Convention Theme

29th DVPW Convention, September 24 – 27, 2024, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

In recent years, one crisis phenomenon has chased the next: the crisis of the economic and financial system, the “refugee crisis”, the Corona pandemic, and most recently the Ukraine war. Currently, the climate crisis is intensifying. In addition, the crisis of democracy, caused by the rise of populism and illiberal orientations, poses fundamental challenges. When crises not only occur in temporal and often geographical proximity, but also influence (and in the worst case reinforce) each other, we speak of a “polycrisis”.

The DVPW Convention 2024 addresses the following issues:

• How do different actors, such as interest groups, parties, states, regional as well as international organizations, deal with polycrises?
• What measures are being taken to combat the crises, mitigate their consequences and prevent a polycrisis from recurring? How can different decisions be explained?
• Established structures and functional differentiation shape politics in the state, as well as in regional and in international organizations. Thus, overarching approaches for dealing with interdependent crises are difficult to develop. What solutions exist for coping with polycrises, and how successful are they?
• What challenges do democracies face? What are the implications of a polycrisis for the transparency and accountability of decision-making processes and for the attribution of legitimacy within and beyond the nation-state?
• Which governmental, cross-national, and/or cross-political approaches are particularly suitable for dealing with polycrises?

Polycrises also pose new challenges to academia. The interdependence inherent in a polycrisis calls for inter- and transdisciplinary cooperation, while at the same time specialization and focus remain highly relevant for current research. (How) can – and should – political science adapt to adequately investigate multiple crises, to provide timely answers to them and to contribute to politics and society mastering the challenges?