Invitation to the 33rd NISPAcee Annual Conference

Governments around the world have faced various crises in the past few years. However, these crises have not been separated and one can consider this recent period a period of polycrisis. In addition, due to spill-over effects and synergies, those crises hit governments and their policy intentions in a significant way. In some cases, planned policies had to be adjusted, in some other cases planned policies had to be suspended or even completely changed in terms of their objectives. Such circumstances have challenged governments, and unsurprisingly, many of them were not ready to deal with the polycrisis appropriately. More precisely, the polycrisis have uncovered insufficient capacities of many governments, and a volatile nature of this polycrisis have clearly tested the flexibility of policy making at various levels.

A closer look at CEE region during this period of polycrisis can help us to understand seriousness of this polycrisis. Democratic backsliding, visible loss of citizens' trust in their governments, a shift from consolidated democracy and decentralisation towards attempts to use authoritarian approaches and centralisation tools, financial instability and growth of government debt, deterioration of fundamental principles like rule of law, transparency or accountability, an unprecedent success of populistic and anti-system voices, unreadiness to deal with a diverse group of hoaxes – many governments in CEE region have struggled due to all these effects and impacts, and they have not found how to effectively cope with the polycrisis yet. On this matter, it is necessary to analyse the polycrisis, its effects as well as impacts, and to understand them. Despite the fact that we still do not see the end of the polycrisis now, researchers and scholars should be leaders from the perspective of this intention because their findings can contribute to an effective capacity-building at all levels of governance.

The next year conference will be focused on the polycrisis and its impacts at various levels from the perspective of governments as well as other stakeholders. Although the polycrisis is an ongoing phenomenon, research can identify not only various challenges and opportunities of the mentioned governments and other stakeholders but also the first lessons to be learnt.

The call for papers for the Main Conference Theme, NISPAcee Working Groups and Panels and the online application with paper proposals will be opened by the end of September 2024.