The apparent triumph of democracy attributed to the revival of civil society in Eastern Europe and neo-liberal energies at the end of the 20th century has yielded to grimmer assessments for democracy and capitalism in the 21st century in the wake of economic crisis, the rise of populist authoritarianism, climate disaster, and war. East-West geopolitical tensions and North-South inequalities challenge Europe and America.

Sustainable peace after conflict requires reconciliation of former adversaries. But, people in post-conflict societies often resist or even reject reconciliation both as a concept and practice. While reconciliation may be desirable, the question is: can people reconcile in the aftermath of mass atrocity, and how do we know they can?

The global trading system is increasingly being affected by geopolitical tensions. This raises important challenges for the development of European trade policy. The talk will look at the multilateral (WTO), regional and autonomous dimension and discuss how EU trade policy is being affected by the new geopolitical environment. It will look in particular into EU policy on WTO reform and the possible development of a EU strategy on economic security.

In cooperation with RESC

LESZEK KOŁAKOWSKI LECTURE
Chair: Timothy Garton Ash (St Antony’s College, Oxford)

This talk will give an overview of the U.S. 2020 Facebook and Instagram Election Study, a partnership between Meta researchers and independent external academics to understand the impact of Facebook and Instagram on key political attitudes and behaviors during the US 2020 elections. Following the principles of independence, transparency, and consent, this project has implemented innovative features for this type of collaboration, such as pre-registration of analysis plans, no pre-publication approval by Meta, IRB review, and the release of data required to enable replication.

Theory and causal mechanism figures appear relatively often in theory chapters. The goal is almost always to provide an overview of a, perhaps somewhat complicated, causal mechanism that the author is proposing. Yet there is virtually nothing methodological literature about how one is supposed to do these mechanism figures: people just do it. The talk then surveys a variety of issues and provide suggestions about how to construct mechanism figures and what they should contain. This must then be at the same time guidelines on theorizing causal mechanisms.

Manifestations of minority religions in the public space – such as religious structures, attire, and insignia – are amongst the most contentious issues in the current immigration debate. Despite the vast political importance of this issue, and the empirical evidence that exposure to religious cues influences attitudes, research on the impact of manifestations of religion in the public space is scarce and focused on host society members. Furthermore, theories propose conflicting predictions about the potential effects of exposure to religion in the public space.