The concluding event for the project, “Building on EAST PaC,” was held on December 18, 2015 at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. It brought together scholars to address critical questions posed in the Electoral Control in Eastern Europe project on accountability, political and party systems, representation, and political inequality. We (a) discussed possibilities of merging the Eastern European Parliamentarian and Candidate Database (EAST-PaC) — a dataset on parliamentarian candidates for all elections since 1989 in Poland, Ukraine and Hungary — with longitudinal survey data, such as the Polish Panel survey (POLPAN) 1988 – 2015, and included an overview of the project; (b) had a special session on the possibilities of using EAST PaC and longitudinal survey data for the study of women in politics worldwide, and the leaders of this discussion were Amy C. Alexander, Quality of Government Institute Sweden, Catherine Bolzendahl, University of California-Irvine USA, and Tiffany Barnes, University of Kentucky, USA; and (c) facilitated networking and plan of academic products — including the upcoming edited book — that presented the empirical analysis of EAST PaC or addressed the key concerns posed in the grant proposal, to be published in 2016 and beyond.

This event was funded in part by a grant from Poland’s National Science Centre (decision number 2012/05/E/HS6/03556) and with additional support from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences and the Graduate School for Social Research (GSSR), and organizational support from Cross-National Studies: Interdisciplinary Research and Training Program (CONSIRT).