Growing evidence of political disaffection among the public, in general, and the rise of protest movements and populism, in particular, have triggered a lively debate about the crisis of Western-style democracy, whose global triumph seemed to be a fait accompli only forty years ago, after the fall of the Berlin wall. The course will not deny the relevance of crisis tendencies and begin with giving a compact overview of the manifold general diagnoses of the current malaise of democracy, linked to formulae such as “post-democracy”, “simulative democracy”, or “façade democracy”. Its main objective, however, is to assess if, and to what extent, some of the symptoms often associated with the decay of democratic politics, such as the spread of alleged or actual “populisms”, “identity politics”, or “anti-politics”, should not rather be interpreted in terms of being the expression of attempts at democratic renewal. To this purpose, we will focus on concrete empirical examples taken from the context of Europe and the Americas.
Introductory reading:
Klaus von Beyme, 2013: Von der Demokratie zur Neodemokratie, Wiesbaden: Springer VS
Paolo Gerbaudo, 2017: The Mask and the Flag: Populism, Citizenism and Global Protest, Oxford: Oxford University Press
John B. Judis, 2016: The Populist Explosion, New York: Columbia Global Reports
The course is connected with the four guest lectures of the cycle “In Bewegung: Eigentum – Kapitalismus – Demokratie”, which will be held on 13 Nov 2019, 4 Dec 2019, 22 Jan 2020, and 4 Feb 2020 (the attendance of these lectures is recommended, but not compulsory).
The number of course participants is limited to 30.
Kann in Kombination mit der entsprechenden Veranstaltung für MA-Studierende und DoktorandINNen als Forschungsseminar (SOW-4800) belegt werden.
Admission settings
The course is part of admission "Anmeldung gesperrt (global)".
