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At the heart of the ECPR’s activities and decision-making lies the Executive Committee (EC) or a 12-member board of trustees that supervises the entire organisation.

Members of the EC are highly respected professionals within the discipline, eager to contribute their ideas, time and energy to developing European political science.

Service on the EC means taking on responsibility for one of the ECPR’s different portfolios, such as the Joint Sessions, the Summer/Winter School in Methods and Techniques, the General Conference or Standing Groups (a full list of portfolios with a summary of their responsibilities can be downloaded here). It is an opportunity to put your mark on how these activities are run and how they can be improved. After an initial three-year term with one portfolio, members shift during their second term to a different one, including the roles of Chair and Vice-Chair. Meetings of the EC generally take place twice a year, at the ECPR’s major academic events – the Joint Sessions and the General/Graduate Conference.


The Executive Committee is not an honorary post. It comes with work and responsibility. But it is also an important distinction to be a part of Europe’s premier political science organisation with all the international exchange, professionalism and dynamism the ECPR has come to stand for.

Throughout its history, the ECPR has strived to maintain both a gender and regional balance within its Executive Committee. Women and candidates from all regions of Europe are encouraged to run.

Normally an election for the Executive Committee fills the seats of 6 members, whose terms are coming to an end. However, because some of the current members of the EC were co-opted into the body in 2009, there will in fact be 8 positions to be filled during the next election.

The current Executive Committee (with those continuing members highlighted in bold) are:

Luciano Bardi (Chair)
Università di Pisa, Italy

André Kaiser
Universität zu Köln, Germany
Vello Pettai (Vice Chair & Treasurer)
University of Tartu, Estonia

Niilo Kauppi
Université de Strasbourg, France
Klaus Armingeon
Universität Bern, Switzerland

Simona Piattoni
University of Trento, Italy
Eileen Connolly
Dublin City University, Ireland

Jonas Tallberg
Stockholm University, Sweden
Jacob Torfing
Roskilde University, Denmark

William Maloney (co-opted in 2009)
Newcastle University, UK

Manuel Sanchez De Dios (co-opted in 2009)
Universidad Complutense, Spain

Danica Fink-Hafner
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Procedures and timeframe

The procedure for electing members of the ECPR Executive Committee shall involve three successive stages: nominations, endorsements and final voting. Each shall be organised electronically via the myECPR area on the ECPR website (if you do not already have a myECPR account please sign up here). Any individual from an ECPR member institution can nominate themselves to stand for the Executive Committee – this stage of the process opens on the 1st November and closes on the 31st December 2011. Their nomination must then be endorsed by at least five Official Representatives for them to be included in the final ballot. The endorsement period shall last from the 1st of January to the 1st of February 2012. When the final ballot is together, voting shall be carried out by the ECPR’s member Official Representatives during the period 15 February to 15 March. The votes shall be counted and final seats allocated based on the Single Transferable Vote system (Scottish variant). The results will be announced by April 1. The new composition of the Executive Committee shall have its first meeting at the end of the Joint Sessions in Antwerp on April 14.

A full guide to the procedures and deadlines for each stage can be downloaded here.

Is your institution a member?

Please see the current membership list to check whether your university is a member. Please note, only Full ECPR Members can stand for election to the Executive Committee, endorse a candidate and vote in the election. Associate Members that wish to do so may consider upgrading to Full Membership of the ECPR; those that have been Associate Members for six consecutive years are eligible to do so.

Join the ECPR

See how your institution could benefit from membership to the premier political science organisation in Europe.

What is an OR?

Membership of the ECPR is institutional; therefore each member institution must select an individual to act as the ‘Official Representative’ (OR) to the ECPR. This role of the OR is to represent their institution’s interests to the ECPR, and vice versa, to ensure their university and all those within it, get the most out of their membership. For more information, or to find out who the Official Representative is for your institution, please contact Emma King (eking@essex.ac.uk).

Sign up to MyECPR

Get more out of your membership to the ECPR through MyECPR.

Contact for more info / queries

For more information about the electoral process etc, please contact the ECPR Central Services in the first instance (ecpr@essex.ac.uk). Alternatively, for a firsthand account of life on the ECPR’s EC please feel free to contact any of the current members – contact details can be found here.