15.01.2026SPSA - Annual Congress

Annual Conference of the Swiss Political Science Association
University of Zurich, 15 – 16 January 2026

The deadline for the submission of contributions is 31 July 2025. A notification of acceptance or rejection of your contribution is expected to be sent to you in mid-October.

Please submit your abstract here.

The conference panels are organized in cooperation with the permanent working groups of the Swiss Political Science Association. The working groups cover most sub-disciplines of political science and provide the specific thematic framework for your submission. When submitting, you will be asked to indicate to which working group you would like to submit your paper. Please note that, while you may submit more than one paper to the conference, multiple submissions of the same paper to different working groups is not permitted. Further information regarding the 13 working groups can be found here.

Main theme of the conference: Emotional Politics

Politics can be emotional. People are elated when their party wins an election and upset when their party loses. When elections are not possible, anger can drive people to the streets to protest an authoritarian regime, joy may ring out if a ruthless dictator is toppled, and resignation may set in if new leaders do not meet expectations. Regardless of topic — foreign policy, international trade, the welfare state, immigration or climate policy — political discussions often become heated. It does not matter whether the debate occurs around the family dinner table or on the floor of parliament. To make good policy, we might hope that policymakers are rational and level-headed, but at the same time emotional debate can be engaging and exciting. Emotions are omnipresent in politics and the role of emotions can be studied from normative and positive perspectives, using a wide variety of methodologies, across any number of contexts, across countries, by examining both political elites as well as citizens, and in every subfield of political science. Emotions politics will provide a guiding theme for the annual congress of the 2026 Swiss Political Science Association.

Organizing Committee
Coordinator of the Committee:
Lila Ziegler

Members:
Prof. Dr. Jonathan Slapin
Dr. Petra Holtrup Mostert
Monika Spinatsch (Office SPSA/ASSP)

Contact for further questions
• For any enquiries regarding the programme: spsa26@ipz.uzh.ch
• For all general enquiries: office@svpw-assp.ch