Call for Papers for a special issue of ÖZG Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften – Austrian Journal of Historical Studies
Papers will focus on the changes happened to the political parties which were once assembled in the Second International (later renamed to Socialist International). In more than one nation these parties with a rich tradition experienced dramatic developments during the last quarter of a century. After the breakup of Communism we saw the reestablishing of former Social Democratic parties in some of the countries where their predecessors were forced to unite with the CP in the 1940s. Some former CP re-invented themselves as Social Democrats whereas in Western European Countries parties disappeared like in Italy or were remodeled as New Labour under Blair in Britain, Schröder in Germany which back then found even admirers across the Atlantic as the new movement in left politics. The northern countries seem to have experienced more smooth transformations when the Swedish SD lost its long-lasting dominant position back in the 1980s.
Historians and social scientists offered several explanations for some of these changes and the proposed special issue wants to bring together case studies for particular countries and periods, comparative analyses either at the policy or organizational level. Especially welcome are papers which try to explain the changed composition of the party elites (social democrats in government or legislation offices), the membership and rank and file activists and the voters.
There are several classic contributions to be mentioned as milestones: Beginning with Werner Sombart’s explanation why there was no socialism in the US, Robert Michels’ iron law of oligarchy which he developed studying the German Social Democratic Party of the early 20th century, Ralf Dahrendorf’s diagnosis that the era of the Social Democrats had come to an end because the movement reached all goals they ever achieved for or Anthony Giddens’ plea for a political future beyond left and right, and the huge library of electoral studies since the 1940s which started by focusing on social structural positions of voters and switch towards more “culturalistic” explanations of the appeal of particular politicians and political campaigns.
Abstracts should be submitted by the end of 2016
Draft versions of accepted contributed are due by mid June 2017
The issue will appear in 2018
Please send abstracts to: christian.fleck@uni-graz.at and marianne.egger@hwr-berlin.de
About ÖZG: The journal has been founded in 1990 and publishes three issues a year. It is listed in SCOPUS and had been recognized by ERIH as 1A, meaning it is a journal of international reputation with international authors and internationally relevant topics. The publishing policy is double blind peer reviewing of all articles. Articles become open access a year after publication.