DPIR to host conference on ‘Countering Illiberalism in Liberal Democracies’
DPIR will play host to a large workshop, organised by DPIR’s Professor Giovanni Capoccia and Professor Isabela Mares (Yale), on strategies pro-democratic forces can adopt to counter the rise of illiberalism in liberal democracies.
Participants include: David Bateman (Cornell); Ivan Ermakoff (Wisconsin); Antonis Elllinas (Cyprus); Vincente Valentim (Oxford); Robert Lieberman (Johns Hopkins); Susan Stokes (Chicago); Lautaro Cella (Chicago); Ipek Cinar (Chicago); Andres Uribe (Stanford); Laura Jakli (Harvard); Jason Wittenberg (Berkeley); Melis Laebens (CEU Vienna); Marcin Slarzinsky (Polish Academy of Sciences); Michael Biggs (Oxford), Mihail Chiru (Oxford), Martin Conway (Oxford), Nick Dickinson (Oxford), David Doyle (Oxford), Stathis Kalyvas (Oxford), Desmond King (Oxford), Alex Kuo (Oxford), Marek Naczyk (Oxford), Adam Smith (Oxford), Katerina Tertytchnaya (Oxford).
The two-day workshop is being held in the context of large strata of the electorate becoming disengaged with politics, and elected autocrats increasingly dismantling constitutional checks and balances or threatening to do so.
This event concludes the series of conferences and workshops of the ‘Back from the Brink’ research project and will comprise several panel discussions over the two days. Papers will discuss the viability of strategies to counter illiberalism in liberal democracies, in particular: the political and institutional responses to parliamentary disruptions; the adoption of legal restrictions against anti-democratic actors; the role of "constitutional hardball" in defending liberal democratic institutions; the conditions for coordinating different oppositions to resist illiberal power bids; the role of ethnonationalism in the current predicament of democracy in the US; the role of anti-democratic rhetorical strategies by incumbent autocrats in delegitimizing liberal institutions; the importance of pro-democracy social norms to stymie the rise of illiberal political forces; the role of civil society mobilization in supporting or opposing illiberal reforms; and the electoral dilemmas of democratic opposition facing elected autocrats.
Booking is not required for the event, which is open to University members only and will be held in the Lecture Theatre of DPIR’s Manor Road Building. It runs from 2.30pm on Friday 3 November to 6.20pm on Saturday 4 November, followed by a buffet dinner in the Common Room of the Manor Road Building at 6.30pm.
