ECPR General Conference 2026 in Kraków

This year, the JuDem project team participated together in the ECPR General Conference at Jagiellonian University in Kraków for the first time. Over four days, the conference provided an opportunity for intensive academic exchange, engaging discussions, and conversations with researchers from different countries and disciplines. The JuDem team contributed to three panels, presenting current research findings from different areas of the project.

The conference began for the team with PhD researchers Friederike Augustin and Leonie-Teresa Bohle, who presented in the panel “Judicial Independence and Policymaking,” chaired by Valentin Feneberg and Natascha Zaun. They presented the index paper for the Judicial Autonomy Index, entitled “Judicial Autonomy Safeguards in Europe: Introducing a New Measurement Tool.” The paper brings together the results of a long-term research project and introduces a new dataset for systematically measuring institutional safeguards of judicial autonomy across Europe.

The programme continued with our postdoctoral researcher Gülçin Balamir Coşkun. In her presentation, “Informal Pressure on the Bench: Executive Rhetoric and Judicial Independence in Turkey,” she examined informal pressure on the judiciary and the role of executive rhetoric in Turkey. Her paper focuses on rhetorical attacks on the judiciary under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and their implications for judicial independence. The paper was discussed in the panel “Off-Bench Judicial Politics: External Determinants of Judicial Behaviour and Outcomes,” chaired by Umut Yüksel and Øyvind Stiansen.

Heleen Matton, a PhD researcher at the Chair, also contributed a joint paper. Together with Heinrike Rustenbeck from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, she presented “Gender as Authoritarian Infrastructure: On the Instrumentalization of Christianity in Europe.” In the panel “Religion and Right-Wing Populism: Between Democratic Backsliding and Authoritarianism,” they discussed how political actors strategically mobilize conflicts around so-called “gender ideology” and establish connections with particular Christian milieus. The paper focuses on the political instrumentalization of religious interpretative frameworks and examines the role these processes play in democratic backsliding.

Three panels, three different research perspectives, and many intensive discussions: the ECPR General Conference offered the JuDem team an important opportunity to discuss ongoing work in an international academic setting and gain new perspectives for further research. After several intensive conference days, the team returned to Berlin with new impressions, constructive feedback, and insights from many stimulating conversations.