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CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
X-WR-CALNAME:Authoritarian Near Miss: The Future of the Polish Democracy af
 ter the Populist Defeat 
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Eastern Time (US & Canada)
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260905T202310Z
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_44693316169378
DTSTART:20231130T213000Z
DTEND:20231130T230000Z
DESCRIPTION:The resounding victory of the Polish opposition on October 15 b
 ewildered many comparative political scientists. The loose coalition of li
 berals\, leftists\, and Christian Democrats defied international trends by
  out-competing the ruling Law and Justice party (“PiS”) in a barely fr
 ee and grotesquely unfair ballot held eight years after PiS’s 2015 ascen
 t to power. The speakers – prof. Maciej Kisilowski of Central European U
 niversity in Vienna and prof. Anna Wojciuk of the University of Warsaw –
  will discuss the significance of the Polish election while resisting the 
 temptation to declare an(other) democratic “end of history.” Instead\,
  they will focus on what can be done to minimize the risk of a future auth
 oritarian recurrence.\n\nThey will start by analyzing the possible causes 
 of that unexpected victory. Contrasting the Polish case with other example
 s of electoral authoritarianism\, they will discuss: the role of the US an
 d the EU in preserving democracy in Poland\, COVID-related economic and po
 litical crises\, freedom and pluralism of the media\, civil society\, and 
 the strategies adopted by democratic opposition.\n\nThe second part of the
  presentation will cover “Umówmy się na Polskę” [“Let’s Agree o
 n Poland”] – a recently published volume edited by Kisilowski and Wojc
 iuk in which a diverse group of 28 Polish intellectuals\, representing vie
 ws from the left to the conservative right\, present a comprehensive propo
 sal for a democratic constitutional reform. Acclaimed as “the most impor
 tant book about Polish politics since 1989” by Poland’s main “Polity
 ka” opinion weekly and as “a decisive step forward in the reconstructi
 on of Polish democracy” by Prof. Bruce Ackerman of Yale University\, the
  volume advocates for a new social contract – a set of constitutional ru
 les accepted by citizens of both progressive and conservative political le
 anings. The authors argue that the key to developing such rules\, and thus
  to the emergence of a genuinely consolidated democracy in Poland\, is gre
 ater involvement of provincial and municipal governments\, as well as citi
 zens\, in the mechanisms of governing the country.\n\nPoland’s deep\, ge
 ographically asymmetrical polarization makes the country’s challenges re
 markably relevant for the US audience. The discussion of the Kisilowski-Wo
 jciuk constitutional proposal for Poland may therefore elucidate the diffi
 cult choices that democrats around the world face when dealing with the mo
 dern wave of right-wing authoritarian populism.
GEO:42.447296;-76.482254
LOCATION:Uris Hall\, G08
SUMMARY:Authoritarian Near Miss: The Future of the Polish Democracy after t
 he Populist Defeat 
URL;VALUE=URI:https://events.cornell.edu/event/authoritarian_near_miss_the_
 future_of_the_polish_democracy_after_the_populist_defeat
CATEGORIES:Lecture
CATEGORIES:Roundtable
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