Meeting Zone, Department of Political Science, University of Innsbruck, SoWi building, 2nd floor west, Universitätsstrasse 15, 6020 Innsbruck (A) How to reach us
See the dates below
11:30 to aprroximately 12:30, unless otherwise stated
Language: English
Coordinator: Fabian Habersack
We look forward to welcoming students and all other interested parties! No registration necessary. Free entry.
External Speaker Series 2026
03/03/2026
The Role of Law Firms in Investor-State Dispute Settlement
Clint Peinhardt
Professor of Political Science, Public Policy, and Political Economy, University of Texas at Dallas
Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) is under fire — partly because arbitrators in these cases operate with wide discretion. While much scholarship has focused on arbitrators’ personal characteristics, less attention has been paid to the role of law firms. In this talk, Clint introduces a new database covering both arbitrators and the law firms they represent, as well as legal representation for both sides in ISDS cases. Initial findings suggest that law firms matter significantly: they can enhance outcomes for their clients, particularly when investors face state bureaucrats, and claimant firms appear to have strong influence on panel rulings.
21/04/2026
Political Mitochondria: Local Party Organizations in the United States
Douglas D. Roscoe
Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Because of the nature of federalism in the US, and also due to its large size, local party organizations at the county, town, and district level have been central to electoral politics throughout American history. Changes in the mid-20th Century toward a more candidate-centered, mass-media politics altered the role of these local party committees. Starting in the 1980s, scholars began to investigate these changes and what they mean for campaigns and elections. Professor Doug Roscoe has been central to this research enterprise for thirty years, and in this lecture he will discuss some of the key findings from this scholarship. What are these organizations like, and what kind of electoral activity do they undertake? Does that activity affect elections? Who are the people involved in local parties, what motivates them, and do they become candidates themselves?
19/05/2025
The Disciplining Effects of European Fiscal Governance on National Pension Policymaking
Igor Guardiancich
Associate Professor, University of Padua
Pension policy is a bastion of national sovereignty in European welfare states: it is politically salient and electorally risky to reform. Yet pensions are the largest budget item in most EU countries, making them central to fiscal stability in a monetary union. Despite these tensions, since the late 1990s, accelerating during the ‘strengthening phase’ of European fiscal governance (2011–14), member states have implemented convergent cost-containment reforms, including automatic adjustment mechanisms favouring retirement system sustainability. Existing literature argues that supranational pressures force decision-makers to engender retrenchment-oriented measures. What happens after such pressures disappear, as during the ‘questioning’ (2015–19) and ‘suspension’ (2020–23) phases of economic governance? Employing an original dataset linking pension-related country-specific recommendations (CSRs) to reform events, we show that reforms oriented toward fiscal stability strengthen under Excessive Deficit Procedures (EDPs) and when sovereigns are under attack. Reversals followed the relaxation of such constraints that began under the Juncker Commission and culminated with the Covid-era suspension of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP).
23/06/2025
Not in The Picture: Visual Descriptive Representation and Gender Gaps in Parties’ Visual Communication
Luis Sattelmayer
Soon to be Postdoc, Department of Political Science, University of Innsbruck
Political communication has increasingly shifted toward visual and social media platforms, transforming not only how parties engage with voters but also what they present to them. In this context, political representation unfolds not only through institutions but also through images. This paper introduces the concept of visual descriptive representation, the extent to which social groups, here women, are visibly represented in party-controlled visual communication. Using an original dataset comprising all images ever posted by 360 political parties on Instagram across 38 countries from account creation to the end of 2023, we employ computer vision techniques to detect and examine women's visual presence in party visuals. The results reveal a consistent visual gender gap: women are systematically underrepresented in party imagery, even in parties with female leadership or strong women’s parliamentary presence. However, when women do appear in party imagery, they are placed more centrally and prominently than men pointing to a logic of strategic amplification. Women's visual presence is also substantively gendered as female faces are disproportionately associated with more female-coded policy domains and largely absent from male-coded policy areas. Gender underrepresentation persists not only in access to power but also in the visibility in politics itself.
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