On September 8 and 9, the date upon which our section at the cancelled 10^th Pan-European Conference should have taken place in Izmir, a group of about 25 scholars came together at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, part of the Leibniz Association, for an EDP Workshop in lieu of our section. Four panels from different angles approached our workshop theme “Democracy Promotion as Interaction: Rethinking the External-Internal Interplay in International Relations“ (see our agenda). Since we had to relocate our meeting due to the severe repression against academia in Turkey, we also considered it important to address recent developments there. Thus, for a special evening session, we were happy to have Dilek Kurban, J.D., Marie Curie Fellow at the Hertie School of Governance, as our guest speaker on “Perpetual Transition: Why Europe has failed in democracy promotion in Turkey”. We also used this opportunity to debate political science’s methodological boundaries and how (far) we should cross them in our endeavor to shed light on the so far neglected dimension of democracy promotion interaction.

Thank you again to all of you who joined us in Frankfurt and made our workshop such a successful event!