When does the Swedish Political Science Conference 2026 take place?

The conference is scheduled to begin in the fall and conclude a few days later, providing a focused period for academic exchange in Västerås, SWE.

Where will SWEPSA 2026 be held?

The conference will be hosted in the city of Västerås, SWE.

Swedish Political Science Conference 2026 (SWEPSA 2026)

Name: Swedish Political Science Conference 2026 (SWEPSA 2026)
Start: 2026-09-30T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-10-02T00:00:00Z
Location: Västerås

Sep 30 – Oct 2, 2026Västerås, SwedenIn-person

Registration open

The Swedish Political Science Conference (SWEPSA 2026) is a significant academic event for political scientists, researchers, and students. Hosted in Västerås, SWE, this conference serves as a crucial platform for presenting new research, discussing contemporary political issues, and fostering collaboration within the field. It brings together scholars from various sub-disciplines of political science to engage in rigorous academic discourse.

Committees & topics

Topics
The Politics of Risk and Crisis Governance · The Future of Democracy in Uncertain Times · Urban Politics and Citizenship · Aesthetics and Politics · Political Theory · Political Behaviour and Parties · Politics and Gender · Policy, Governance and Public Administration

Why it matters

This conference is important for the advancement of political science, particularly in the Nordic region and beyond. It provides an opportunity for researchers to disseminate their findings, receive feedback from peers, and contribute to the broader academic conversation. The discussions and presentations at SWEPSA often highlight emerging trends and critical challenges in governance, public policy, international relations, and political theory.

The gathering in Västerås facilitates networking among academics, which can lead to new research partnerships and interdisciplinary projects. Such collaborations are vital for addressing complex global issues and developing innovative solutions. By convening experts, SWEPSA helps to shape the future direction of political science research and its practical applications.

How to prepare

Participants aiming to maximize their engagement at SWEPSA 2026 should prepare by familiarizing themselves with the host city, Västerås, SWE. Understanding the local context can sometimes provide a unique lens through which to view political science topics, especially those related to regional governance or comparative politics.

For those presenting research, a clear and concise articulation of their work is paramount. Engaging with concepts such as stakeholder mapping, as outlined in the lessons on "What Is Stakeholder Mapping?" and "Stakeholder Mapping Workshop," can be useful for understanding the various actors and interests involved in political processes. Additionally, considering "Hidden Stakeholders" can enrich the analysis of political dynamics and policy outcomes. Effective preparation ensures that presentations are impactful and contribute meaningfully to the conference's intellectual environment.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 4 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Sweden

Host nation and a key contributor to political science research.

Role in topic

As the host country for SWEPSA 2026, SWE plays a central role in facilitating academic exchange and showcasing its contributions to political science. Swedish scholars often present research on topics relevant to European governance, welfare states, and international cooperation.

Germany

Significant academic partner in European political science.

Role in topic

DEU is a major hub for political science research in Europe. German scholars frequently contribute to discussions on European integration, comparative politics, and political theory, making their participation in SWEPSA valuable for diverse perspectives.

United Kingdom

Influential in political theory and international relations.

Role in topic

The GBR academic community has a strong tradition in political science, particularly in areas such as international relations, political philosophy, and public policy. Their contributions to SWEPSA would enrich debates on global governance and democratic theory.

United States

Global leader in political science methodologies and diverse research areas.

Role in topic

The USA is a dominant force in political science research, known for its methodological innovations and broad range of sub-fields. American scholars often bring comparative insights and theoretical frameworks that can significantly inform discussions at SWEPSA.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

The Politics of Risk and Crisis Governance

Modern states increasingly govern through the management of risk: pandemics, climate shocks, financial contagion, cyberattacks, and cascading supply-chain failures have all moved from the margins to the center of political agendas. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed deep variation in how democracies and authoritarian regimes mobilize emergency powers, communicate uncertainty, and allocate scarce resources, while Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent European energy crisis revealed how interdependence itself can become a vector of risk. Scholarly debate has shifted from Ulrich Beck's classic 'risk society' thesis toward questions of resilience, anticipatory governance, and the politicization of expertise. Today the field grapples with how to institutionalize crisis response without normalizing exceptionalism. The EU's reinforced civil protection mechanism, the WHO Pandemic Agreement negotiations, and national reviews — including Sweden's Coronakommissionen — have raised hard questions about accountability, the role of independent agencies, and the trade-offs between speed and democratic deliberation. Delegates will examine how risk is constructed politically, who bears its costs, and how trust in public institutions can be sustained across successive overlapping crises.

Key players

The Future of Democracy in Uncertain Times

After a long post-Cold War expansion, democracy has entered what V-Dem, Freedom House, and the Varieties of Democracy project describe as a sustained wave of recession. Hungary and Turkey illustrate gradual democratic backsliding within nominally electoral systems; the United States has experienced acute polarization and contested elections; and authoritarian consolidation in Russia and parts of the Sahel has reversed earlier liberalization. At the same time, the rise of artificial intelligence, platform-mediated political communication, and foreign information manipulation has reshaped the informational environment in which citizens form judgments. The debate over democracy's future now combines classic questions — representation, accountability, the rule of law — with newer concerns about deliberative quality, citizen assemblies, and the resilience of electoral infrastructure. Scholars are divided between pessimists who emphasize structural drivers of backsliding (inequality, cultural backlash, executive aggrandizement) and those who point to democratic innovation, youth mobilization, and the surprising resilience of institutions in places like Poland, Brazil, and South Korea. Delegates will assess which reforms — constitutional, electoral, deliberative, or digital — most credibly stabilize democratic governance.

Key players

Urban Politics and Citizenship

More than half of humanity now lives in cities, and urbanization is reshaping the locus of political authority. Mayors and metropolitan governments have become significant actors in climate policy (C40), migration reception, housing, and even foreign policy, often pursuing agendas that diverge from their national governments. Sanctuary cities in the United States, climate-leader municipalities in Europe, and megacity governance in São Paulo, Lagos, and Jakarta have all expanded the empirical terrain of urban political science. At the same time, housing affordability crises in Stockholm, Berlin, Lisbon, and across the Anglosphere have made the city a primary site of distributive conflict. These developments revive older questions about the 'right to the city' (Lefebvre, Harvey) and about who counts as a political member. Non-citizen residents now vote in local elections in several European states; participatory budgeting has spread from Porto Alegre to hundreds of cities; and platform-mediated services from Airbnb to ride-hail have provoked new regulatory politics. Delegates will examine how cities reconstitute citizenship in practice, where their autonomy ends, and how urban inequality interacts with national political cleavages.

Key players

Aesthetics and Politics

The relationship between aesthetics and politics has a long lineage, from Walter Benjamin's warnings about the aestheticization of fascism to Jacques Rancière's argument that politics itself is a 'distribution of the sensible' — a contest over what can be seen, said, and counted as political speech. In recent years this agenda has been reinvigorated by debates over monuments and decolonization (Rhodes Must Fall, Confederate statuary, the toppling of Edward Colston), by the visual cultures of populism, and by the curated propaganda ecosystems of authoritarian states from Moscow to Pyongyang. Digital platforms have intensified the stakes: memes, deepfakes, TikTok aesthetics, and AI-generated imagery now shape electoral campaigns and protest movements alike. Scholars are increasingly attentive to architecture, music, fashion, and bodily performance as sites of political contestation, including in Sweden's own debates over cultural canon, public art, and national symbols. Delegates will explore how aesthetic forms construct political community, legitimize or undermine authority, and frame which grievances become visible in the public sphere.

Key players

Political Theory

Political theory remains the discipline's normative and conceptual core, ranging from the history of political thought to contemporary debates on justice, legitimacy, freedom, and democracy. The post-Rawlsian liberal consensus that dominated the late twentieth century has been challenged from multiple directions: republican theorists (Pettit, Skinner) emphasize non-domination; deliberative and agonistic democrats (Habermas, Mouffe) contest the proper terrain of political conflict; critical race, feminist, and decolonial theorists question the field's canon and assumptions; and a revived realist tradition (Williams, Geuss) presses against ideal theory. New challenges have widened the agenda further. Climate change has forced sustained engagement with intergenerational justice and the rights of nature; artificial intelligence raises questions about algorithmic legitimacy and the moral status of non-human agents; and global migration unsettles theories of bounded political community. Within the Nordic context, theorists have contributed distinctively to debates on the welfare state, deliberative democracy, and recognition. Delegates will engage with how political theory can both clarify conceptual stakes and guide normative judgment in conditions of pluralism and crisis.

Key players

Political Behaviour and Parties

The study of voters and parties has been transformed by the erosion of classic cleavages and the rise of new ones. Across Europe, traditional social-democratic and Christian-democratic parties have lost vote share to green, radical-right, and challenger parties; the GAL-TAN dimension increasingly competes with the left-right economic axis; and party systems in Sweden, the Netherlands, France, and Germany have fragmented. In the United States, by contrast, polarization has produced unusually stable but intensely affective partisanship. The 2022 Swedish election, which brought the Sweden Democrats into a governing arrangement for the first time, has become a key reference case for studies of mainstream-radical-right cooperation. Behavioral research has also been reshaped methodologically: large-scale panel studies, survey experiments, administrative-data linkage, and computational text analysis of social media now coexist with classical electoral sociology. Key questions include the drivers of affective polarization, the role of economic versus cultural grievances in radical-right support, the behavior of young and first-time voters, and how parties adapt their organizations in an era of declining membership but expanding digital outreach. Delegates will weigh competing explanations for voter realignment and assess what they imply for party strategy and democratic representation.

Key players

Politics and Gender

Gender has moved from the margins to the center of political science, both as an object of inquiry and as an analytical lens. Research on women's descriptive and substantive representation, gendered violence in politics, parental leave and care regimes, and the gendered effects of welfare reform has matured into a robust subfield. The Nordic countries have long served as comparative reference cases for high female representation, dual-earner family policy, and feminist foreign policy — though Sweden's formal abandonment of the 'feminist foreign policy' label in 2022 illustrates how contested these commitments remain. The agenda has also broadened. Anti-gender movements across Europe and the Americas, restrictions on reproductive rights (most prominently the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs decision in 2022), debates over trans rights and gender-recognition law in the UK and Nordic states, and the rise of 'manosphere'-linked political mobilization have generated new questions about backlash and democratic erosion. Intersectional approaches increasingly examine how gender interacts with race, class, migration status, and sexuality. Delegates will assess how gendered power structures political institutions and how contemporary contestation is reshaping representation, policy, and rights.

Key players

Policy, Governance and Public Administration

Public administration as a field has moved through successive paradigms: classical Weberian bureaucracy, New Public Management's market-mimicking reforms of the 1980s–90s, and more recent New Public Governance and 'digital era governance' approaches that emphasize networks, co-production, and data infrastructures. Sweden and the Nordic states have been both laboratories and exporters of administrative innovation, from agency autonomy (myndigheter) to e-government. At the same time, the limits of NPM-style fragmentation have become visible in pandemic response, eldercare scandals, and the difficulty of coordinating across siloed agencies. Contemporary debates focus on the governance of complex, cross-cutting problems — climate transition, AI regulation, integration, and security — where authority is distributed across levels and sectors. The EU's regulatory state continues to expand (AI Act, Digital Services Act, Green Deal), pushing member-state administrations to adapt. Questions of administrative capacity, evidence-based policymaking, behavioral 'nudge' units, algorithmic decision-making, and the politicization of the civil service all sit on the agenda. Delegates will consider how public administration can deliver effective, legitimate, and accountable policy under conditions of austerity, distrust, and accelerating technological change.

Key players