"This is perhaps the most important election of our lifetime. The very future of our democracy is at stake." A week after another 'existential' US ballot with huge implications for the entire world, this seminar will discuss whether the current democratic strategy of relying exclusively on repeated narrow victories over radical conservative revolutionaries is sustainable, or a new social contract is instead necessary.
For Professor Anna Wojciuk, her home country of Poland provides a good case study and a starting point for the discussion of the topic. Like a number of other democratic countries, Poland has faced deep political polarisation. It also survived the rule of right-wing authoritarians.
The seminar will start with comparing the current state of affairs with the constitutional proposal, presented in the book Let's Agree on Poland, co-edited by Anna Wojciuk and Maciej Kisilowski (CEU). The volume became a 2023 Polish bestseller and is forthcoming in English by Oxford University Press. Can decentralisation and broadening of the engagement of citizens become a part of a new social contract? Is it time for a difficult and controversial institutional compromise with the Right? Is a progressive-conservative social contract even possible? Should we give up our dreams about a better constitutional solution for the times of polarisation?
Professor Kalypso Nikolaidis, one of the contributors to the volume, invites all of us to join the discussion about this project of hope and peace: "I have a dream about dreams. In this dream, I walk. I walk around the world in search of places where humans have found better to live together. Oh no, not in harmony. Simply in peace, social peace, in peace and in joy."
You will find our core ideas in video form here.
The registered participants will receive a draft manuscript of the Introduction and the first chapter of the English version of the book. Please note that the fragments cannot be used for purposes other than this seminar, for copyright reasons.