hosting international meetings also had a considerable impact on the organisation overall. Had we not been able to count on the Municipality, as well as ECPR Central Services, the Joint Sessions would undoubtedly have turned out differently, and would probably have been much less enjoyable for both organisers and participants. When you have to take care of so many aspects, most of which seem to go wrong at least some of the time, knowing that you can count on friendly advice, a helping hand or perhaps just some encouragement is extremely important. It certainly was for us.

ORGANISING THE JOINT SESSIONS: A STEP-BY-STEP ACCOUNT

When you actually start organising an event like the Joint Sessions you do not need to do things in a fixed order. Nevertheless, we realised that there are some steps you have to take right at the beginning, while others have basically to wait until the last minute. From our experience we can now say that it might be useful to plan your activities as follows.

Create a logo for the Joint Sessions and mount a set of web pages both on the University’s and on the ECPR’s web site. Circulate a conference e-mail address: from this moment onwards someone has to assume responsibility for checking it regularly and answering queries.
Identify the building(s) where the sessions will be held. Aside from the large number of rooms needed (usually about twenty-five), the crucial spots are the places where the registration formalities, the coffee breaks and the book exhibition are to take place. Especially since the book exhibition and the facilities for the coffee breaks should be located in the same area, the latter needs to be very spacious and (because of the noise that is created during the coffee breaks) not too close to the workshop rooms. Remember that a computer room should also be available for participants. If there isn’t one in the buildings you have decided to use, you will need to find an alternative room (as happened in Turin). Of course in this case you have to take into consideration the extra cost and time that will be involved.

Fund raising - raising the amount of money you need implies of course that you have worked out how much is likely to be required to finance each of the different aspects of the conference. To this end it is extremely important to get in touch with the appropriate units within the University but also to establish contacts with local government bodies, as well as private and public institutions.
Hotel reservation and booking - handling this aspect on one’s own basically implies having available someone who has done this kind of job before and can work on it full time. It is definitely not advisable to do it oneself since there are many organisations who do it professionally without charge.

Organising social and other events, including the coffee breaks. While sponsorship money for a number of the events may easily be found, coffee breaks, if you wish to offer them, may turn out to be a significant burden on the overall budget for the conference. Some events – such as the Rokkan Lecture and the publishers’ opening reception – take place every year and need to be taken account of in planning the overall schedule.

Deciding on the information sheets you want to give out to participants; on the kind of bag needed to hold them all; and on the gifts for special guests.

Selecting people to help during the conference and briefing them as to their tasks.
Printing the programme (once the information about the workshops and the final list of participants has been received from the ECPR), plus any other information sheets. It is very important that before you get to this stage you make sure you can handle the database the ECPR will let you have just in time to get the programme printed.

Preparation of the buildings. This involves ensuring that tables and chairs are available for the registration, coffee break and book exhibition areas as well as for the workshop rooms; ensuring that stands and notice boards are available for the publishers and for the participants generally; ensuring that signs are put up guiding participants to the workshops, the registration and other facilities; opening and closing the buildings (especially at weekends); cleaning up (during the sessions and at the end).

TRYING TO GENERALISE FROM OUR EXPERIENCE

What we shall do now is to try to place our experience within a broader context, first of all in order to help people working in situations that differ somewhat from the one we found ourselves in. Second, we believe that comparing experiences may highlight interesting relevant differences between the various situations and therefore help us better to understand the functioning of different university systems in Europe.

At the level of the local university system, we consider those variables that are related to the internal resources and structures of the system, namely:

• the financial and organisational resources available within the system; and

• the organisational models that structure teaching.

Three other variables, operating at the level of the relationship between the local university system and its environment, influence the chances of obtaining help from outside. They concern:

• the links between the university system and other institutions;

• the degree of concern of local elites, for matters of ‘international relations’; and

• the availability of financial resources both from public institutions and from private enterprises.

THE FINANCIAL AND ORGANISATIONAL RESOURCES AVAILABLE WITHIN THE LOCAL UNIVERSITY SYSTEM

It hardly needs mentioning that a richer and better-organised University has fewer problems in dealing with the task of organising a five-day meeting involving more than 500 scholars than does a poorer, less well-organised University. Nevertheless, it might be useful to consider, more closely, certain details.

First, the amount of money devoted generally to research in each country inevitably influences the degree to which institutions within it can have international ties and can be involved in international events. Second, the degree of centralisation or autonomy in the university system is also an important factor. One may hypothesise that in a centralised system – as Italy’s was until few years ago – it will be more difficult to obtain significant resources for events (even significant Europe-wide events) that are to be realised at the local level, than it will be in more autonomous systems where the importance of organising international meetings is likely to be more readily appreciated. Third, the existence of university external relations departments, having professional staff, stable routines and experts used to working in this field makes a difference.

THE ORGANISATIONAL MODELS STRUCTURING TEACHING

At this level, one encounters those factors that shape the day-to-day activities of each department or faculty. For example where there is no lengthy break for Easter, the dates of the Joint Sessions are likely to fall within a normal teaching period, cutting into it and causing problems for those who are not involved in the event. As a consequence, permission to use the facilities of the University concerned will have to be negotiated, requiring organisers to spend more time and to face more difficulties in arranging the event.

A second, related factor concerns the kind of rooms in which classes are usually held. Organising workshops in big rooms, with many rows of chairs that are screwed to the floor – as is usual in the Italian case – is more complicated than doing so in buildings where the furniture in classrooms is generally laid out for small seminars.

A third factor concerns the location of the University within its immediate physical environment. A city-centre location, or being on an outside campus, imply completely different organisational models. While universities located in city centres are more integrated into urban networks, precisely for this reason, their buildings are also frequently widely dispersed. Out-of-town campus universities, on the other hand, by concentrating functions in a limited space, perhaps offer a wider range of organisational possibilities and – possibly – greater efficiency, but have the disadvantage that the conference is more likely to take place in a separate, and closed, social and cultural environment.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS

Let us now focus on those factors associated with the relationship between the University and its environment that are likely to influence the success of the enterprise. Of course, the standing of the University locally, in terms of its social and cultural reputation, is a first important element. A highly esteemed faculty or department has a better chance not only of obtaining adequate funds for the organisation of the Joint Sessions, but also of obtaining the necessary levels of practical support and publicity in putting on the event.

Only partly linked to this is a second factor, namely, the cultural dimension of the relationship between academic institutions and the institutions surrounding them – that is, the degree to which departments and faculties are integrated into local political and social networks. It is evident that a university system that has strong links with neighbouring institutions contributes to the creation of a more ‘culturally aware’ environment. In such environments events like the Joint Sessions find a prompter and more accommodating reception.

THE ‘INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS CULTURE’ AMONG LOCAL ELITES

In developing this line of reasoning, we should say a few words about the different ‘international relations cultures’ that characterise the links between universities and their immediate environments. A broad awareness, on the part of local political elites and others, of the role that their University can play in their attempts to forge links with people and institutions based in other countries, makes the task of organisers immeasurably easier and considerably increases the chances of success of the meeting concerned.

With regard to this point, it is worth specifying that in talking about the ‘success’ of an international conference like the Joint Sessions we mean something more than a positive outcome in academic terms alone. Even if the primary aim of the Joint Sessions is to offer a forum for substantive discussion of research in progress, anyone who had participated in one of these conferences knows very well that the degree of satisfaction they ultimately get from the experience is the product of a broader range of factors.

The factors that contribute to a positive outcome include being able to live for some days in a different country without feeling like a stranger; to talk with locally-based colleagues, to eat and drink with them; to smell the special scent that distinguishes each country, and to share each of these experiences with the friends and colleagues who arrive from different parts of Europe and the world. A participant’s experience of the Joint Sessions is influenced by the general mood of the conference and is driven by two different needs: the need to experience new situations and the need to feel at home. It is easy to appreciate that a city where the ‘international relations culture’ is more developed is in a better position to understand and to satisfy both these needs.

THE AVAILABILITY OF FINANCIAL RESOURCES

Obviously the availability of financial resources is a key variable. The amounts required to cover the various items of expenditure (such as the social events, personnel, transportation and rooms if the University’s cannot be used for any reason) vary from one situation to another, but will always be quite high. Often the University itself contributes to the costs of the Joint Sessions, as does the ECPR, but the possibility of obtaining funding from public and/or private institutions is crucial. This possibility of course depends on the nature and the number of the links that the University has managed to forge with its environment, but also on the overall financial situation of the city or the area in which the Joint Sessions are to be held. The job of fund-raising is quite time-consuming and may even be frustrating, and it will be the more so the less favourable is the economic climate generally.

CONCLUSION

We hope we have not discouraged anyone from organising an event like the Joint Sessions, since we enjoyed the experience. However, had we known certain things in advance we might have used our time and energy better. This is why we have wished to share our experience with readers of European Political Science.

Looking back on the Joint Sessions in Turin, we believe that the experience would have been even more enjoyable had we had available proper spaces for the book exhibition and the coffee breaks, and had they been a little more distant from the workshop area, as ECPR Central Services staff had advised. Actually we did try to find an alternative solution, which unfortunately did not work out, but we now think that we might have tried even harder (perhaps with the same outcome and more frustration, but you never know).

Certainly, our life would have been made easier had there been a person able to take charge of the organisation on a full-time basis, but unfortunately the University of Turin did not have available among its staff a person it could free-up for this task. Nevertheless, as we have said, we went through the experience happily; we enjoyed working together, and the responses of the people attending the Joint Sessions were really rewarding. Six months later Alfio is still the coach of the team (presently at rest); Franca and Anna now live next door, and Fabio has Enrico to keep him busy. What will happen to us next?

Fabio Armao, Anna Caffarena and Franca Roncarolo