This conference brings together three IPSA research committees (14, 13 and 28) to examine the challenges of designing democratic institutions in divided societies. The conference provides an opportunity to examine the role of different factors (e.g., ethnicity, gender, class, political institutions, efficacy of multi-level governance, the intersection between peace and democratic stability) in fostering democratization in the context of regional and global integration. We welcome contributions that focus on democratization as an open-ended process driven by either internal or external factors, embedded in local, regional, or global dynamics as well as social, economic and legal legacies of the past.

The conference will be convened in Nicosia, Cyprus at the time when the country is undergoing a complex and historic process of designing political institutions to bridge the gap between the island’s divided communities. In particular, we welcome proposals that reflect upon the constitutional design process in Cyprus as well as proposals that develop case studies or comparison of issues of democratization evident in any part of the world or those which engage a theoretical perspective on institutional and constitutional designs in ethnically, religiously, nationally and linguistically divided societies.

For more details, see https://sites.google.com/view/ipsarc14/events/nicosia-2017