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Category: <span>Dispatches</span>

Dispatches

Category: Dispatches

The Resurgence of Illiberalism

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Dark Times, But Not Apocalypse This is a substantial collection of essays, including liberal, conservative and left-wing perspectives on the rise of illiberal populism as exemplified by the Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS). By focusing on Poland, the volume represents a theoretical contribution to general studies of populist and illiberal threats to democracies that simultaneously helps experts and non-experts understand the situation in Poland. As an East …

The Liberal Mind Might Have Been Shot,

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but It Missed the Elephant in the Room There is something telling about naming a book The End of the Liberal Mind, when you have to wait till the very end to find the slightest of hints what liberalism is supposed to mean. Is it a philosophical idea? A political concept? An economic system? An emotion? The danger of looking solely at illiberalism when trying to understand liberalism …

The Reinventing of the Liberal Mind

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For decades, I’ve learned about America by studying Poland, and used my American experience to understand Poland, and worked to contribute to sociological and political theory along the way. By studying Polish alternative theater in the 1970s, I came to appreciate the importance of constituting alternative spaces of free public life, what I later called “the politics of small things.” When I examined the culture and language of …

Thinking About The Crisis of Liberal Democracy Through a Polish Lens

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A Symposium on The End of the Liberal Mind: Poland’s New Politics, edited by Jarosław Kuisz and Karolina Wigura (Kultura Liberalna Foundation: Warsaw, 2020) Symposium Introduction by Jeffrey C. Isaac Introduction to The End of the Liberal Mind by Karolina Wigura Critical commentaries by  Szabolcs László, Six Appraisals of the Illiberal Mind Dagmar Kusá, The Hyperdemocracy of “Our People” Oana Băluță, The Resurgence of Illiberalism: Dark Times, But …

Book Introduction: Diagnosing the End of the Liberal Mind

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Intro to ‘The End of the Liberal Mind: Poland’s New Politics’ Just a few years ago, it seemed that Poland had reached the end of history. The country appeared to be a fulfillment of Francis Fukuyama’s 1990 assertion that liberal democracy was the final, ultimate form of government. How could it be that a nation showcased as the most successful example of democratic transition in East-Central Europe has …

Symposium Introduction

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The End of the Liberal Mind: Poland’s New Politics, edited by Jarosław Kuisz and Karolina Wigura (Kultura Liberalna Foundation: Warsaw, 2020) That liberal democracy as a distinctive form of governance is in crisis requires no argument here, and skeptical readers need go no further than the many essays published right here, at Democracy Seminar, to find evidence if evidence is needed. Democracy Seminar, as a platform and as …

Six Appraisals of the Illiberal Mind

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The recent history of Hungarian-Polish relations reveals two opposite processes in the troubled chronicles of democracy in Central Europe. In the 1980s, the founders of the Hungarian democratic opposition were inspired by Polish dissidents and travelled to Poland to learn the tactics of underground activism from the Solidarity movement. This grassroots transfer in the service of building up liberal democracy was contrasted in the 2010s by an inverse …

Republican Attacks on Voting Rights Are Racist and Hostile to Democracy

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Resistance to these Republican assaults can and should take a number of forms. The Republican Party’s assault on constitutional democracy continues unabated. Over 20 restrictive voting laws have already been enacted this year (the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights Roundup is an indispensable resource for monitoring ongoing developments). And in the past two weeks two further Republican body blows were delivered to democratic equality.  First, on June 22 Senate Republicans exploited archaic …

My Arrest in Poland

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The authorities hadn’t expected an American to be at this obscure performance _____ “At the time the circumstances of my arrest in Poland seemed trivial. I hardly thought about them afterward. But now, when I consider the fall of 1989, and the fall of communism, my little run in with the Polish authorities seems highly suggestive of how things were then and what has since come to be.” …

The history of revolutions

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Democracy in action or democracy in turmoil? A conversation with Yevhenii Monastyrskyi, a Luhansk native, historian, and sociologist. Interviewer: Simona Merkinaite, Vilnius University, Open Lithuania Foundation. SIMONA MERKINAITE: With the people taking over public squares in Belarus, we can see a very unique moment to reflect on the politics of revolution. There are basically two ways to look at the street protests and civil disobedience erupting around Europe …