The social sciences have long been heavily influenced by modernization theory, focusing on issues of economic growth, political development and social change, in order to develop a predictive model of linear progress for developing countries following a Western prototype. Under this hegemonic paradigm of development, the world tends to get divided into simplistic binary oppositions between the ‘West’ and the ‘rest’, ‘us’ and ‘them’ and ‘self’ and ‘other’.

https://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/materials/Political-Remittances-Poster.pdf

The 7th Annual Oxford Fulbright Distinguished Lecture in International Relations is entitled ‘Universities in an Age of Populism' and will be given by Professor Louise Richardson, Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford.

Please join us for this event, which will take place in the Pichette Auditorium, Pembroke College at 5pm-6.30pm on 16th June 2017.

Professor Philip Howard's Inaugural Lecture: Is Social Media Killing Democracy? Computational Propaganda, Algorithms, Automation and Public Life

A panel discussion of the result of the 2017 General Election and its implications for British politics and public policy in the next few years.

Centripetal democracy is the idea that legitimate democratic institutions set in motion forms of citizen practice and representative behaviour that serve as powerful drivers of political identity formation. Partisan modes of political representation in the context of multifaceted electoral and direct democratic voting opportunities are emphasised on this model. There is, however, a strain of thought predominant in political theory that doubts the democratic capacities of political systems constituted by multiple public spheres.

Why are there so few advocates for state-mediated economic redistribution and social welfare in contemporary Myanmar (Burma)? Moving beyond a focus on the regime-led political transition since 2011, this seminar explores how informal institutions generated during following the collapse of socialism in 1988 shape contemporary distributive politics.