The University of Heidelberg invites chapter proposals for the edited volume “The Vanguard of Class and Nation: Parties as Governments in Eurasia, 1920s–1990s.” The book workshop for the invited authors is scheduled to take place in Heidelberg on April 22–23, 2021.
Focusing on the histories of one-party regimes in Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, West Asia, Central and Inner Asia in the twentieth century, the volume will explore the appropriation of the government role by extraconstitutional organizations and their claims to alternative paths to modernization in global and comparative contexts. The volume will address the geneses of one-party regimes in China, the Soviet Union, Turkey, Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, and other post-imperial and post-colonial polities, the roles of socialism and nationalism in the parties’ approaches to modernization and state-building, the constitutions and deliberative practices, the issues of diversity (such as gender, class, ethnicity, religion, and region), as well as crises and liberalization attempts in the respective contexts. The organizers seek to stimulate the dialogue between historians, political scientists, and other scholars working on the named contexts and to breach the divide between different area studies.
The organizers plan to submit the book proposal to a good international publisher (according to the SENSE ranking). The book will be published in open access.
Please, submit a 300-word abstract along with a paragraph containing biographical information to ENTPAR.Heidelberg@gmail.com before July 1, 2020. Selected authors will be invited to submit their first drafts of 7,000–10,000 words by December 1, 2020. Please, note that only those who submitted their first drafts will be invited to the book workshop in April 2021. The invitations to the workshop will hence be sent after the draft submission deadline.
The workshop is part of the project “Entangled Parliamentarisms: Constitutional Practices in Russia, Ukraine, China, and Mongolia, 1905–2005” (ENTPAR) which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 755504). The organizers will be able to provide accommodation but cannot cover travel expenses. The participation in the book workshop per video call is possible.