The Working Group invites abstracts for papers addressing issues with regard to Public Administration Reform (PAR) in CEE and CIS countries. This WG aims to bring together investigations concerning reform in administrative organisations and institutions, realignment of intergovernmental relations, and organisational learning concerning (inter)governmental cooperation within the framework of the EU integration, European Neighbourhood Policy, as well as external and regional cooperation with states in Central Asia.

These topics are particularly suited to the 24th Annual Conference, which has as a general theme "Spreading Standards, Building Capacities: European Administrative Space in Progress”. Beginning as a theoretical construct of the SIGMA Unit, it was meant to show the common administrative heritage and similarity of practices across Europe, the European Administrative Space (EAS) and was soon to become an informal standard for good governance building. For the candidate countries of the CEE region it was used as a tool for measuring the degree of compliance with the EU’s accession criteria, whilst for the others it served as both a means for further European integration and for domestication of EU policy-making. It is our belief that EAS has also been a contributor to the development of the field of comparative public administration, and implicitly, it facilitated global reflection on viable models and trends of administrative reforms.

We strongly encourage papers addressing theoretical and empirical analyses on the following key themes:

• Design of reforms addressing the diffusion of EAS principles.

• Performance management in sustainable implementation of EAS principles.

• Mechanisms of developing consolidated administrative capacities as derived from the EAS doctrine.

• EAS driven convergence trends in public administration reform and good governance building.

Our WG welcomes contributions analysing single and multi-country settings, employing both quantitative and qualitative design and research methods. Papers will be accepted with regard to:

• Theoretical overviews on the literature on EAS.

• Interesting case studies in CEE countries.

• Interesting case studies in CIS and CAA countries.

• Longitudinal research in Public administrative reform in CEE and/ or CAA Countries.

A selection of the accepted papers will be considered for the proceedings of the conference and publication of the WG’s book.