Paul Lewis, Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University, Walton Hall, Miton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK. Email: P.G.Lewis@open.ac.uk

Petra Guasti, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Jilska 1, CZ-110 00 Prague 1. Email: petra.guasti@soc.cas.cz

The Standing Group was established in 1999 with the following aims:

1. to help the information flow between members about ongoing research projects and academic activities in the field of CEE politics;
2. to promote the integration of scholars from Central Europe and Eastern Europe into the activities of the ECPR;
3. to initiate new research agendas in line with the interests of the members of the Standing Group;
4. to provide members with more extensive information and the means of communication in the form of a website;
5. to contribute to the activities of the ECPR through workshop initiatives and other academic activities.

Since that date it has built up a mailing list which has been used at regular intervals to communicate with members about matters of common concern and to organise various ECPR-related activities. Meetings have been held at all Joint Sessions and General Conferences since the Group was established. The Group also organised a specialist Section at the first two General Conferences. When the time came to organise for the Third Conference in Budapest, though, it was felt that many CEE scholars and those specialising in the area were sufficiently integrated with the mainstream interests and concerns of European political science for there to be no need for a regionally defined section into which members interests would fit. CEE interests were indeed fully represented in sections and panels concerned with European integration, EU developments and broad thematic areas of political science research like parties, parliament, electoral behaviour, democratic theory and practices, etc. In this sense, aim (b) has been more or less fully achieved. The Group’s main aim now is to strengthen relations between all scholars interested in CEE politics. The Group has also organised Research Sessions (Pilsen 2002, Vilnius 2003), which have helped developed specific lines of research and encouraged the formation of specialist research groups and projects. These have generated, and continue to generate, a range of publications.

A research register of members’ interests has been compiled, and measures are being taken to give this more publicity and encourage members to update entries. The Group has also been instrumental in helping organise a PhD Summer School on Governance and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. The first School was held at the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of Lüneberg in August 2005 under the direction of Professor Ferdinand Müller-Rommel and was deemed a great success. A second School, equally successful, was held in August 2006. The Standing Group is still pursuing its objective of establishing an independent website, hopefully with interactive capacity, and is still trying to make progress in this area.

Membership functionality is available here.