Professor André Kaiser and Valeria Smirnova have participated in the workshop titled „Regulation of Civil Society“ at the University of Exeter, Great Britain. The issues they discussed together with Professors Richard Katz, Nicole Bolleyer, Joost Berkhout, Jan Beyers and other participants involved methodological and conceptual challenges of doing a comparative analysis on political parties, interest groups, and civil associations.

Together with Professor Nicole Bolleyer, Valeria Smirnova has presented a paper scrutinizing
the relationship between party finance regulation and party membership.