Call for Papers – ‘Vice Presidents and Deputy Prime Ministers: Rules, Resources and Roles’ *Sorry for cross-posting* Dear Colleagues, we are delighted to announce a call for papers for a panel on ‘Vice Presidents and Deputy Prime Ministers: Rules, Resources and Roles’, scheduled to be held at the upcoming ECPR General Conference. The conference is expected to take place as an event in presence at the University of Innsbruck (Austria), 22-26 August 2022 (yet the organizers are also ready to switch to a virtual format, if necessary: https://ecpr.eu/GeneralConference. You may find the panel abstract at the bottom of this message as well as attached as a pdf document. The panel is organized and will be chaired by Ludger Helms (University of Innsbruck) and Michelangelo Vercesi (Leuphana University Lüneburg). The panel is part of a broader section, entitled ‘A Fresh Theoretical and Empirical Look at Elites and Political Leadership’, chaired by Despina Alexiadou and Luca Verzichelli. You may find details at the following address: https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/SectionDetails/1231. The deadline for submissions is 16 February 2002. Submissions will be made through the ECPR platform. You do not have to be employed by one of the ECPR institutional members to submit a proposal, but please note that you need a MyECPR account (if you do not have one yet, it can be easily opened on the ECPR website). You can submit your proposal as single paper, directly through the ECPR platform, indicating ‘A Fresh Theoretical and Empirical Look at Elites and Political Leadership’ as the selected section. However, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us before submitting. For any further information or queries, you can contact us (ludger.helms@uibk.ac.at; michelangelo.vercesi@leuphana.de). Looking forward to receiving your proposal. Best wishes, Michelangelo (Vercesi) & Ludger (Helms) Panel abstract Some countries do not know the position of vice president or deputy prime minister at all. In some parliamentary democracies, in particular from the Westminster family, the office of deputy prime minister has been established, abolished and revitalized – reflecting the diverging strategic considerations of governing parties and elites. In others, however, the vice prime minister is almost a ‘second prime minister’ operating only slightly below the level of the prime minister, which is a delicate role to perform in coalition democracies where vice or deputy heads of government normally come from a different party than the head of government. The overall picture in presidential democracies is barely less complex and confusing. In some of the older presidential systems, such as in particular the United States, the office has changed dramatically since its inception, with increasingly important roles of contemporary vice presidents (or vice-presidential candidates) both in and beyond the electoral arena. In Argentina, the current Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner attracts the attention of the media at least to the same extent as President Alberto Fernández, and her influence on national politics is undoubtedly high. Some younger presidential systems, such as Zanzibar or Zimbabwe, have even had two vice-presidents, pointing to the major importance of representational issues in organizing and staffing this part of the executive branch. Thanks to isolated recent research (see e.g., P. Mieres and E. Pampín, ‘La trayectoria de los vicepresidentes en los regímenes presidencialistas de América’, Revista de estudios políticos, No. 167, 2015; L. Marsteintredet and F. Uggla, ‘Allies and Traitors: Vice-Presidents in Latin America’, Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 51, No. 3, 2019), some comparative insights into these issues are available, but, overall, the whole field has remained largely unchartered territory. To help overcome this unsatisfactory state of affairs, this panel invites papers that look into the career pathways of vice presidents and deputy prime ministers (including both the ways into this position and its possible ‘springboard potential’), and their formal and informal roles in the executive branch and beyond. Papers applying novel theoretical and methodological approaches, and/or pursuing (either historically or internationally) comparative agendas, are particularly welcome. -- Priv.-Doz. Dr. Michelangelo Vercesi Lecturer in Political Science Center for the Study of Democracy Leuphana University Lüneburg