'Electoral Integrity and Constitutional Democracy in Latin America' - Boston College, USA, 1-2 November 2018

Full details here

Electoral Integrity and Constitutional Democracy in Latin America

November 1-2, 2018

Boston College

2101 Commonwealth Avenue

Chestnut Hill, MA

Constitutional democracy has as a necessary condition the periodic election of governments through competitive, legitimate and transparent elections. To guarantee these democratic elections, it is essential to have clear electoral rules and institutions that enforce these rules. Democratic elections under the Rule of Law are a guarantee of the exercise of political rights.

2018 APSA Annual Meeting - 'Democracy and Its Discontents' - Boston, USA, 30 August-2 September 2018

Full details here

Programme here


Democracy and Its Discontents

The theme for this year’s meeting of the American Political Science Association is Democracy and Its Discontents. These are challenging times for democracy. In many established democracies, the aftermath of the 2008 and the 2011 economic crises is opening up new spaces for new challengers and popular grievances. The complex relationship between national systems of rule and a global economy is leading to greater tensions both within democracies and between them. Existing rules and party systems are under strain as new cleavages emerge, with populism, nativism, and illiberalism all jostling for popular support, as well as new experiments in representation.

'Imitation and its Discontents: Democratic Malaise in Post-Communist Europe' - International Forum for Democratic Studies, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Washington DC, USA, 5 November 2018

Full details here

About the event

The reasons for the failure of democracy to take hold in Russia and for its current backsliding in Central Europe are complex, but one important and often neglected factor is what Ivan Krastev (in a July 2018 article in the Journal of Democracy) has called “Imitation and Its Discontents.” Following the collapse of communism, the countries in the region faced both internal and external pressure to “imitate the West” by adopting many of its democratic institutions and norms. Despite the advantages this may have brought, it also has generated feelings of a loss of sovereignty and ushered in a period of growing malaise. As global authoritarian forces continue to rise, even the once seemingly consolidated democracies of Central Europe appear to be turning away from “Western” values of liberalism and embracing their own notion of “the real Europe.” Ivan Krastev will analyze this shift, explaining why illiberal and anti-Western sentiments continue to rise. He will also discuss how democratic forces can respond to these vexing challenges.

'Constitutional Resilience - How Can a Democratic Constitution Survive an Autocratic Majority?' - WZB Berlin, 13-14 November 2018

Full details here

13 - 14 November 2018

Constitutional Resilience

How Can a Democratic Constitution Survive an Autocratic Majority?

Authoritarianism has been undergoing a reinvention in recent years. It no longer attacks democracy and the rule of law up front but instead tries to adopt the language and even (at least nominally) the institutions of democratic constitutionalism to promote its autocratic aims from within.

'Constitutionalism and Constitutional Design in Democratic Recession' - SPSA Annual Conference, Belgrade, Serbia, 23-24 September 2018

Full details here

Application deadline: 1 July 2018

Constitutions were seen as a crucial component of democratization and conflict regulation in the last few decades. As a result, related studies in normative political theory, constitutional law, comparative politics and democratisation studies grew substantially. And yet, global democratic recession, which have confronted old and new democracies in the last few years, raises important questions about the role of constitutionalism and constitutional design in the new context.

'The Shrinking Democratic Space – with Gillian Triggs and Sharon Abraham-Weiss' - Melbourne, 25 November 2018

Full details here

In Israel and Australia, civil society and human rights voices are under attack. A backlash against the very idea of democracy is evident as governments adopt more repressive measures to curb individual rights and silence critical voices. Join former Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs and executive director of Israel’s largest human rights organisation, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Sharon Abraham-Weiss, to delve into these disturbing trends in both Israel and Australia.

Asser Institute Annual Lecture 2018: 'International law and the far right: Reflections on law and cynicism' - Peace Palace, The Hague, the Netherlands, 29 November 2018

Full details here

The fourth Annual T.M.C. Asser lecture will be delivered by Prof. Martti Koskenniemi on 29 November at the Peace Palace. In his lecture, Prof. Koskenniemi will address the role of international law in dealing with the rising far right, as the backlash against global rule and the international institutions of the liberal 1990s continues. Here is an abstract by Prof. Koskenniemi giving a glimpse of the topic:

Conference - 'Democratic Failure' - Boston University School of Law, USA, 28 September 2018

Full details here

Democratic Failure

We invite you to attend a conference on Democratic Failure to be held at Boston University School of Law on Friday, September 28.

For some time, discourse about democracy in the United States and around the world has been marked by concerns about dysfunction, extreme partisanship, and deadlock. More recently, this discourse has taken a darker, even apocalyptic turn, to talk about crisis, failure, or death. What is democratic failure? Does it presuppose a conception of democratic success and of the preconditions for success? How does democratic failure differ from or relate to other political or constitutional maladies, such as dysfunction, crisis, or rot? How might a democracy fail? How might it be saved?

Workshop: 'The State of Liberal Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe' - Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, 6 December 2018

Full details here

Application deadline: 25 November 2018

The state of liberal democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. Workshop on the I·CONnect-Clough Center 2017 Global Review of Constitutional Law

The state of liberal democracy in Central and Eastern Europe

Workshop on the I·CONnect-Clough Center 2017 Global Review of Constitutional Law