Call for papers: “Populist Constitutionalism: Theory and Practice in East-Central Europe”
18 - 19 September 2018
The conference examines the relationship between populism, constitutionalism, and the rule of law, in the context of recent political developments in East-Central Europe. Most constitutionalists regard populism is as incompatible with liberal-democratic constitutionalism. Mattias Kumm for one states that ‘populists are a greater threat to liberal-democratic constitutionalism than the minority of religiously fundamentalist immigrants ever could be’. In recent years, East-Central Europe has seen populists actively engaging with constitutional reform and even constitution-making. In many of instances - in particular in Hungary and Poland, but not only - populists claim to be constructing an alternative constitutional order, in an at least partial critical contrast to liberal-democratic constitutionalism. How are these attempts at creating populist constitutional order to be understood, both th eoretically and practically? Are the claims and justifications of populists to be dismissed out of hand, as in David Landau’s notion of ‘abusive constitutionalism’? And why is it that in particularly the more consolidated democracy in the region populism has emerged? Should liberal-democratic constitutionalism be significantly strengthened in the face of the populist challenge? Or has the democratic transformation process in some ways been problematic, now leading to an important backlash? And is the populism-constitutionalism nexus a more complex one, and do we need to find ways to understand potentially deeper, historical and structural causes of the relative weakness that liberal-democratic institutions have shown in confronting populist ‘counter-constitutional revolutions’?
Confirmed speakers:
Jiri Priban (Cardiff Law School)
Bojan Bugaric (Faculty of Law in Ljubljana)
Renata Deskoska (Law faculty "Iustinianus Primus" - Skopje, Macedonia)
Tanasije Marinković (Faculty of Law in Belgrade)
Gárdos-Orosz Fruzsina (HAS Centre for Social Sciences, Institute for Legal Studies)
Djordje Gardasevic (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Law)
Petr Agha (Institute of State and Law, Czech Academy of Sciences and Charles University Law School)
Paul Blokker (Institute of Sociological Studies (ISS) )
Marta Bucholc (Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities)
Silvia Suteu (UCL Faculty of Laws)
Organised by: Institute of State and Law (Czech Academy of Sciences) and Department of Political Sciences and Sociology (Faculty of Law, Charles University)
To apply for participation, scholars are invited to submit an abstract of their take on the core concerns of the conference (250words). Deadline for applications: September 1st 2018, by email to: petr.agha@centrum.cz.