Past Events

	Title	Date	Type	Speakers
	Europe’s Futures Colloquium I	Mon, 09.09.2019, 16:00	Seminars and Colloquia	Grigorij Mesežnikov Niccolo Milanese	Europe’s Futures Colloquium I Mon, 09.09.2019, 16:00 Speakers: Grigorij Mesežnikov Niccolo Milanese Series: Seminars and Colloquia The working hypothesis of the project is a consideration that no less important factor of the growth of right-wing radicalism in Slovakia is – besides ethno-politics and social deprivation – a illiberal regression in the execution of power by mainstream political forces: tyranny of the majority, efforts to limit the fair electoral competition, marginalization of the opposition (especially of liberal-democratic orientation), selective justice, attacks on independent media and civil society, state capture, nourishing the illiberal public discourse on democracy, freedom, human rights, universal values, migration, the future of the EU, etc. Read more
Europe’s Futures Colloquium I Mon, 09.09.2019, 16:00 Speakers: Grigorij Mesežnikov Niccolo Milanese Series: Seminars and Colloquia The working hypothesis of the project is a consideration that no less important factor of the growth of right-wing radicalism in Slovakia is – besides ethno-politics and social deprivation – a illiberal regression in the execution of power by mainstream political forces: tyranny of the majority, efforts to limit the fair electoral competition, marginalization of the opposition (especially of liberal-democratic orientation), selective justice, attacks on independent media and civil society, state capture, nourishing the illiberal public discourse on democracy, freedom, human rights, universal values, migration, the future of the EU, etc. Read more
	Democracy and Demography	Sat, 17.08.2019, 10:00 - Sat, 24.08.2019, 18:00	Conferences and Workshops		Democracy and Demography Summer School 2019 Sat, 17.08.2019, 10:00 - Sat, 24.08.2019, 18:00 Speakers: Series: Conferences and Workshops To exist in a democracy means to be counted, and ideally to feel as if what one does truly counts. At this summer school, we discussed how the demography of a polity is presumed to impact its form of government. Thus, the summer school addressed a few central questions: Read more
Democracy and Demography Summer School 2019 Sat, 17.08.2019, 10:00 - Sat, 24.08.2019, 18:00 Speakers: Series: Conferences and Workshops To exist in a democracy means to be counted, and ideally to feel as if what one does truly counts. At this summer school, we discussed how the demography of a polity is presumed to impact its form of government. Thus, the summer school addressed a few central questions: Read more
	The Challenge of Technocracy	Thu, 27.06.2019, 18:00	Panels and Discussions	Ivan Vejvoda Stefan AuerHans Kundnani , Nicole Scicluna	The Challenge of Technocracy Thu, 27.06.2019, 18:00 Speakers: Ivan Vejvoda Stefan AuerHans Kundnani , Nicole Scicluna Series: Panels and Discussions The European Union (EU) is a rules-based order par excellence. Often seen as one of its great strengths, its reliance on rules as a functional equivalent of politics and political contestation is actually deeply problematic. The deficiencies of the EU’s rules-based and technocratic approach to governance have become much more apparent over the last ten years – the EU’s ‘crisis decade’. This panel focused on two trends that have emerged through the eurozone crisis. Firstly, the crisis has led to an increased reliance on non-majoritarian institutions, such as the ECB, at the expense of democratically accountable bodies. Secondly, the crisis has led to a new emphasis on coercive enforcement at the expense of the voluntary cooperation that previously characterised the EU as a community of law. Both of these trends diminish the quality of democracy at the EU-level as well as within its member states. The wider problem aimed to highlight is the EU’s tendency to resort to technocratic governance in the face of challenges that require political contestation. In the absence of opportunities for democratic politics, EU emergency governance oscillates between moments of heightened politicisation, in which ad hoc decisions are justified as necessary, and the (sometimes coercive) appeal to the depoliticised rule of rules. Read more
The Challenge of Technocracy Thu, 27.06.2019, 18:00 Speakers: Ivan Vejvoda Stefan AuerHans Kundnani , Nicole Scicluna Series: Panels and Discussions The European Union (EU) is a rules-based order par excellence. Often seen as one of its great strengths, its reliance on rules as a functional equivalent of politics and political contestation is actually deeply problematic. The deficiencies of the EU’s rules-based and technocratic approach to governance have become much more apparent over the last ten years – the EU’s ‘crisis decade’. This panel focused on two trends that have emerged through the eurozone crisis. Firstly, the crisis has led to an increased reliance on non-majoritarian institutions, such as the ECB, at the expense of democratically accountable bodies. Secondly, the crisis has led to a new emphasis on coercive enforcement at the expense of the voluntary cooperation that previously characterised the EU as a community of law. Both of these trends diminish the quality of democracy at the EU-level as well as within its member states. The wider problem aimed to highlight is the EU’s tendency to resort to technocratic governance in the face of challenges that require political contestation. In the absence of opportunities for democratic politics, EU emergency governance oscillates between moments of heightened politicisation, in which ad hoc decisions are justified as necessary, and the (sometimes coercive) appeal to the depoliticised rule of rules. Read more
	Which Future for Democracy in a Post-political Age	Thu, 20.06.2019, 18:30	Panels and Discussions	Chantal Mouffe Pavel Barsa	Which Future for Democracy in a Post-political Age Patočka Debate 2019 Thu, 20.06.2019, 18:30 Speakers: Chantal Mouffe Pavel Barsa Series: Panels and Discussions The lecture analyzed the current conjuncture in Western liberal democracies and the reasons for the increasing success of right-wing populist movements. It elaborated the thesis that the only way to fight against those movements is to develop left populist alternatives. Specifically, it shall be argued that it is a lack of understanding for the dynamics of politics and the role of affects in the formation of collective identities that explains the failure of social democratic parties in offering an appropriate answer to the right-wing populist challenge. Read more
Which Future for Democracy in a Post-political Age Patočka Debate 2019 Thu, 20.06.2019, 18:30 Speakers: Chantal Mouffe Pavel Barsa Series: Panels and Discussions The lecture analyzed the current conjuncture in Western liberal democracies and the reasons for the increasing success of right-wing populist movements. It elaborated the thesis that the only way to fight against those movements is to develop left populist alternatives. Specifically, it shall be argued that it is a lack of understanding for the dynamics of politics and the role of affects in the formation of collective identities that explains the failure of social democratic parties in offering an appropriate answer to the right-wing populist challenge. Read more
	What is Wrong with Economics?	Thu, 13.06.2019, 16:00 - Thu, 13.06.2019, 17:30	Seminars and Colloquia	Robert Skidelsky	What is Wrong with Economics? A Plea for a more Unified Social Science Thu, 13.06.2019, 16:00 - Thu, 13.06.2019, 17:30 Speakers: Robert Skidelsky Series: Seminars and Colloquia For too long economists have ignored the implications of ethics, philosophy, history and sociology within their discipline, assuming without question that humans are rational beings whose wants are given. The resulting orthodoxy is incapable of offering any critique of the human hunger for accumulating wealth without limit, and has drastically overreached its scope. Robert Skidelsky’s work is a clarion call for more pluralism within economics and an appeal for a discipline that is sensitive to both the subtleties of human behaviour and the contingency of its own methods. Read more
What is Wrong with Economics? A Plea for a more Unified Social Science Thu, 13.06.2019, 16:00 - Thu, 13.06.2019, 17:30 Speakers: Robert Skidelsky Series: Seminars and Colloquia For too long economists have ignored the implications of ethics, philosophy, history and sociology within their discipline, assuming without question that humans are rational beings whose wants are given. The resulting orthodoxy is incapable of offering any critique of the human hunger for accumulating wealth without limit, and has drastically overreached its scope. Robert Skidelsky’s work is a clarion call for more pluralism within economics and an appeal for a discipline that is sensitive to both the subtleties of human behaviour and the contingency of its own methods. Read more
	Discussion: What is Wrong with Economics?	Thu, 13.06.2019, 16:00	Seminars and Colloquia	Robert Skidelsky	Discussion: What is Wrong with Economics? A Plea for a more Unified Social Science Thu, 13.06.2019, 16:00 Speakers: Robert Skidelsky Series: Seminars and Colloquia For too long economists have ignored the implications of ethics, philosophy, history and sociology within their discipline, assuming without question that humans are rational beings whose wants are given. The resulting orthodoxy is incapable of offering any critique of the human hunger for accumulating wealth without limit, and has drastically overreached its scope. Robert Skidelsky’s work is a clarion call for more pluralism within economics and an appeal for a discipline that is sensitive to both the subtleties of human behaviour and the contingency of its own methods. Read more
Discussion: What is Wrong with Economics? A Plea for a more Unified Social Science Thu, 13.06.2019, 16:00 Speakers: Robert Skidelsky Series: Seminars and Colloquia For too long economists have ignored the implications of ethics, philosophy, history and sociology within their discipline, assuming without question that humans are rational beings whose wants are given. The resulting orthodoxy is incapable of offering any critique of the human hunger for accumulating wealth without limit, and has drastically overreached its scope. Robert Skidelsky’s work is a clarion call for more pluralism within economics and an appeal for a discipline that is sensitive to both the subtleties of human behaviour and the contingency of its own methods. Read more
	Technology and Utopia	Wed, 12.06.2019, 14:00	Lecture	Robert Skidelsky	Technology and Utopia Wed, 12.06.2019, 14:00 Speakers: Robert Skidelsky Series: Lecture In contemporary discussions about the future of artificial intelligence we often lose our heads. While economists offer bleak predictions of mass job losses and a deepening of already widespread precarity, Silicon Valley utopians insist that new technologies are bringing us ever closer together and will one day deliver us from work, disease and poverty. But when human life is reduced to a set of rational processes waiting to be optimised we risk losing sight of the irreducible quality of human experience. With his characteristic attention to the subtleties of the human condition, Robert Skidelsky offers a challenging account of what it means to pursue the good life in the age of the machines. Read more
Technology and Utopia Wed, 12.06.2019, 14:00 Speakers: Robert Skidelsky Series: Lecture In contemporary discussions about the future of artificial intelligence we often lose our heads. While economists offer bleak predictions of mass job losses and a deepening of already widespread precarity, Silicon Valley utopians insist that new technologies are bringing us ever closer together and will one day deliver us from work, disease and poverty. But when human life is reduced to a set of rational processes waiting to be optimised we risk losing sight of the irreducible quality of human experience. With his characteristic attention to the subtleties of the human condition, Robert Skidelsky offers a challenging account of what it means to pursue the good life in the age of the machines. Read more
	Europe’s Futures Final Symposium	Wed, 12.06.2019, 10:00	Panels and Discussions	Ivan Vejvoda Luke Cooper Piotr Buras Rosa Balfour Stefan Lehne Tim Judah Zsuzsanna Szelényi	Europe’s Futures Final Symposium Wed, 12.06.2019, 10:00 Speakers: Ivan Vejvoda Luke Cooper Piotr Buras Rosa Balfour Stefan Lehne Tim Judah Zsuzsanna Szelényi Series: Panels and Discussions We need platforms to renew and reinvent Europe. In cooperation with leading European organisations and think-tanks, IWM and ERSTE Foundation have joined forces to tackle some of the crucially important topics: asylum and migration, rule of law and democracy, European enlargement and social inclusion. Europe’s Futures has clear objectives: a European Union that protects its citizens; where Member States defend the fundamental values of a democratic order and rule of law; and where countries such as Austria continue to forward the Union’s democratisation and enlargement agenda. Read more
Europe’s Futures Final Symposium Wed, 12.06.2019, 10:00 Speakers: Ivan Vejvoda Luke Cooper Piotr Buras Rosa Balfour Stefan Lehne Tim Judah Zsuzsanna Szelényi Series: Panels and Discussions We need platforms to renew and reinvent Europe. In cooperation with leading European organisations and think-tanks, IWM and ERSTE Foundation have joined forces to tackle some of the crucially important topics: asylum and migration, rule of law and democracy, European enlargement and social inclusion. Europe’s Futures has clear objectives: a European Union that protects its citizens; where Member States defend the fundamental values of a democratic order and rule of law; and where countries such as Austria continue to forward the Union’s democratisation and enlargement agenda. Read more
	What the EU can learn from the Habsburg Empire	Thu, 06.06.2019, 18:30	Panels and Discussions	Ivan KrastevA. Wess Mitchell	What the EU can learn from the Habsburg Empire Thu, 06.06.2019, 18:30 Speakers: Ivan KrastevA. Wess Mitchell Series: Panels and Discussions In the fourth event of the Geopolitical Talks Series, IWM Permanent Fellow Ivan Krastev talked with A. Wess Mitchell, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (2017-2019), about current geopolitical challenges and lessons from the past. Read more
What the EU can learn from the Habsburg Empire Thu, 06.06.2019, 18:30 Speakers: Ivan KrastevA. Wess Mitchell Series: Panels and Discussions In the fourth event of the Geopolitical Talks Series, IWM Permanent Fellow Ivan Krastev talked with A. Wess Mitchell, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (2017-2019), about current geopolitical challenges and lessons from the past. Read more
	The International State System after Neoliberalism	Wed, 05.06.2019, 18:00	Lecture	Wolfgang Streeck	The International State System after Neoliberalism Europe between National Democracy and Supranational Centralization Wed, 05.06.2019, 18:00 Speakers: Wolfgang Streeck Series: Lecture Wolfgang Streeck began by recalling a short essay by Karl Polanyi, written in 1945, in which he discusses the prospects of a new, peaceful global order, based on the lessons of the war and the interwar period. In it Polanyi advocates an international regime beyond both Communist and neoliberal universalism that allows for national political-economic self-determination. Of particular importance here is Polanyi’s concept of “regional planning”, which stands for jointly regulated sectoral economic cooperation between neighboring sovereign countries that retain their monetary sovereignty. Comparing Polanyi’s vision to the world of today he found differences and similarities that both appear highly instructive. Among other things, it seems that the prospects for a democratically decentralized European state system, as opposed to the technocratic centralization promoted by the European Union, are intertwined with the emerging global relationship between China, now occupying in Polanyi’s scenario the position of the Soviet Union, and a, perhaps, increasingly isolationist United States. In this context, Wolfgang Streeck pointed to the propagation of a new collective defense narrative – the “European army” project – as a substitute for the social welfare and prosperity narrative in support of “European integration” that has lost its credibility with the collapse of neoliberalism as a viable political formula. Read more
The International State System after Neoliberalism Europe between National Democracy and Supranational Centralization Wed, 05.06.2019, 18:00 Speakers: Wolfgang Streeck Series: Lecture Wolfgang Streeck began by recalling a short essay by Karl Polanyi, written in 1945, in which he discusses the prospects of a new, peaceful global order, based on the lessons of the war and the interwar period. In it Polanyi advocates an international regime beyond both Communist and neoliberal universalism that allows for national political-economic self-determination. Of particular importance here is Polanyi’s concept of “regional planning”, which stands for jointly regulated sectoral economic cooperation between neighboring sovereign countries that retain their monetary sovereignty. Comparing Polanyi’s vision to the world of today he found differences and similarities that both appear highly instructive. Among other things, it seems that the prospects for a democratically decentralized European state system, as opposed to the technocratic centralization promoted by the European Union, are intertwined with the emerging global relationship between China, now occupying in Polanyi’s scenario the position of the Soviet Union, and a, perhaps, increasingly isolationist United States. In this context, Wolfgang Streeck pointed to the propagation of a new collective defense narrative – the “European army” project – as a substitute for the social welfare and prosperity narrative in support of “European integration” that has lost its credibility with the collapse of neoliberalism as a viable political formula. Read more

Past Events

Current Fellows' research