The COST Action “Comparative Research on the Executive Triangle in Europe” (COREX) is inviting applications for a three-day advanced course on concepts and methods in research on executive politicians, top civil servants, and ministerial advisers. All course instructors are highly experienced researchers in their respective fields and active members of COREX. This course is offered in cooperation with the research project “The Political Executive: Cabinet Government Praxis Between Laws and Norms” (POLITEX) funded by the Norwegian Research Council.
Target group
The advanced course invites working group participants of COREX interested in further developing their conceptual and methodological skills in the executive triangle research to apply. In particular, the advanced course seeks applications from PhD and postdoctoral researchers and participants from ITC countries. Furthermore, PhD students and researchers who are not participating in COREX are invited to apply, though priority will be given to active participants of the network. The course will give participants fundamental insights into the respective methods, introduce them to key readings, and provide hands-on knowledge on how to start using them in executive triangle research.
Content
Sessions will cover the concept of politicization and its operationalization in empirical research, comparative research designs, the systematic analysis of biographies and careers, expert interviews and interpretative methods as well as document analysis. The course also offers a keynote speech on research on politico-administrative relations under authoritarian governments, a dedicated session on publishing in international peer-reviewed journals as well as one on data science-based approaches in the study of the executive triangle. Participants will be provided with a syllabus ahead of the course.
Format
The course will follow this format: Each of the three days will begin with morning lectures. On the first two days, the afternoons will feature workshop-style sessions. These sessions are designed for in-depth discussions and feedback on specific methodological or conceptual challenges that participants have encountered or anticipate in their research. Challenges may range from conceptual, such as how to operationalize politicization with various data types, to methodological, like accessing elite respondents in government or analyzing interview transcripts. Participants will bring specific examples of their data and the challenges they face in interpreting or analyzing their data. The first two days will close with a session on data science methods and publishing respectively.
Input from participants and feedback
Applicants are asked to submit a brief description of their challenge(s) with the application. If accepted, they are asked to elaborate on those challenges in a short note (2-3 pages) to be submitted ahead of the course, and to briefly present their challenge(s) in one of the workshop sessions. Participants can expect to take home actionable peer-feedback on their presented challenge as well as feedback by instructors. The feedback aims to provide guidance and support as to how to address the challenge in the next steps of the participants’ research.
Learning Objectives
After the end of the advanced course, participants:
Have developed a critical understanding of the principal concepts and research strategies associated with executive triangle research.
Have gained the ability to apply executive triangle concepts in their research.
Be able to critically analyze and evaluate selected concepts and methods to address methodological challenges in a specialized area of executive triangle research.
Be able to independently apply methodological solutions to specific challenges in executive triangle research.
Funding and reimbursement
The travel costs for selected participants will be reimbursed in accordance with the COST rules. Eligible expenses include:
Daily Allowance: Covers accommodation, meals, and local transport.
Long-Distance Travel Expenses: Includes costs for plane, train, car, or other long-distance travel.
Other Travel Expenses: Covers visa expenses where applicable.
Reimbursements and allowances will be processed following COST guidelines, ensuring compliance with the funding regulations. For detailed information, please refer to the official COST rules: COST Annotated Rules for COST Actions – Level C; www.cost.eu/daily_allowance.
Application procedure and deadline
Applicants must submit a short motivation statement, including one or several research challenges. Applications must be submitted via the following online form: https://nettskjema.no/a/502743
The application deadline is 15. April 2025.
Location
The advanced course will take place at the Norwegian University Center in Paris (Centre Universitaire de Norvège à Paris, CUNP), Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 54 Boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris.
Convenors
Tobias Bach is professor and head of research the Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Norway. He leads the research group Policy, Bureaucracy, and Organization at the same department and serves as Vice Chair of COST Action COREX. His research focuses on politics-administration relations and bureaucratic politics in an internationally comparative perspective.
Thurid Hustedt is Dean of Graduate Programmes and Professor of Public Administration and Management at the Hertie School. She serves as the Chair of the COST Action COREX. Her research focuses on public sector change dynamics, political-administrative relations and comparative public administration.
Lecturers
Jostein Askim is professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo, Norway. His research focuses on core executives, political-administrative relations, and administrative reforms. He is the Principal Investigator of the POLITEX project.
Anne Bellon is associate professor of political sociology at the University of Technology Compiègne, and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She serves as a member of Working Group 2 in the COST Action COREX. Her work focuses on the transformation of government, especially facing the advent of large digital companies. She is also involved in the dissemination of digital methods in political science.
Philippe Bezes is CNRS Research Professor in political science (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in the Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE) at Sciences Po, Paris, France. His research explores the transformations of public bureaucracies in France and in comparative perspective with different focus: administrative reform policies, the influence and diffusion of New Public Management ideas and tools in the government of public bureaucracies and the organizational transformations of central governments. He is the French principal investigator in the Structure of Government Project (SOG-PRO).
Levent Demirelli is associate professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Istanbul Beykent University, Türkiye. He serves as a member of Working Group 2 in the COST Action COREX. He leads a scientific research project that aims to understand the patterns and determinants of the politicization of senior level bureaucracy in Türkiye. He focuses on politico-administrative relations as well as the integration of statistical techniques and software-based information technologies with political science.
Yngve Flo is professor at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion at the University of Oslo, Norway. His work takes a historical perspective on administrative institutions at different levels of government. He is part of the POLITEX project team.
Athanassios Gouglas is Director of the MPA programme at the University of the West of Scotland, United Kingdom. He leads COREX Working Group 4 Accountability and Transparency in the Executive Triangle in Europe. His research crosses the boundaries of comparative politics, public policy and administration, it is multi-method (quantitative and qualitative) and for its most part comparative.
Katarina Staronova is associate professor at the Institute of Public Policy, Comenius University Bratislava, Slovakia. She leads Working Group 1 Institutional Context in the COST Action COREX. Her research focuses on politico-administrative relations, executive politics and rulemaking, mostly in Central and East European context.
Amalie Trangbæk is assistant professor at Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. She is co-chair of Working Group 3 in the COST Action COREX. Her research focuses on the practices and roles of civil servants in ministries—from lower ranking civil servants to senior civil servants—drawing on theories of roles, behavior, and skills. Methodologically, she specializes in expert interviews and ethnographic methods, including shadowing and participant observation. She has previously taught courses on interpretive research and qualitative methods at the MA and PhD levels.
Kutsal Yesilkagit is a professor of Public Administration at Leiden University. His work concentrates on political-administrative relationships from a comparative perspective. Themes Kutsal is interested in varies from the politics of bureaucratic design, transgovernmental networks, and the impact of populism on bureaucracy. He is member of the CoREx core group and is one of the principal investigators of the Structure of Government Project (SOG-PRO).
The advanced course is based upon work from COST Action COREX, CA22150, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).
COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding agency for research and innovation networks. Our Actions help connect research initiatives across Europe and enable scientists to grow their ideas by sharing them with their peers. This boosts their research, career and innovation.
Schedule (tentative)
17 September 2025 (Wednesday) | |
0930-1000 | Opening of the Training School: Thurid Hustedt & Tobias Bach & Marte Mangset (director of CUNP) |
1000-1100 | Research on politico-administrative relations in Authoritarian Governments: Katarina Staronova (Keynote) |
1100-1130 | Coffee Break |
1130-1300
| How to study politicisation: Concepts, research designs and methods: Thurid Hustedt |
1300-1400 | Lunch |
1400-1600 | Workshop, presentation and discussion of research challenges |
1600-1630 | Coffee Break |
1630-1730 | Text as data and other techniques, Levent Demirelli |
1900 | Dinner, tbc |
18 September 2025 (Thursday) | |
0930-110 | Comparative research designs and cross-country analysis, Tobias Bach, Philippe Bezes and Kutsal Yesilkagit |
1100-1130 | Coffee Break |
1130-1300 | Expert interviews and interpretive methods, Amalie Trangbæk |
1300-1400 | Lunch |
1400-1600 | Workshop, presentation and discussion of research challenges |
1600-1630 | Break |
1630-1730 | Publishing on the executive triangle in international journals, Thanassis Gouglas |
1900 | Dinner, tbc |
19 September 2025 (Friday) | |
0930-1100 | The study of careers and biographies, Anne Bellon |
1100-1130 | Coffee Break |
1130-1300 | Studying governmental decision-making through documents, Jostein Askim and Yngve Flo |
1300-1330 | Closing of the Training School: Thurid Hustedt and Tobias Bach |
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