Acta Politologica Call for Abstracts: Digitalization of Political Parties

The international journal Acta Politologica invites submissions of manuscripts covering various issues related to the digitalization of political parties. In the context of rapid advancements in digital technologies, political parties face new challenges and opportunities. The digitalization of political parties necessitates significant financial investments in modern technological tools and software, facilitating efficient membership management, online campaigning, and data analysis.

Key Themes:

1. Financial Challenges: How do political parties secure the necessary financial resources for digitalization projects? What impact do these costs have on the party's overall budget and their ability to conduct other activities?
2. Expertise Gap: Political parties encounter challenges due to the lack of in-house expertise in digital trends, social media, data analysis, and cybersecurity. How do parties acquire and retain such expertise?
3. Member Training and Digital Literacy: What training and educational programs do political parties offer to enhance digital literacy among their members, particularly among older generations? How do they ensure the effective utilization of new digital tools?
4. Impact of Digitalization on Internal Party Democracy: How does digitalization influence internal decision-making processes and inclusivity within political parties?

We strongly encourage submissions from Central and Eastern countries, aiming to embrace diverse perspectives. Furthermore, we particularly invite submissions from young scholars and female colleagues, fostering an inclusive discourse on the digitalization of political parties.

With these questions and considerations, we invite you to submit abstracts for our call. We expect your contributions to explore the key themes above related to financing the digitalization of political parties, ensuring expert capacities, training members, and analyzing various facets of digitalization's impact on political parties. Your analyses and proposed solutions to these challenges will be crucial for the future of political parties in the digital age.

For the purposes of this Call for Papers, Oscar Barberà (University of Valencia) and Jasmin Fitzpatrick (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) will serve as guest editors at ACPO. ACPO accepts case studies as well as comparative studies or more theory-focused texts. If you are interested in publishing in the special issue, address the abstract of the intended article to the editors (acpo@fsv.cuni.cz) in the range of 250 to 500 words no later than February 7, 2024. The editors accept texts in English. If your abstract is accepted, you will be invited to submit your manuscript no later than April 15, 2024. All submitted manuscripts will then go through a standard review process. The manuscripts accepted for publishing shall be proofread by an experienced native speaker. This service is free of charge for the authors. Expect the release of the special issue in October 2024. Acta Politologica is a political science peer-reviewed journal published by Charles University (Prague). The journal is indexed with and included in Scopus, ERIHPLUS, CEEOL, and Google Scholar. For details on submissions, typography, citation norms, see the webpage.