2020
The PAIRDEM project formally ended at the end of July, and submitted its report to the Research Council of Norway in mid-october, but the project group continues to be active and publish into 2021.
At the Virtual EPSA Annual Conference in June and the Virtual ECPR General Conference in August members of the PAIRDEM core group presented two different papers – one on interest groups lobby routine and one presenting the PAIRDEM datasets.
2019
At the ECPR’s General Conference in Wroclaw, Elin H. Allern, Vibeke W. Hansen, David Marshall and Simon Otjes won the Standing Group on Interests Groups’ Best Paper Award (“Experienced Scholar“) for their paper titled “Organizational Ties between Interest Groups and Political Parties: A Hierarchical Tale of Mutual Resource Provision?”. The jury praised this paper for its cutting-edge research design and a well-crafted empirical analysis.
Members of PAIRDEM core group presented multiple papers at the annual conferences of EPSA, ECPR and APSA in June, August and September 2019.
PAIRDEM organized a mini-conference in Oslo, at Hotel Scandic Vulkan, May 22-24, 2019.
Vibeke Wøien Hansen presented a paper from PAIRDEM at the Norwegian Annual Political Science Conference in Trondheim January 7-9 2019.
2018
Elin H. Allern and Vibeke W. Hansen presented a paper from PAIRDEM at the “Comparative Institutions and Regimes” research seminar at the Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, December 6 2018.
Members of PAIRDEM core group presented multiple papers at the annual conferences of EPSA, ECPR and APSA in June, August and September 2018.
Elin H. Allern presented a paper from PAIRDEM in a workshop on political cleavages at the GIGA Institute in Hamburg, June 7-8 2018.
2016-2017
Elin H. Allern presented the PAIRDEM Project at the Institute for Social Research in Oslo, April 19 2018.
PAIRDEM’s 3rd Core Group Workshop was held at the University of Oslo, Holmenkollen Park Hotel, November 1-3 2017.
Elin H. Allern co-organized two panels on parties and interest groups/associations at the ECPR General Conference in Oslo, September 6-9 2017 (together with Nicole Bolleyer, University of Exeter).
The PAIRDEM data sets are under construction, and the first working paper was presented at the ECPR General Conference in Oslo, September 6-9 2017.
Elin H. Allern presented a PAIRDEM paper at POLKOM, Senter for studier av politisk kommunikasjon, at the University of Oslo, August 27 2017.
The book from the pilot study – Left-of-centre Parties and Trade Unions in the 21st Century – was published by Oxford University Press and launced at a one-day seminar at Mile’s End Institute, Queen Mary University of London, the spring if 2017.
The Interest group survey launched in seven countries between late 2016 and spring of 2017, to be completed in 2017/early 2018.
Party survey launched in 21 countries during the spring and (late) summer of 2016, after mapping/coding the party statutes in all these countries, to be completed the autumn of 2017.
2015
PAIRDEM’s 2nd Core Group Workshop was held at the University of Copenhagen, December 14-15 2015.
PAIRDEM’s postdoctoral fellow, Vibeke Wøien Hansen, joined the Core Group 1st of June 2015.
Opening workshop for the PAIRDEM core group in Oslo, February 11-13 2015.
The autumn of 2014, Allern received a grant from the national funding scheme “Young Research Talents” (The Research Council of Norway/UiO) to manage a new comparative study of the relationship between parties and interest groups in established democracies: Party-Interest Group Relationships in Contemporary Democracies: Character, Causes and Consequences (PAIRDEM) .
In April 2014, a LPTU workshop was organized in Oslo: the country experts joined to discuss the results of the party-union surveys before completing the LPTU data sets and drafting the book chapters.
From 2012-2015, Elin H. Allern and Tim Bale carried out a “pilot study” of the relationship between left-wing parties and trade unions (LPTU). A network of experts on parties and trade unions in 12 different old democracies finished the data collection in the autumn of 2013.
In June 2012, Elin H. Allern and Tim Bale co-chaired an “ECPR Research Session” entitled “Towards a Comparative Research Project on the Relationship between Political Parties and Interest Groups” at the European University Institute in Florence.
In April 2009, Elin H. Allern and Tim Bale co-chaired the workshop “Political Parties and Civil Society” at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, at the Lisbon University Institute; ICS; CIES and Portuguese Political Science, Lisbon, which led to a special issue of the journal Party Politics, in 2012: “Political Parties and Interest Groups: Qualifying the Common Wisdom”. Special issue of Party Politics, 18 (1).
Parties and Interest Groups in Democracies 