The politics network of the ESSHC especially invites proposals for coherent sessions, and for separate papers on the following topics:

• Pacification and reconstruction of the state Regime change is a hot topic in current international politics. However, the pacification of deep-seated and violent conflicts and the reconstruction of the rule of law, political representation and the civil administration is a recurrent issue ever since the beginning of political history.
• Forms of democracy and democratisation
  A topic related to the previous is the development of democratic regimes. In much of the earlier research on political modernization, the focus was on the social and cultural conditions of democratisation, conceived as a process ending in a apparently self-evident form of democracy. In more recent research, the notion of democracy is problematised, focusing on the difference between direct and representative, plebiscitarian and deliberative models of democracy. Also democratisation is a topic of contention, e.g. the question whether the introduction of elections is always the best start in a process of democratisation.
• Totalitarian regimes.
  Since the fall of communism in Europe, the debate on the nature of totalitarian state has re-emerged, e.g. The Dictators of Richard Overy. We invite proposals for papers on the development of totalitarianism, both as a concept and as a political practice.
• Identities, cleavages and state-making
  One of the recurring topics in the history of politics is the way in which identities, and social and cultural differences are politically organized at the level of the state, and how the resulting political cleavages organize and predetermine political processes and outcomes. We invite proposals for papers and session that address these issues from a comparative perspective.