In early January 2011 Ben Stanley finished his one year post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute for Public Affairs (IVO). This stay was part of the project ELECDEM: Training Network in Electoral Democracy, financed by the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development under the auspices of the Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN). This network unites eleven teams from nine EU countries offering substantive and methodological preparation in the area of electoral research.

During his stay at the IVO, Ben worked on a project „Integration versus Demarcation? A Comparative Classification of Party Appeals, Voter Preferences and Candidate Attitudes in the European Parliamentary Elections of 2009“.

In addition, he also participated in other IVO projects and made several public presentations, including a seminar on populism in Poland “Tu jest Polska! Poland’s populist moment, 2005 – 2007“, on May 10, 2010 (invitation), with the participation as discussants of Juraj Buzalka, Institute of Cultural Studies, FSEV UK and Peter Učeň, Dept. of Political Science, FiF UK.

Ben also participated in a conference organized by IVO in July 2010, “Free Elections 20 years after: the splendor and misery of the central European dream“, which focused on the Visegrad elections of 2010. He discussed the early presidential elections in Poland. The contributions from this conference will be published in a book in early 2011 (Ben's presentation at the conference).

Ben also joined the team preparing a post-election survey in Slovakia which was a part of the international Comparative Studies of Electoral Systems.

Ben's expertise was also utilized also during the parliamentary election in UK; he participated in a panel organized by Bratislavský Inštitút humanizmu (Bratislava Institute of Humanism, BIH) entitled "The Day after the General Election in the UK" (video of the discussion) and published newspaper articles on this topic.

IVO experts very much enjoyed Ben's stay at IVO and both sides hope that mutual cooperation will continue in the future.

Short CV

Ben Stanley obtained his MA in European Politics (2005) and a Ph.D in Government (2009) from the University of Essex. His dissertation was entitled 'Populism in the Polish Party System: Party Appeals and Voter Mobilization'. Among his most significant publications is “The Thin Ideology of Populism” (in Journal of Political Ideologies 13:1, pp.95-110).

ELECDEM links

University of Exter - ELECDEM
ELECDEM - Training Network in Electoral Democracy
ELECDEM Work package 12 - Electoral Behavior in New Democracies

Photos



Ben with colleagues from IVO




Ben in his IVO office