Erica Benner is a political philosopher who has held academic posts at St Antony's College Oxford, the London School of Economics, and Yale. Awarded a DPhil at Oxford in 1993, she is the author of the books Really Existing Nationalisms (Oxford University Press, 1995), Machiavelli's Ethics (Princeton University Press, 2009), Machiavelli's Prince: A New Reading (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli's Lifelong Quest for Freedom (Penguin Allen Lane and W.W. Norton, 2017).

Dr Jan Boesten is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations and member of CCW’s ConPeace team.. He earned a PhD at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver with a dissertation on the Colombian Constitutional Court and its decision to curtail constitutional reform. His argument is that the Colombian Constitutional Court must be understood as a consequence of deliberative principles rather than strategic action.

EU enlargement policy has long been hailed as the most effective form of external democracy promotion. Yet in recent years, democratic backsliding has emerged both among new member states and in current candidate countries. Why do we see such trends? I argue that unintended side effects of EU policies, but also shifts in the broader international context can account for the reduced effectiveness of EU democracy promotion.

After 15 successful years based at St Antony's College, Oxford, Professor Jan Zielonka will retire in 2020. He has not only served as an ambassador for the work of the European Studies Centre, but also as a contributor to his fields of research.

The Centre holds this event - comprising of several short panels to reflect the areas of research to which Professor Zielonka has contributed - to honour him ahead of his retirement.

We explore the long-term political consequences of the Third Reich and show that current political intolerance, xenophobia, and voting for radical right-wing parties are associated with proximity to former Nazi concentration camps in Germany. This relationship is not explained by contemporary attitudes, the location of the camps, geographic sorting, the economic impact of the camps, or their current use. We argue that cognitive dissonance led those more directly exposed to Nazi institutions to conform with the belief system of the regime.