I begin by expressing my conviction that this ceremony closes one of the most successful World Congress in the IPSA´s recent history and the belief that it will remain in our memories as an exemplary witness to our collective capabilities and commitment to serve political science and democracy. Yet, as all of us know, if such collective capabilities are to be mobilized, made effective, and eventually improved, leadership and informed guidance are required. We were fortunate to rely upon an abundant endowment of both resources on the many fronts in which they were required in order to make this Congress a reality.

In such good spirits, I have the privilege to start my term as new President of the IPSA by thanking past President Max Kaase, and by conveying my appreciation for his masterful performance in conducting the international meeting we are closing today. I am grateful to past-President, Dalchoong Kim and to our colleagues in the Executive Committee for their support, their skilled efforts to further IPSA´s vocation as a global player in the profession - and not the least for the camaraderie that has marked all our meetings, without exception.

Fukuoka has a reputation for being an important meeting point in East Asia in terms of the regional economy and cultural exchange. It will stand now also in our history as an association as the place where professionals from East and West, North and South congregated to confront the challenges posed by democracy and democratisation as a global process. My thanks go to the Local Committee, to professor Ikuo Kabashima, for his leadership, to professor Watanabe , President of the Japanese Association, to all colleagues, officials, students involved in the local organization of this meeting., and to the business and the political communities.I am specially grateful to our Program Chair, Yvonne Galligan, for her engagement, and active support – and to Guy Lachapelle, IPSA´s Secretary General, to Aubert Descôteaux and to other members of the Secretariat, David Gagnon , Alexander Robin, Bruno Maltais and Justine Laurier.

I am well aware of the symbolic values attached to the election of a Latin American woman as President of the IPSA and of the expectations which come associated to it from various quarters. It attests to the long-standing commitment of the IPSA´s decision-making bodies to stand for ever more egalitarian standards of participation, representation and empowerment, in gender, ethnic, as well as in regional terms. Yet, despite the continuity between the improvements introduced and accumulated by a long list of highly engaged Presidents and EC members, these standards remain long-term goals rather than a reality. In this respect, honoured as I am to be the second woman President, and to follow a highly respected political scientist such as Carole Pateman only adds a sharper edge to my new duties and the moral obligation attached to them. There is a major reason I am acutely aware of the meaning of my election: the conviction that both in organizational and in analytical terms we have reached a new stage in the IPSA, one that will enable us to respond in an ever more proactive fashion to the challenges posed by the new (and the not so new) forms of insertion of the developing world in the international system.

Let me be more precise about that, by taking stock of what we have achieved, in order to measure what is to be done. Some of the major challenges during the past 30 years at the global level have taken place in the political realm, as democracy and democratisation acquired the status of global processes. The IPSA has responded quite effectively to this challenge, mobilizing its analytical and editorial resources and making ever more intensive use of its organizational abilities. This Congress has been in many ways the culmination of our effort to cover new ground and to reach out for new collective and individual members. A quick look at the breadth and content of IPSA´s publications, at its website and Portal, at the accomplishments of the Research Groups, attests to IPSA´s talent as a global player in fostering new forms of interaction among political scientists. The IPSA is now established as a leading centre within which professionals from all over the world can congregate, interact and strive to craft and eventually fine-tune conceptual frameworks adjusted to the context-specific and value-laden debates within different regional settings. Yet, notwithstanding such steps forward, there is an obvious deficit in membership - collective, institutional and individual - from the developing world as compared to that from Europe and the US. The reasons are manifold and, to my view, are not attributable to the lack of ability or interest to associate. It may well be due, as I came to realize in the case of Latin America, to the increasing supply of alternative international forums for political scientists to congregate. I take it that this scenario is not exclusive to our region, rather it is an additional evidence of the deep changes going on in an international setting that is increasingly competitive, also in the field of political science. It will be up to us to strike the delicate balance between increasing the IPSA´s gravitational pull, while cooperating with parent associations to serve political science and the social sciences at large. Furthermore, the deficit in collective and individual membership, may well be due to the fact that the analytical and political energies of our colleagues in the developing world are being absorbed by their active and leading role in the process of democratisation itself, often in an scenario of economic stress or, at best, of increasing economic volatility. They may be engaged in making democracy work, or even to get it started, often against all odds. Such tentative explanations are indicative of the urgent need to promote a diagnosis that is as accurate as possible of the context-specific reasons for the regional gaps in membership – as a first step to reverse them.

I take it upon myself to start mobilizing our collective energies to look more closely at the reasons for such imbalances, with the notion that overcoming them means also to take a stake in the future. As we all know, key developing countries, with potentially leading regional roles, are emerging as participants in the international political system – such as those dubbed by development strategists as BRIC´s, that is Brazil, Russia, India and China. We should muster our analytical and organizational resources not only to account better for the challenges involved for their neighbouring regions and for the world system but also to find new forms of interaction with colleagues operating in these nations. In more concrete terms, IPSA is now poised to aim at such long-term strategic goals, thanks mainly to the decisive steps taken under the past Presidency to stabilize our organization and to invest a great deal of resources to make political science products more accessible round the world. An enlarged Secretariat established in Montreal, the incentives to promote electronic communication and to RC´s websites add to the efforts to combine more effective representation with academic quality. But those are accomplishments in need of consolidation and fine tuning. In this sense and with the help of the new EC, it will be important to strike a few delicate balances: between consolidation and innovation, between representation based in collective, institutional and individual membership on one hand and on the other, academic quality.

Let me conclude by asserting that our strength comes also from our profile which in many senses is unique. In this connection I want to stress one special asset which counts very much for socializing developing countries into democracy. The IPSA may turn out to be a privileged locus for exploring and deepening the inherently contested meaning of democracy and therefore of democratization, as an open-ended, long-term process of social construction – enriched by a herrschaftsfreier dialogue –a dialogue free of domination in Habermas´sense - between North and South , East and West .



Dr. Lourdes Sola