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- Democracy Bulletin, June 2021
Democracy Bulletin, June 2021
Democracy Bulletin, June 2021
DEMOCRACY BULLETIN
News From the CEU Democracy Institute
Based in Budapest, the CEU Democracy Institute examines and seeks solutions to challenges democracy faces across the globe today. It builds on the 30-year legacy of world-class research, teaching and outreach in the spirit of democracy and freedom demonstrated by the Central European University.
The first issue of the Democracy Bulletin, our newly launched quarterly newsletter, focuses on our most important achievements in the previous months. If you don’t want to miss any of our news items, events, publications, podcasts or videos, then please follow us on
,
, and
as well.
HIGHLIGHTS
Review of Democracy launch event reflects on the future of Europe
The Conference on the Future of Europe should give voice to citizens’ needs, and even though it may lack clear commitment on the outputs and procedural transparency, it is still a unique opportunity to effectively channel citizen mobilization at EU level. Still, the lack of commitment from Member States is a warning sign, panelists of the launch event of our journal, the Review of Democracy argued.The panel featured former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, Ulrike Guérot, Founder and Director of European Democracy Lab, Yale Associate Professor Hélène Landemore, Thu Nguyen, Policy Fellow at Jacques Delors Centre at Hertie School of Governance, and HEC Paris Professor Alberto Alemanno. Watch the discussion or read its summary here.
New book by Zsolt Enyedi and Fernando Casal Bertoa
Oxford University Press published the new book of Zsolt Enyedi, co-authored with Fernando Casal Bertoa, entitled Party System Closure - Party Alliances, Government Alternatives, and Democracy in Europe.The book maps trends in interparty relations in Europe from 1848 until 2019. It investigates how the length of democratic experience, the institutionalization of individual parties, the fragmentation of parliaments, and the support for anti-establishment parties shape the degree of institutionalization of party systems. Learn more about it here.
Is there a chance for democracy in Myanmar?
“There is always a chance for democracy when we have a committed society,” panelists of the latest debate in our Hotspots of Democracy in Crisis series concluded. The discussion featured Wai Wai Nu, founder and Executive Director of the Women's Peace Network, and former political prisoner in Myanmar; activist Laura Faludi; independent analyst David Scott Mathieson; and was moderated by Liviu Matei, Provost of Central European University, and Vice Chancellor of the Open Society University Network.Watch the discussion or read its summary here.
RESEARCH
DEMOCRACY IN HISTORY
Connecting scholars
The workgroup started its regular sessions, planning the activities of the next academic year and also connecting to scholars and possible institutional partners in the region. On 15 February 2021, it organized an online
with 20 Hungarian colleagues from different institutions, discussing modalities of cooperation and questions of a democratic memory politics.
Showcasing projects
On 18 May, the workgroup made its first introductory session in front of the broader public of DI, organizing an online
of two new projects: History as Democracy, presented by
; and Re-thinking of Modern European Intellectual History from the Vantage Point of Crisis-Discourses, presented by
.
DE-/RE-DEMOCRATIZATION
On populism, nationalism and revisionist foreign policy
“Nationalism has greater destructive effects for the international system when combined with populism, demonstrating the importance of distinguishing nationalism and populism conceptually in order to isolate their separate and combined effects on foreign policy,”
argues in her article published in International Affairs. Read it
.
Presentation at Stanford University
On May 14,
and
presented their book,
The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes
at Stanford University. The book is a comprehensive attempt to break with the traditional analysis, proposing a systematic renewal of our descriptive vocabulary. Watch their presentation
.
ENVIRONMENT AND DEMOCRACY
Green leadership
The Horizon2020 project, REAL_DEAL (Reshaping European Advances towards Green Leadership Through Deliberative Approaches and Learning), has been approved. The workgroup is a consortium partner in this EUR 6.8 Million project led by European Environmental Bureau.
A civil society perspective
The workgroup is also spearheading a project in cooperation with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to conduct research, including a survey and interviews, and to produce a report entitled "The UNEP We Want" aiming to provide a civil society perspective on the 50th anniversary of the founding in UNEP and the way forward.
INEQUALITIES
Mapping gender and EU politics
The
Routledge Handbook of Gender and EU Politics
edited by Gabriele Abels,
,
Heather MacRae, and Anna van der Vleuten was published in March 2021. It maps the expanding field of gender and EU politics, giving an overview of the fundamentals and new directions of the sub- discipline, and serving as a reference book for scholars and students at different levels interested in the EU. Learn more about it
.
On inequalities and social resistance
Five members of the workgroup presented their work at the online
Thirty Years of Capitalist Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe: Inequalities and Social Resistance
, Romania in May 2021.
,
, Leyla Safta-Zecheria, and
addressed educational inequalities in transnational spaces of care and labor.
’s documentary film
Olha’s Italian Diary
was screened in another panel.
MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY
The power of the press in the UK media regulation
“The UK media has a history of being in the spotlight for the wrong reasons,” according to the first report of the Uncovering Media Influence in the UK project. Read it
, and learn more also about the
, aimed at investigating the profound influence that rapid shifts in policy, sources of funding and technology companies in the public sphere have on journalism.
Media capture in Hungary
In an interview with Euractiv,
discussed the problems of media capture in Hungary, of public media being fully controlled by the government and private media being subject to a campaign of systematic takeovers by oligarchs. In his view, the Hungarian media situation is among the most concerning ones in Europe. Read the interview
.
RULE OF LAW
The future of democracy
Vera Jourova, Vice-President of the European Commission, Clement Beaune, Secretary of State for European Affairs in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and MEP Michal Simecka discussed how to strengthen democracy at the national level, in a debate chaired by
and moderated by
. Watch it, or read the summary
.
Rule of law in the case law of the European Court of Justice
The “rule of law-enhancing process of re-articulation of EU constitutionalism is ongoing and represents the Court of Justice’s incrementalist response to the process of rule of law backsliding which first emerged in Hungary before spreading to Poland,”
and
wrote in their SIEPS report. Read it
.
PODCASTS
A Limited and Cautious Democracy
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Ferenc Laczo discuss with Martin Conway his latest book “Western Europe’s Democratic Age, 1945-1968.”
Power in the Hands of Journalists
Dumitrita Holdis and Justin Spike explore whether journalism cooperatives and subscription newsletters will put power back in the hands of journalists.
REVIEW OF DEMOCRACY
The
is an open platform to discuss, analyze and develop possible solutions to the challenges to democracy across the globe today. The journal is published by the CEU Democracy Institute. Read its most important publications from recent weeks:
Why yet another journal on democracy?
“We believe that renewing democracies requires a fundamental reflection on the origins of the current crisis and a constant search for innovative solutions. This journal, founded by scholars from the Central European University, the first university in exile in the European Union, and joined by a large numbers of other academics, aims to contribute to such debates. We want to spotlight non-obvious perspectives, taking inspiration both from the European and global level of scholarship and activism.”
Read the editorial
.
Rule of Law is not like IKEA furniture
“There is a great risk that within the current European constellation the idea prevails that the solution to lack of democratic legitimacy can be purely resolved by means of — let’s call it — representative democracy “light”: some modest injections of representative democracy into the European Union’s system.”
Read the interview with Paul Blokker by Kasia Krzyzanowska
.
A certain anachronistic appeal: On Conversations with Francis Fukuyama
“Three decades after the publication of The End of History, Fukuyama continues to combine sober realism with an overall trust in human development. In an age shaped by anger and panic, this confident liberalism must strike us as somewhat anachronistic but is not without a certain timeless appeal.”
Read the book review by Ferenc Laczo
.