Today, liberal democracies are under unprecedented strain from within and without. In each episode, renowned social anthropologist Shalini Randeria invites a le...
Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:• Central European University: CEU• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD• The Podcast Company: scopeaudio Follow us on social media!• Central European University: @CEU• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @GVAGrad_AHDC Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks! GlossaryDobbs v. Jackson (24:03 or p.7 in the transcript)Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, legal decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2022 overturned two historic Supreme Court rulings, Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), which had respectively established and affirmed a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Specifically, Roe v. Wade had recognized a constitutional right to obtain an abortion before approximately the end of the second trimester of pregnancy (which the Court understood as the usual point of fetal viability). Caseyhad affirmed the “essential holding” of Roe, which it had described in part as “a recognition of the right of the woman to choose to have an abortion before viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the State.” As Caseyexplained, a state unduly interferes in the right to pre-viability abortion if its restrictions “impose…an undue burden on a woman’s ability to make this decision” or present “a substantial obstacle to the woman’s effective right to elect the procedure.” Notwithstanding Roe and Casey and other Supreme Court rulings reaffirming a constitutional right to pre-viability abortion, Mississippi, the state appellant in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, claimed that laws banning pre-viability abortion are not necessarily unconstitutional. States may “prohibit elective abortions before viability,” the state argued, “because nothing in constitutional text, structure, history, or tradition supports a right to abortion.” Dobbs drew national attention because it overturned nearly 50 years of judicial precedent and effectively enabled states to impose drastic restrictions on the availability of abortion and even to ban it completely. source
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41:39
Johanna Lutz on Identity, Partisanship, and the Vulnerabilities of Democracy
Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:• Central European University: CEU• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD• The Podcast Company: scopeaudio Follow us on social media!• Central European University: @CEU• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks! GlossaryChristian Democratic Union Party (CDU) and Christian Social Union Party (CSU) in Germany(19:56 or p.6 in the transcript)The CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, were established as non-denominational Christian parties directly after the Second World War by members of the civilian resistance to National Socialism. Their core values are rooted in Catholic social doctrine, Conservativism, and commitment to a liberal (social) market economy that is provided with a regulatory framework of rules and laws by the state. The CDU/CSU regards itself as a “catch-all party” that expressly combines many different interests and therefore aims to speak and develop policies on behalf of a very large part of the population. The CDU runs for election in all Germany’s states apart from Bavaria, where its place is taken by the CSU, which only stands in Bavaria. The two parties are often known colloquially as “the Union”. In the Bundestag they form the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. The “Union” is traditionally the strongest party in Germany and has governed the country the longest in various coalitions. source
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Raimund Löw on the Dithering Austrian Democracy
Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:• Central European University: CEU• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD• The Podcast Company: scopeaudio Follow us on social media!• Central European University: @CEU• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks!
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42:25
Julia Ebner on How Extremism Threatens Democracy (Part 2)
Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:• Central European University: CEU• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD• The Podcast Company: scopeaudio Follow us on social media!• Central European University: @CEU• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks! GlossaryQAnon(17:19 or p.5 in the transcript)QAnon is a decentralized, far-right political movement rooted in a baseless conspiracy theory that the world is controlled by the “Deep State,” a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles, and that former President Donald Trump is the only person who can defeat it. QAnon emerged on 4chan in 2017, when an anonymous poster known as “Q,” believed by Qanon followers to be a team of U.S. government and military insiders, began posting cryptic messages online about Trump’s alleged efforts to takedown the Deep State online. QAnon followers believe that the Deep State will be brought to justice during a violent day of reckoning known as “the Storm,” when the Deep State and its collaborators will be arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay to face military tribunals and execution for their various crimes. Since the 2020 presidential election, QAnon has continued to migrate into the mainstream, becoming a powerful force within U.S. politics. Across the United States, QAnon adherents—animated by false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” or “stolen”—are running for political office, signing up to become poll workers, filing frivolous election-related lawsuits and harassing election officials. While not all QAnon adherents are extremists, QAnon-linked beliefs have inspired violent acts and have eroded trust in democratic institutions and the electoral process. Many QAnon influencers also spout antisemitic beliefs and the core tenets of “Pizzagate” and “Save the Children,” both of which are QAnon-adjacent beliefs, play into antisemitic conspiracy theories like Blood Libel. source
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34:07
Julia Ebner on How Extremism Threatens Democracy (Part 1)
Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:• Central European University: CEU• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD• The Podcast Company: scopeaudio Follow us on social media!• Central European University: @CEU• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks! GlossaryIdentitarians (06:49 or p.2 in the transcript)The term of “Identitarians” originated in France with the founding of the Bloc Identitaire movement and its youth counterpart, Generation Identitaire. Identitarians espouse racism and intolerance under the guise of preserving the ethnic and cultural origins of their respective counties. American Identitarians such as Richard Spencer claim to want to preserve European-American (i.e., white) culture in the US. As Michael McGregor, a writer and editor for Radix wrote in an article in the publication, Identitarians want “the preservation of our identity–the cultural and genetic heritage that makes us who we are.”Identitarians reject multiculturalism or pluralism in any form. Namely, Identitarianism is a post-war European far-right political ideology asserting the right of peoples of European descent to culture and territory which are claimed to belong exclusively to people defined as European. Building on ontological ideas of modern German philosophy, its ideology was formulated from the 1960s onward by essayists such as Alain de Benoist, Dominique Venner, Guillaume Faye and Renaud Camus, considered the movement’s intellectual leaders.While on occasion condemning racism and promoting ethnopluralist society, it argues that particular modes of being are customary to particular groups of people, mainly based on ideas of thinkers of the German Conservative Revolution, in some instances influenced by Nazi theories, through the guidance of European New Right leaders. Some Identitarians explicitly espouse ideas of xenophobia and racialism, but most limit their public statements to more docile language. Some among them promote the creation of white ethno-states, to the exclusion of migrants and non-white residents. The Identitarian Movement has been classified by the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in 2019 as right-wing extremist. The movement is most notable in Europe, and although rooted in Western Europe, it has spread more rapidly to the eastern part of the continent through conscious efforts of the likes of Faye. It also has adherents among North American, Australian, and New Zealander white nationalists. The United States–based Southern Poverty Law Center considers many of these organizations to be hate groups. source
Today, liberal democracies are under unprecedented strain from within and without. In each episode, renowned social anthropologist Shalini Randeria invites a leading scholar to explore the challenges and dilemmas facing democracies around the world. They investigate what needs to be done to ensure the future well-being of our democratic institutions and practices.
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