“New populism in Central and Eastern Europe”, XV International Student Conference “Politics & Society in Central and Eastern Europe”, Wroclaw, 4 December 2018. Deadline for submitting an abstract: 18 November 2018. The Institute of Political Science of the University of Wroclaw invites students and PhD candidates to submit their proposals for the XV International Student Conference “Politics & Society in Central and Eastern Europe”, 4 December 2018. The conference is designed to enable the presentation of research findings of young researchers interested in current developments in Central and Eastern European politics and societies. The theme for the upcoming conference is “New populism in Central and Eastern Europe”.
Within just a few years new populism has become one of the main forces in European and American political systems. Among the most important characteristics of populism is its ambiguity: populists can be right-wingers or left-wingers, haves or not-haves, charismatic leaders or politicians without special charisma, self-proclaimed democrats or tough critics of democracy. What they share is the idea of socio-cultural superiority of the people (populus) to elites maintaining a political system, identified as corrupted and exploiting ordinary members of the society. New populism has been particularly strong also in Central and Eastern European countries which makes it an important subject for research with a goal of delivering a solid diagnosis and interpretation of the current situation in different and broad contexts. In fact, populism is always shaped by context rather than a political doctrine, however the Central and Eastern European perspective would add to existing case studies and support further research on populism as such.
We welcome proposals addressing the following as well as other topics related to the theme of the conference:
• essential characteristics of new populism in the Central and Eastern European countries
• faces and narrations of new populism in CEE
• relation between new populism and democracy in CEE (is new populism democratic or not?)
• similarities and differences between populists in CEE
• sources, drivers and consequences of new populism in CEE
• Central and Eastern European exceptionalism – does new populism in CEE differ from that in other European countries?
• populist policies in CEE (social, economic, fiscal, legal, historical, international, environmental, health)
• moral, economic, social, legal and cultural assessment of new populism in CEE
• costs and benefits of populism
• responses to populism in CEE and their effectiveness
• is going populist becoming inevitable and necessary to win elections (against populists)?
• semantics of populism – pejorative, neutral or positive?
• is CEE more or less vulnerable to populism than Western Europe?
• methods and techniques of studying populism
• political marketing of populists in CEE
• populism and media in CEE.
To submit an abstract, please send an email to political.science@uwr.edu.pl with the following information:
• participant(s) name(s), title or level of studies and affiliation;
• a title of the presentation;
• a short abstract of the paper (up to 250 words) containing your topic description, main theses/ conclusions and methods.
Important dates:
• 11 October 2018 – Call for abstracts opens
• 18 November 2018 – Call for abstracts closes
• until 19 November 2018 – notification of acceptance
• 23 November 2018 – the announcement of the final conference programme.
Additional information:
• no participation/attendance fee;
• participants are expected to cover their own travel and accommodation expenses;
• participants will be awarded certificates confirming presentation of a paper;
• If accepted, the papers can be published in Polish Political Science Review.
Conference coordinator: Dr. Paweł Nowakowski (pawel.nowakowski@uwr.edu.pl)
