Planning Committee Meeting, October 2010

Conference
What were the elections about? How do we know it?

Research workshop of the Israel Science Foundation
Co-sponsored by CSES (Comparative Study of Electoral Systems)
and Tel-Aviv University

Conference Program

Sunday, October 24, 2010

9:30 – 10:00 … Welcome and Opening Remarks

10:00 – 12:00 … Elections and their Meaning(s)

Chair: Bernt Aardal (Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway)
Discussant: Amal Jamal, Department of Political Science, Tel Aviv University

• • Elections as a Collective Choice: the Factual Consequences of a Political Fiction
    Yaron Ezrahi (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)

• • Three Elections, No Mandates: France, 2007, United States, 2008, and Great Britain, 2010
    Jim Stimson (University of North Carolina, U.S.)

• • Mandate Election Interpretations: Structural Foundations and Social Construction 
    Michal Shamir (Tel Aviv University, Israel) and Jacob Shamir (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)

13:30 – 15:30 … Elections, Strategy, and Institutions

Chair: Orit Kedar (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
Discussant: Yael Shomer, (Tel Aviv University, Israel)

• • Electoral Strategy as an Organizational Problem-Solving Process
    Gideon Doron (Tel Aviv University, Israel) and Maoz Rosenthal (Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Israel)

• • Candidates and Parties – Competition or Reinforcement – or: Does it matter how they fit?
    Bernhard Wessels (WZB Germany)

• • Is an Election about Choosing a Government?
    André Blais (Université de Montreal, Canada), John Aldrich (Duke University, U.S.), and Thomas Gschwend (Mannheim University, Germany)

16:00 – 18:00 … Voter Choice: Idealogy and Identity

Chair: Ulises Beltran (CIDE, Mexico)
Discussant: Nicolas Sauger (Sciences Po, France)

• • When does the Left-Right Dimension have meaning in an election? 
    John Aldrich, Sinzi Popa Dorobantu, and Marco Fernandez (Duke University, U.S.)

• • Voting for our Story: A Narrative Model of Electoral Choice in Multiparty Systems
    Tamir Sheafer, Shaul Shenhav (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel), Ken Goldstein (University of Wisconsin, U.S.)

• • Economy and culture in the 2010 Dutch election
    Kees Aarts (University of Twente, The Netherlands)

Monday, October 25, 2010

16:45-19:00 … Program: In Memoriam of Asher Arian, Pionner of Israeli Election Studies

Chair: Gideon Doron (Tel Aviv University, Israel)

• • Greetings
    Dany Leviatan, Noah Lewin-Epstein (Tel Aviv University, Israel),
    Aviv Arian (Family Representative)

• • Asher Arian: Founder of the Political Science Department
    Haim Ben-Shahar (Tel Aviv University, Israel)

• • Behaviorism in Tel-Aviv
    Yossi Beilin (Beilink, Israel)

• A Party System Captive by the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  Michal Shamir (Tel Aviv University, Israel)
• Should American Jews Vote Liberal?
  Sam Krislov (American University, U.S.)

Planning Committee Meeting

Monday, October 25, 2010

09:00 – 11:00 … General business

Update on Module 3
Do we have enough Module 3 studies to allow transition to Module 4?
Module 3 Data Cleaning Issues
Update on Africa meeting
Pretesting of Module 4
Future meetings – planning committee, plenary meetings
Book series update
Review of progress on initiatives volunteered by members

11:30 – 16:00 … Main Theme for CSES Module 4

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

09:00 – 11:00 … Module 4 Questionnaire

Deciding on the main theme
Deciding what comprises the “Core” and what space is available for the theme
Deciding on some questions, including new ones needed, and wording
Discussion about what macro data might be needed
Setting up subcommittees (questionnaire, macro) to continue this work

11:30 – 13:00 … Mobilization

Presentation by subcommittee (Rachel Gibson)
Discussion
Do we add questions for this, and if so how much space is available for it?
What macro variables might be helpful for this?

14:00 – 15:30 … Political Knowledge

Presentation by subcommittee (Ulises Beltran)
Discussion
Will we change the existing questions, and if so how?

16:00 – 17:30 … Wrap-up 

Module 4: discussion of the process and calendar from here, and pretesting