Democracies in Peril

Democracies in Peril

According to The Economist's "democracy index," 2017 was the worst year for the decline of democracy since they started the index in 2006. Everywhere one looks, it seems as if liberal democracy is in crisis. What does this mean for the present and future? How real is this crisis, really? Is it simply "froth" on the surface of the news cycle? Or is there something deeper going on? And if so, what are those deeper factors? If there is a crisis, how global is it? Does it threaten consolidated democracies as well as more recent or marginal democratic regimes?

This interdisciplinary conference brings together leading scholars from the United States, Europe, and Asia to consider these questions. The goal is to take stock of the current crisis of liberal democracy and the rise of illiberal populism around the globe. Conference presenters and roundtable panelist will discuss the current crisis in a global framework, assessing the current health of democracy around the world, and offering theoretical and analytical frameworks for how to understand the fate of democracy moving forward.

This two-day conference will be held on Friday, April 12 and Saturday, April 13, 2019 in the Boston College Conference Center at 2101 Commonwealth Avenue on the Brighton Campus.

Democracy _in_Peril

Schedule of Events


Friday, April 12, 2019

9:20 a.m.

Dean Gregory Kalscheur S.J., Morrissey College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Vlad Perju, Director, Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy

9:30 a.m.

Presentation, Pippa Norris, Harvard University: “Varieties of Populism

10:45 a.m.

Coffee Break

11:00 a.m.

Roundtable Discussion: Populism and Democracy?

Participants: Jan-Werner Müller, Princeton University; Jim Cronin, Boston College; Amílcar Antonio Barreto, Northeastern University

Moderator: Katharine Young, Boston College

12:30 p.m.

Break

1:30 p.m.

Presentation, Ipek Cinar, University of Chicago: “The Populist Toolkit: Authoritarian Rhetoric on Democratic Discourse”

2:45 p.m.

Coffee Break

3:00 p.m.

Roundtable Discussion: Alternatives to Democracy (Confucianism, Political Islam, etc.)

Participants: Mirjam Künkler, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study; Sungmoon Kim, City University of Hong Kong; Justin Frosini, Bocconi University

Moderator: Vlad Perju, Boston College

4:30 p.m.

Coffee Break

4:45 p.m.

Keynote Address, Jan-Werner Müller, Princeton University

“What Exactly is the ‘Crisis of Democracy’ a Crisis of?”

Chair: Devin Pendas, Boston College

 

Saturday, April 13, 2019

9:30 a.m.

Presentation, Wolfgang Merkel, Humboldt University: “Crisis or Challenge: Is The Crisis Of Democracy An Invention?”

10:45 a.m.

Coffee Break

11:00 a.m.

Roundtable Discussion: Democracy and Economics

Participants: Kosaku Dairokuno, Meiji University; Liubomir Topaloff, Meiji University, Devin Pendas, Boston College

Moderator: Daniela Urosa, Universidad Católica Andrés Bello Caracas, Venezuela

12:30 p.m.

Break

1:30 p.m.

Presentation, Shujiro Yazawa, Hitotsubashi University:

Radical Change, Subjectivity, and Democracy

2:45 p.m.

Break

3:00 p.m

Roundtable Discussion: Is Democracy Failing?

Participants: Mark Plattner, Journal of Democracy, Mabel Berezin, Cornell University

Moderator: Devin Pendas, Boston College

Friday, April 12, 2019

Moderator: Devin Pendas, Boston College

Jan-Werner Müller

Jan-Werner Müller

Jan-Werner Müller studied at the Free University, Berlin, University College, London, St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and Princeton University. From 1996 until 2003 he was a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford; from 2003 until 2005 he was Fellow in Modern European Thought at the European Studies Centre, St. Antony’s College. Since 2005 he has been teaching in the Politics Department, Princeton University.


Müller has been a Member of the School of Historical Studies, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, and a visiting fellow at the Collegium Budapest Institute of Advanced Study, Collegium Helsinki, the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, the Remarque Institute, NYU, the Center for European Studies, Harvard, as well as the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence. He has also taught as a visiting professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, the Ludwig Maximilians-Universitaet in Munich, the Humboldt Universitaet in Berlin, the Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Paris, and Peking University. He delivered the Carlyle Lectures at Oxford University and the Tanner Lectures at Cambridge University.

Müller is a co-founder of the European College of Liberal Arts (ECLA; today: Bard Berlin), Germany’s first private English-speaking liberal arts college, for which he served as founding research director. He maintains a strong interest in international teaching and research initiatives centered on the liberal arts.

He is the author of Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity (Yale UP, 2000;Chinese translation), A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (Yale UP, 2003;German, French, Japanese, Greek, and Chinese translations); he is also the editor of Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past, (Cambridge UP 2002) and German Ideologies since 1945: Studies in the Political Thought and Culture of the Bonn Republic (Palgrave 2003). His book Constitutional Patriotism was published by Princeton University Press in 2007 (Chinese, Serbian, Greek, Turkish, and Korean translations); an expanded and revised German edition was published by Suhrkamp in 2010. 
His history of political thought in twentieth-century Europe, Contesting Democracy,was published by Yale University Press in the summer of 2011 (Italian, French, Danish, German, Swedish, Russian, Polish, Danish, Chinese, and Serbian translations). His book Was ist Populismus? was published by Suhrkamp in April 2016; Penguin Press brought out an updated English-language version in 2017; the book has been published or is scheduled to be published in more than twenty other languages so far. Mueller's book Furcht und Freiheit: Ein anderer Liberalismus will be published by Suhrkamp; his Democracy Rules! is coming out with FSG; and his Christian Democracy: A New Intellectual History, based on his Carlyle Lectures in Oxford, is forthcoming with Harvard University Press.

Please Note, parking is only permitted in certain areas of campus. For Brighton campus parking, please refer to the map provided by BC Transportation.

Visitor parking is also available at Commonwealth Garage and Beacon Street Garage