I don't think anything massively important has happened in Nordic
politics since I last wrote. But I have three notices of a more
administrative character. NOTE: the last one is especially important.
* JOB. Nick Sitter informs me of a job in political economy that's going
at one of his places of work, the Central European University in
Budapest. I attach more details. The deadline for applications is May 16th.
* FUNDING. I've been informed that the PSA will grant us £600 this year
for our activity. This isn't a bad outcome. Please let me know of any
event - workshop, seminar, etc - that you think might deserve some of
these resources.
However, this leads directly on to the third point.
* PSA RELATIONSHIP. I've also been informed by the PSA that three new
demands are to be made by the association of its specialist groups, like
ours. The first, that "all...groups receiving funding [are] to place at
least one announcement in the PSA Newsletter", is unproblematic. The
second, that "all...groups [must] adopt a constitution", is also one we
could live with quite easily.
The third is more awkward, however. "[T]he PSA", we are told, "will now
require that all specialist groups charge membership fees -- and there
must be a discount for current PSA members...Groups may charge whatever
they want. Some may even choose to charge every two years or so. This is
all perfectly acceptable. However, there must be membership fees in
place by 15th April 2010."
I can understand why the PSA might want to insist on membership fees.
Presumably, it wants to make sure that its specialist groups are
sufficiently active to have the capacity to charge fees. It probably
also wants its subsidy to the groups to go largely to PSA members,
rather than to what it might see as free-riders, who benefit from its
munificence without contributing to the association's upkeep.
But I personally am unenthusiastic, to put it very mildly, about the
prospect of changing the Scandinavian Politics group's current structure
into something more formal. The simple reason is that I don't feel I
have the time to administer such a organisation - particularly when I
suspect that the resources that it would generate through fees would be
completely trivial.
So I reckon that the following are the options we have.
1. We bite together, as the Swedes say, and just comply with the PSA's
requirement for membership fees. As I say, though, I really don't want
to do this.
2. We comply, but someone else - ideally, but not absolutely
necessarily, based in Britain - takes over the job of convenor (and
announcement maker, and constitution drafter, and membership-fee
administrator). I would retire as convenor extremely graciously.
3. We ask for some sort of exemption, on the grounds that, as an
area-studies specialist group with members (I use the term loosely) in
lots of different countries, the administrative burden would be
unreasonable (think of all those currencies, for one thing).
4. We resign our formal status as a PSA specialist group and carry on as
we are - that is, basically a list of newsletter authors and recipients,
who occasionally organise panels at the PSA annual conference and other
academic events. Except, of course, that it wouldn't be as we are now,
for the obvious reason that we would lose our annual funding from the
association. Does that really matter? Would anyone really care?
5. We agree that, yes, of course, it's been fun; but things change, etc,
etc; and it's just time that we pursued our interests in Nordic politics
in our own separate ways.
I'm keen to get list members' reactions to these various scenarios. I'll
then make a suggestion to the group about what I think we should do.
Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap
Please feel free to forward this message to anyone who might be
interested. To join the Scandinavian Politics mailing list, send a
message to me, the convenor (nicholas.aylott@sh.se). If you want to send
something to the list, or if you don't want to receive these occasional
messages, just let me know. See also www.psa.ac.uk/scandinavia/
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