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- Democracy Bulletin, September 2021
Democracy Bulletin, September 2021
Democracy Bulletin, September 2021
DEMOCRACY BULLETIN
News From the Democracy Institute
The second issue of the Democracy Bulletin, the quarterly newsletter of the CEU Democracy Institute, focuses on our most important achievements and publications in the previous months. If you don’t want to miss any of our news items, events, articles, podcasts or videos, then please follow us on
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, and
as well.
HIGHLIGHTS
Budapest Municipality, Political Capital, and CEU Democracy Institute Co-Organize Budapest Forum
The conference, which brings together domestic and foreign experts, journalists, activists and policymakers, is aimed at providing a forum for strategic thinking on the pivotal political, social, economic, and environmental transformations of our era, and also at putting Budapest squarely back on the region's progressive intellectual map. This year's edition of the Budapest Forum focuses on cities, local initiatives, and building sustainable democracies. Learn more about it and register here.
Ruling by Cheating – New Book by Andras Sajo
Cambridge University Press has published the new book of our Senior Research Fellow, Andras Sajo, entitled Ruling by Cheating – Governance in Illiberal Democracy. Analyzing the constitutional system of illiberal democracies and illiberal phenomena in “mature democracies” that are justified in the name of “the will of the people”, the book explains that the drift to mild despotism is not authoritarianism, but an abuse of constitutionalism. Learn more about it here.
Eva Bognar and Judit Szakacs Presented Study to European Parliament
Judit Szakacs, Outreach Coordinator of our Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS), and Eva Bognar, Senior Program Officer and Researcher at CMDS, presented their study on minorities and disinformation to the European Parliament’s Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union, including Disinformation (INGE). Although the study focused on disinformation originated, funded or amplified by foreign powers, the main findings included the importance of domestic actors as well as that of the social context in which disinformation campaigns take place. Learn more about the study here.
Dorottya Redai Receives Emma Goldman Snowball Award
Our Research Fellow Dorottya Redai has received the Emma Goldman Snowball Award of the FLAX Foundation. It is awarded to early-career researchers, and Dorottya Redai was nominated for her interdisciplinary and unwavering work as an independent scholar and activist working on gender in education. Read more about what she said upon receiving the award here.
New Lecture Series: Urban Governance and Civic Participation in Words and Stone
Our Democracy in History Workgroup, the Department of Medieval Studies at CEU, the Department of History of Art at Birkbeck, University of London, and the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Erfurt launches a new public lecture series that will seek the origins of civic participation in political thought and explore its forms of expression in written and visual media from Late Antiquity to the seventeenth century. Learn more about the series here.
RESEARCH
DEMOCRACY IN HISTORY
A New Project
The new
Research Project, entitled “Democracy and Its Discontents. A Historical Examination of the Current Predicament of Democracy,” considers that studies on the crisis of democracies must be complemented by a thorough historical investigation capable of defining a genealogy of the current democratic malaise, identifying historical antecedents to be compared, to this latest predicament of democracy. Learn more about the workgroup’s involvement
.
Crisis and Renewal in the History of European Political Thought
The new volume, edited by Cesare Cuttica and DI Research Affiliate
, and published as part of the
series by
, explores the complex theme of crisis in European political thought from antiquity to the twenty-first century. It provides a historically informed analysis of what it means to reflect on and theorize about crisis. Learn more about the book
.
DE-/RE-DEMOCRATIZATION
Mapping Populism and Nationalism in Leader Rhetoric
The
of DI Research Affiliate
, and co-authors Kirk A. Hawkins and Bruno Castanho Silva conceptualizes populism and nationalism as vertical and horizontal discursive frames of sovereignty, and investigates the prevalence of these frames in the speeches of chief executives in Europe and North America to assess whether these discourses are on the rise at the highest levels of government.
Attitudes Towards Technocracy and Populism
The proposal of Bernhard Wessels (WZB Berlin Social Science Center), Alex Trechsel (University of Lucerne) and DI Research Affiliate
for the inclusion of populism and technocracy attitude items in the
's (ESS) six-wave online panel
(CRONOS-2) has been accepted. Learn more about the proposal and the project
.
ENVIRONMENT AND DEMOCRACY
New Research Team Formed
The Workgroup's research project on global civil society input to the commemoration of the United Nations Environment Program's first 50 years took a big step forward with the formation of a research team that includes, children and youth researchers from Asia, Latin America and Africa. The project will result in a publication called "The UNEP We Want," based in part on a global survey that we conducted earlier this year.
Sonya Ziaja Joins the Workgroup
Professor Sonya Ziaja (University of Baltimore School of Law) has joined the Working Group as a Research Affiliate. Her area of research includes, inter alia, the consequences of complex algorithmic environmental decision-making on equity and democratic participation. Through Professor Ziaja, DI is building institutional contacts with University of Baltimore's Center for International and Comparative Law.
INEQUALITIES
Interactive Map of Counter-Extremism Initiatives
In the BRaVE project, a database was constructed recording counter-extremism initiatives, policies, and institutions as well as relevant studies in 10 countries (Poland, Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Germany, Belgium, France, Denmark, UK). The
can be used by researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and other stakeholders.
Comparative Research Wrapped Up
has wrapped up his two-year EC Marie Curie postdoctoral engagement with the DI. His comparative research addresses that school-to-work transition support to Roma youth remains highly apolitical, targeting ‘people to be developed’ and not structural inequalities. His related work is
in the
British Journal of Sociology of Education
and other academic outlets.
MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY
CEU Students’ Reporting for Marius Dragomir’s Class Featured in Politico
In an example of academia's contribution to journalism,
Politico
features an
by students in the class of
, Director of our
, on how the Covid-19 pandemic impacted the situation of migrants in EU detention centers. Nine masters students of the
worked for three months on the article, and they interviewed government officials, NGOs, border protection forces and detained asylum seekers.
Covid-19 Increases Appetite for Trusted and Reliable News
This year’s
finds that the demand for reliable, accurate news sources increased, but turning this into revenue remains a significant challenge, and publishers face increasing economic pressure.
, Senior Program Officer and Researcher of our
wrote the chapter on Hungary. The report was covered extensively in Hungarian media. Learn more about the report and the coverage
.
RULE OF LAW
EC Against Internal Market and EU Citizens’ Rights
The Workgroup’s lead researcher,
together with
(Cambridge) published an
in the
European Journal of Risk Regulation
showcasing the problematic implications of the EU Covid Certificates from the point of view of the Rule of Law and the Internal market. The authors find that this piece of legislation cannot but harm the freedom of movement of citizens in the European Union, thus boasting the opposite effect, compared with the stated goal of opening up borders.
The EU’s Face in Lukasenka’s Mirror
“What we see is a rampant breach of the law,”
, lead researcher of the Workgroup and Post-doctoral Research Fellow
write in their
in
Verfassungsblog
about the promise of EU values and the inhuman treatment of Afghan refugees, the "thirty-two hostages", at the Polish-Belarusian border. "What is going on at the Polish border is not at all atypical for the EU today, laying bare the depth of problems plaguing the EU’s inapt governance of migration,” they argue.
PODCASTS
The US’ Attempt To Humanize Its Imperial Burden
Ferenc Laczo in conversation with Samuel Moyn (Yale University) about his book “Humane. How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War”.
Corrective Power of the Populists
Do populists pose a threat to constitutional democracy? Are they always the villains in our tales about democracy? Bojan Bugaric answers these questions in an interview with Kasia Krzyzanowska.
REVIEW OF DEMOCRACY
The
(RevDem) is an open platform to discuss, analyze, reflect on, 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:
New Crises: Science, Morality and Democracy in the 21st Century
Wolfgang Merkel in his op-ed analyzes three aspects of democracy crises: scientization, moralization and polarization.
Read the article
.
A Not Wasted Life
Artur Domoslawski, the author of a monumental Zygmunt Bauman’s biography talks to RevDem's managing editor, Michał Matlak, about the life of the most celebrated Polish-Jewish sociologist.
Read the interview
.
Cuban Spring in the Summer?
Stefano Palestini speaks with Cuban sociologist Elaine Acosta about the meaning and causes of the popular uprising against the Cuban government.
Read the interview
.
