The
scientific journal “Public Policy
Studies” (http://szpp.sgh.waw.pl)
published at the Collegium of Socio-Economics of the
SGH Warsaw School of Economics, announces the Call for Papers for the Special
Issue on social problems related to elections during the COVID-19 pandemic:
Elections in a Democratic Rule of Law State During a Pandemic
Sanitary Regime as a Challenge for Public Policy
Deadline
for submitting proposals/abstracts of papers: April 3, 2021.
Deadline
for submitting manuscripts: July 15, 2021.
The scope of this Call for Papers:
Elections were, are, and will be one of the key elements for
the functioning of a democratic state. This does not mean that elections
themselves, their environment, and the legal regulations related to them must
remain unchanged. However, it is important for these transformations to be
adequate to the evolving technological solutions, social conditions, and for that
elections to be prepared in a rational, professional, lawful and timely manner
so that they can be adapted to the system.
In recent years, the nature of the election administration
has been radically reformed in various countries. The possibilities of
conducting an election campaign and its financing have been significantly
reorganized. Nowadays, we are faced with complex challenges resulting, for
example, from the transfer on-line of a large part of the activity related to
creating political reality, the choices made by citizens, or searching for
information. The changes and progress that we have
been dealing with in recent years in this matter are not merely technological;
they are civilizational. Those phenomena pose challenges that go far beyond the
commonly available heuristics and the cognitive apparatus at our disposal. We
face an extreme asymmetry of competencies and access to information between
representatives of the information and communication technology (ICT) industry
and other entities involved in the political choices. As a result, not only
voters but also public administration is not prepared for the change that is
taking place.
As it turned out, no one was prepared for the events that
took place at the beginning of the 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic, which affected
in one way or another almost everyone, additionally complicated the situation
and acted as a catalyst, accelerating some already ongoing political and social
processes. It also left a decisive mark on the election processes that took
place at that time or that were to take place, and as a result, were postponed
to another date. In those countries where it was decided to hold elections,
they were of a different nature than before. Lawmakers in many countries have
made, often significant, changes to the electoral law. In some cases, even
episodic (one-off) legal regulations have been created, sometimes prepared in
disregard of customary good practices in planning public activities related to
such a fundamental issue as the administration of the election process, and in
a manner that may raise reservations from the perspective of the norms of a
democratic rule of law state. The pandemic, in matters related to the
elections, forced state authorities to take measures aimed primarily at
ensuring the safety of voters, the staff of election commissions and election
administration employees. It also contributed to a decisive reorganization of
the election campaigns, including its more dynamic and wider transfer to the
digital world. All this, combined with the militarization of information, has
led to the emergence of serious risks, including for the safety of elections
and the quality of political systems in democratic states.
Bearing
in mind the above issues, we invite you to submit proposals of texts focused on
various aspects of the broadly understood electoral process in terms of public
policy, in particular:
· Organization and management of
postal elections, also during a pandemic.
· Ensuring a sanitary regime for the
work of electoral bodies during a pandemic.
· Securing and transferring voters’
personal data on the basis of which lists of voters are drawn up.
· Managing epidemiological risks in
the context of political processes.
· Analysis of problems related to the
organization and security of elections.
· Analysis of electoral administration
reforms.
· Ways to counteract the
militarization of information and social media in the election process.
· The importance of public
communication strategies for the electoral process.
· Methods and techniques of
conducting an election campaign during a pandemic.
· The importance of the institutions
of local government units in the organization and holding of elections.
· The institution of an election
officer.
· The use and abuse of social media
(e.g., Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram) in election campaigns,
with emphasis on the time of the pandemic.
Submission Procedure:
The
deadline for interested authors to submit paper proposals/abstracts will expire
on April 3, 2021, and for the finished manuscripts on July 15, 2021. Proposed
topics should be sent to the thematic editors of the issue: Tomasz Gąsior (tomasz.gasior@op.pl) and Jan Misiuna (jan.misiuna@sgh.waw.pl).
Authors
should submit manuscripts to the journal “Public Policy Studies” via the Open Journal Systems website: https://econjournals.sgh.waw.pl/KSzPP/about/submissions
Texts
should be in Word (.docx) format and consist of up to max 40 000 characters.
All texts undergo a review process (double-blind peer-review). Articles are
published in Open Access under the CC BY
4.0 licence (authors retain the
copyright). Editing and publication of articles in “Public Policy Studies” are free of charge. Fees or Article
Processing Charges (APCs) are not requested from the authors at any point of
the peer review and publication.
Manuscripts should include the following elements:
·
Author(s) contact details (name and
surname, institutional affiliation, city, country, e-mail address, and ORCID
identifier).
·
Title of the paper.
·
Abstract: 200-250 words.
·
5-7 keywords.
·
JEL Classification Codes: 3-5 codes; codes are available here.
·
Main text and subtitles.
·
Summary.
·
Endnotes and references in the
Harvard/APA style.
We encourage authors to use the article template (in Polish or in English).
More
information for authors is available on the journal’s website (http://szpp.sgh.waw.pl) from the editors of the Special Issue.