Panel Discussions: Liberalism in Crisis: Between Totalitarian Responses and Progressive Dreams

[Music] welcome everyone to the second panel we have more or less the same participants around in the discussion around the table and two keynote presentations let's call them that way by vanillin Ghana who is a professor of political science at Miami University yes and he is a visiting fellow of a WM has the title of this his project is well adición the loser after the accession Delich democratic governance in post accession Eastern Europe and then we have Adam Ramsay he is the editor of open democracy media platform in London and his project title here the Institute is understanding the elite networks driving the far right so I am assuming where this it reaches this is because I confused his yeah our roles our respective roles so that you would be the moderator and then we have even and it's no special presentation so the theme where we are basically continuing with the themes of this morning this morning we were discussing the totalitarian responses and progressive dreams now we are returning to the main question as to whether the liberal democracies exists or what is at stake behind this notion so I first give floor to with anything I'll take you know a little present the question whether the liberal democracies exist but first let me say there's a conversation about this regime type does exist and I'm not sure when it started in 1997 when Fareed Zakaria published an article entitled the rise of the liberal democracy in the influential journal Foreign Affairs so I think in some sense engaging Sicarius ideas or what might be called as a carrion template is inevitable when perhaps heuristic Lee enriching but and that's the first thing I would like to say we need to be intellectually alert so I will make a plea for intellectual alertness when we approach the phenomenon we've been observing over the last thousand years we should resist the temptation to resort to well-known historical analogies and seemingly common sensical comparisons and the reason for that is that actually the case is that Zakaria was working with the countries he was looking at technical terms his universe of cases was quite different from what we meet those of us who try to understand what's been happening in Eastern Europe over the last ten years so the cases he's looking at are quite quite different these cases might be correct his cases might be characterized as incomplete democratization you know in his own words because they'll be quoting a lot so what he examines are countries that fail to mature into liberal democracy so he's looking at some kind of let's call them equilibria which emerged as many autocracies began to democratize and what happened there to some right summarize his you is that elections were pretty fair votes were currently counted but practices of Liberal governance failed to take root so the question the carrier was asking is why of the two components of liberal democracy democracy kind of began to emerge it did materialize but liberalism did not this is a curious question what we observe in Eastern Europe out diuresis is quite different because the path which countries like Poland Hungary and so forth followed is not one of incomplete democratization so what happened there they are product I mean they might be cold little democracies but their product of a very different political dynamic named it the amputation of liberal components from the Democratic body politic that's what created a liberal democracy in Eastern Europe so this might sign sound like a minor detail how the fact that you know in what we have in one case the Koreas case is incomplete democratization and what we have in our cases to Europe is you know I call it Democratic backsliding we my idea about the description that might sound like a minor detail because the outcome is roughly similar but it's not a minor detail so let me now the end here's my plea for intellectual alertness don't just you know transpose the Korea's thinking to Eastern Europe so what are the implications of these two different parts in complete democratization as opposed to Democratic backsliding I can think of four implications of these of this fact that we reached roughly similar outcome but through different paths or trajectories first and professor roughly talked about that today the first implication is that we cannot indicates of Eastern Europe I would argue kind of disagreeing with professors opening we cannot and should not invoke the law of do I know even though I am a fan of sanam hotel but I don't think it's going to work in this case in other words looking at some kind of constants like political culture illiberal practices in the case of the courier he talks about ethnic strife to explain the Democratic backslide and the reason for that is that those who invoke Poland for example Poland's pasts in order to explain Poland's recent backsliding will find an impossible to explain why from the early 90s until 2015 for more than 20 years all commentators and analysts including the Kerry himself celebrated Poland as a fairly decent liberal democracy so the explanation we have to give to the backsliding must be such that it accounts both for the very very true and palpable and tangible progress between the early 90s and the early in the late 2000s and then the the democratic backsliding explanations of this peculiar pattern that look deeply into a country's past strike news methodologically unsound second difference the carrier looks for a very good reason at institutional design and most of the cases key examines feature very strong presidency Russia for example by the way when I reread Zakaria was struck by his prophecy here here's what he says about Yeltsin in 1997 he may well be a Liberal Democrat at heart but the Elsie's actions have created a Russian super presidency we can only hope his successor will not abuse it well we all know what his successor did so he says you know the reason why we have these problems the card is because of institutional design I don't think that works in Eastern Europe at all you know there were some countries where constitutional design was a problem most notably perhaps lavake aware it wasn't really clear how power is distributed between the president and the Prime Minister but these problems were fixed and I frankly don't think that the argument that backsliding is because of the waste institutions were designed makes a lot of sense third we need to be more sociological than Zakaria because what he ot motley describes is the preservation of a status quo so this there is kind of a status quo it changes a little bit in the sense that elections now matter but it doesn't change a whole lot because ebal liberalism does persists so his accounts I mean if he needs a sociology to explain that but not a whole lot we in contrast we need to do sociological work because things did change rather dramatically right the status quo was completely revamped it was reconfigured quite drastically quite rapidly so then given what happened we need to be asking questions like you know what social groups support the illiberal projects why do they support it what is the matrix of social meanings and imaginings that shape their preferences of those who support the projects this is what I mean when I say that we in contrast to the courier we need to be more sociological so here are three problems with Zakaria I mean that they're not problems for Sicari they're promised for those who uncritically take his template and apply to Eastern Europe short lengthy causal chains focus on methods in the institutional design and lack of the exploration of the sociological dimension of political change today I'll find of a default problem so when the carrier described the country is democratic but not liberal he was referring to the opinion of people like himself so there will be analysts experts commentators and so forth but the agents that he was told like the political actors the leaders of countries like Singapore so I'm talking about the 90 singapore slovakia peru zambia these are countries that he deals with these leaders did not invoke this juxtaposition they didn't say you know what i'm doing is democratic but it's not liberal know what their defense or you know rhetoric was you know i am building a liberal democracy in my own country except that I'm trying to adjust this project to local circumstances seeing the poor is different from Germany therefore liberal democracy is seeing the problem luck will be quite dissimilar for German that was the argument whereas now this distinction just the position between democracy and liberalism is drawn by the actors themselves they themselves say what I'm doing here is certainly democracy that reflects the will of the people but it's not little reason because I neither I nor my people like liberalism so that is really something new and it is at this juncture that now answer the question does illiberal democracy exist my answer is yes but obviously my approach to these questions if we will phenomenological I'm not talking about what actually exists out there I'm not talking about conceptual distinctions or scholarly discourse is I'm talking about the rhetoric of political actors themselves they are the ones who tell us you know what we have here is a democracy that is not not in that sense it does exist so it seems to me that this project of building an illiberal democracy can only work if the respective leaders people like Corbin Kachinsky put in America the project crucially depends on their ability rhetoric of ability to draw the opposition democracy versus liberalism as sharply and as graphically as possible and then to convince domestic constituencies as well as the international audiences that what they're doing is proudly liberal so it's not some sort of a folk reef or a liberalism it's proudly liberal and at the same time reflective of the wave of the people and therefore fully democratic so for the project to succeed they must be many these juxtaposition so in terms of political rhetoric what is it that lends credence to this distinction how can it be made to resonate with larger social constituencies and why have the political entrepreneurs that reiterate this distinction why have they been so successful obviously this is a very complex question but I'm gonna focus on one thing which I'm sure will make me very unpopular in this room I'll be probably expelled from this children and banned from ever setting foot in the building again but my argument is the DC liberal enterpreneurs can and do draw on a globally available power resource and this power resource is the aggressive rhetoric of anti neoliberalism what I refer to is the rapid rise and consolidation of a particular grand narrative in my reference to do tar is not accident it is a grand narrative that explains every problem in every corner of the world as an unfortunate but avoidable after effect of something called new liberal economic reforms new liberal appoints whatever that means so by the early 2000s which is about the time when Slavoj Zizek was officially announced as the most inflationary intellectual in the world this rep this grand narrative had attained a hegemonic status iota you're going branchy not coincident my reference in intellectual circles in academia and the mainstream media particularly in English media in English the Luke diffusors leading pundits academic superstars like Jesus himself and the most popular op-ed writers converge or an interpretive framework which I call Monaco so mono diable is amano diabolism which means the entire world is subservient to one evil force when that's new liberalism and this evil force is the ultimate source of all problems Monaco's or moral deities so but but first let me say I don't really know what you liberalism is the term is thrown around frequently never really defined because as soon as you define it it's very easy to demonstrate it has absolutely nothing to do with this European politics in the 1990s it is indiscriminately applied to basically always European politicians from let's say culture which in which case I understand but also Putin has been called neoliberalism and from that Slav Klaus and again I can see the point but also to Bulgaria circus tanishav who's a proud socialist but has been described as newly parolee form so the other thing I do not understand is how is a new liberal different from a liberal in a country like the United States Square libero means the exact opposite of what it means everywhere else in the world so liberal would be someone on the Left more redistribution more on Thursday I see the point okay liberals are on the left new liberals are on the right but if by liberal mean classical liberal someone who believes in freedom someone who valorizes individual rights including the right to property in Salem of contracts and one who believes in limited government then I find it really hard to seem in a British context for example how is a little different from a new liberal and it's some parts of the world like Eastern Europe this distinction makes no sense whatsoever because the same individuals who will insist on freedoms contract stable property rights limited governments will also be tolerant of you know gays and lesbians will support refugees and we do believe in the rule or it's the same group of people there may be some you know economic aspects and ultimately it's the same because if he stole and this is a contextual thing I mean it's it's a characteristic feature of Eastern Europe I think professor opening refer to these are the for medicinal so for them it's all one thing so every stone thrown a little neoliberal in Eastern Europe will fall on a liberals head and the permanent marginalization of you resulting in the marginalization liberalism to quote so let me now conclude by showing how this grant narrative you know the grand narrative about neoliberal villainy is strategically deployed by actors like Viktor Orban in Eastern Europe in order to legitimate the rise of a liberal democracy so this grand narrative one of its like anti neoliberalism like all grand narratives it's actually fairly easy to summarize first it is a form of very aggressively to perative scapegoating ultimately it's all about who's to blame who's to blame and the essence causes the new liberals it reduces all complex questions to just this one what is the guilty party nurse it's very easy you know the leo liberals so in Eastern Europe the story goes like that in the aftermath of 1989 Western profit seekers unleashed a large-scale effort to integrate the former second world into a global economic system that serves the interests of capital this project was carried out with the collusion of local lackeys of capital which are called new liberal reformers what these reformers did was enesta sighs local populations with promises of consumerist bliss and then push them into the abyss of actually existing capitalism that is why these new liberals new liberals who must be held accountable for every single suffering inflicted on post communist society from poverty social dislocation and economic marginalization to the mistreatment of minorities gender inequality and the demographic shrinkage none sure as even knows even the collapse of Yugoslavia some explained with reference to pouches new liberal reforms so even even that because of course it is therefore imperative to resist the West's new colonial imposition by disempowering local politicians who endorse rather than repudiate the Western principles and values which progressive critics have long since discredited foremost about among these discredited values is freedom another important tenet of the anti neoliberal grand narrative is that freedom is a meaningless concept unless you possess a decent amount of cash from this vantage point political system that valorized rhythm like liberal democracy are inherently duplicitous and morally corrupt because they guarantee to the people something that people don't really need freedom and denying the people what the people really want which is more money and money of course I mean in the most general sense finally what's wrong with liberals and new liberals is that they consistently apply what is called critical reason to overly ambitious governmental plans beginning with Adam Smith onwards classical liberals have always reminded audiences willing to listen that governments can be as corrupt short-sighted and self-interested as private corporations thus the Liberals with their skepticism and criticisms they create an environment or a climate of opinion that is permeated that is inimical to the government's ambition to radically and quickly resolve societal problems liberal doubts about the efficiency efficacy efficacy a normative justification of government election this neuter or blunt the only instrument which according to progressive is lower humankind cues in order to protect itself from the slings and arrows of an outrageous fortune to quote Hamlet the famous sceptic and that instrument is the series of massive comprehensive and forceful governmental interventions backed by the threat of coercion so that's the grant global anti new liberal narrative how is it applied to Eastern Europe I'm gonna discuss now conclude with this or the only sort of comprehensive statement theoretical ideological statement of liberal defending a liberal democracy which we have so far and there is almost 12 2014 speech in Transylvania one of his main complaints or band's complaints is that the Hungarian state was organized in accordance with what he called the Libero organizational logic by which he meant that the powers of the state to intervene in various spheres of life including the economy and the NGO sector this power should be limited that'sthat's the liberal Soros idea the problem with this logic or bananas is that it was imposed on the Hungarian people from abroad he proudly announced that since 2010 something in 2010 is when feeders came to power entirely new project has been created in an entirely new Hungary is being created which he described as an ANA little state organization originating in the national interest clearly orbán's project encountered resistance in Hungary there were those who you know protested and disagreed with with his vision of hungry but he could dismiss them using the tropes of the anti neoliberal discourse more specifically he depicted his opponent the self-interested actors who are ready to hurt their own people in order to serve the interests of the West's feelings reforms were resisted he said by political activists paid by forums so any association with the West even if you just took a grant from the West any painting the local activists and turns them into conveyors the falling of foreign influence : also made it clear that unlike liberal democracy any liberal democracy dedicated to the pursuit of the people's real interests does not recognise any limitations on its power to intervene in societal Affairs and announce that I quote this is what he did a committee will be formed in the Hungarian Parliament that deals with constant monitoring recording and publishing foreign attempts to gain influence in other words contacts between local NGOs and in Western sport its sponsors secondly he exposed libero talk about venomous misleading and deceitful here's what he says about Friedman I quote this idea is very attractive on an intellectual level yet it is not clear who is going to tell where the point is when my freedom is violated and as nobody was appointed to decide this therefore every everyday live experience suggests that it was the stronger party that decided this we constantly feel that the weaker were stepped upon so this is the classic anti liberal idea that freedom is nothing it's just a facade behind which the strong exploit the weak this is exactly the argument orbán uses when he says you know why worry about freedom so much what's the big deal first of all it's meaningless and second of all it's part of an alien agenda the only way forward or bond asserts is to and I quote again allow the political leadership to prioritize the interests and achievements of the community in the nation over the interests and achievements of individuals finally Orban has no patience with libera skepticism about the ameliorative effects of large-scale governmental action the problem with liberal democracy Orban pointed out is that it was too timid it could not possibly and I quote openly declare even obliged governments with constitutional power to declare that they should serve national interests moreover it even questioned the existence of national interests in other words again the liberal idea that we actually do not know what the national interest is and we need to talk about it and figure it out says it's pretty clear what imagine it this is what the government says because it has a democratic mandate and any objection to this like any plea for further deliberations simply in peace the government's sincere and benevolent efforts to improve the quality of life for its citizens so liberal democracy is depicted by Orban and others and put in by the way clip is a crippled political system because it's the existential energies have been sapped and it's healthy eating for self-preservation diluted by liberal narrative that features checks and balances the rule of law and seemingly universal in fact hollow values in contrast illiberal democracies both ambitious and daring technologies the fact that the order of the day is global competition or among economic interests but about nations so the Orban's pledge at the end of his peak is that what he described these day free as an era of liberal state and liberal democracy is over and an unabashedly liberalism is being established that will and I quoting figure out forged and work out a new form of state organization that will make the community of hungarians competitive once again the truth about the world we live in it seems is that success is guaranteed only Tooele barrel states that recognize no limits on their economic social and cultural actions in conclusion I would like to sum up that I made four points the first one is empirical backsliding in Eastern Europe is different from being complete democratization in the 90s the second is methodological we need to be having research design comes to mind here but it's a technical term we need to be careful about the comparisons we draw as we try to understand what's happening in Eastern Europe my third point is political and that it is that the success of a liberal projects depends on the ability of leaders to articulate the dichotomy or it's not a juxtaposition probably is better between liberalism in democracy and my fourth point is polemic openly polemical in my view the unstoppable rise of the anti neoliberal grandiloquence and the syste incantation of its battle cry a carousel and farm like just eliminating if the neoliberals could somehow disappear like Voltaire was do you Catholic priests and everything would be fixed well that created the environment or it was one of several factors that create an environment that facilitated the electoral triumph of xenophobic populist and the permanent marginalization of important values and normative principles in Eastern Europe and last thing I want to say is that there's actually nothing new about this the revolt against liberalism Ortega said wrote a book the revolt of the masses which was published in 1930 where he describes liberalism is noble and refined but also paradoxical and anti naturally there is something anti-natural about liberalism its toleration of my know why should you tolerate the minorities as opposed to breaking their heads if you if you hate them so ortega was wondering what well the same humanity that arrived at this idea should at some point appear anxious to get rid the desire to get rid of liberalism is always there on several occasions historically speaking liberalism has staged a comeback but there is no historical necessity here so we might as well be entering a historical era the historical era of liberal democracy and Europe when democratic actions will no longer be tempered by liberal principles thank you this was quite interesting and systematic I quite enjoyed it okay so next is Adam sure thanks I think I disagreed with 85% of that maybe 90 and so I'm going to talk through why a bit which wasn't what I was planning on saying I think that's probably more interesting than just rambling off from what I was planning to say before I think the first place I'd start is you said that no one ever defines neoliberalism and I I just challenge you to say that's that's simply not true there's lots of people who have attempted and my favorite definition comes from the British sociologist will Davis you know that in seven words which is sublimation of politics to market I personally would see near liberalism as a phase in the history of capitalism so we had colonialism where Western capital conquered much of the world and then what geographically expanded to the boundaries of the world it tempted to turn back on the states which had often supported it doing that and sort of privatize the assets of those states and of course in the middle of that period we saw the collapse of the USSR and therefore the geographic expansion of capital in the kind of halfway through her II had into Eastern Europe and into Russia or anything that's you know a broad way to understand it I also do think there's very many people who think that neoliberalism is the only way to explain problems of the world the world is obviously a complicated place we have structures of power those other than capital gender race sexuality etc and you know I don't think there's almost anyone on the left certainly the modern left you would consider that neoliberalism is the only power structure and therefore entirely to blame for the problems of the world in the way that you sort of characterize I think that you need to be able to analyze the movement of capital in the world and the way that it influences politics without saying it's the only thing that influences politics obviously there's lots of things going on all at once the world is a complicated place I think that you know the way I would see this and in my day job it it's my job to investigate particularly in the UK the sort of ideological structures of power that steer the British state in particular and sometimes to global politics I think the way that I would see this is actually that we've moved beyond neoliberalism and so you know if the new liberal period is as I characterize it kind of driven through the second half by expansion into Eastern Europe and the Russia I think that what we then saw after that was a massive credit bubble and attempt to construct a sort of you know consumer market for capital and then that burst in 2008 and that as you all know had lots of blissed implications around the world and then in the last decade we've seen an attempt to inflate even more asset bubbles and so house prices in Budapest have doubled in the last five years we've seen house prices in Ireland increase so much now that young people are voting for champagne in order to demand an end to the housing bubbles they can afford housing we've seen the sale of inflated assets from Britain from Ireland from Hungary from lots of countries to the Gulf to China to other parts of the world there are generally wealthier than we are and of course those things have left implications I don't mean to say that they're the only things that have produced implications of course lots of other things are going on at once but I think that we can't this can't the significance politically of those basic economic facts the increasing as we're talking before the massive rise in inequality we've seen over the last 30 years has important political implications and so when it is that we investigate how very rich and powerful people and businesses their British politics which is the thing I'm know best but also I can tell you bit about Italian politics a bit about Spanish politics it's consistently the case that a very very wealthy group of people produced by a set of economic policies that have applied in most countries across the Western world the sublimation of politics to the markets has allowed them to take massive control of serious parts of the state so in Britain for example huge amounts of public policy and outsource to people like Price Waterhouse Cooper and the big four that's true of almost every Western government which means that the traditional civil servants that used to make policy no longer do you know I summarize have a game where I just think of a random corner of the state and look up whether PwC or one of the other big accountancy firms has a contract to shape policy in that area and I've met to find one that dozens the biggest donors in the UK to the Labour Party before Corbin came into power after the trade unions were Price Waterhouse Cooper the accountancy firm who was writing Labour's education policy at the same time was advising clients who wanted to privatize education system and run it they were writing papers tax policy at the same time as advising clients who wanted to dodge taxes across the world and this is true of most western states so you know this the extent to which capital is eaten into our state's his billion empty political effects another example of this and I touched on this in my talk yesterday is that in 1996 the government in the UK and other countries started to want to privatize that function of the military that is propaganda so more and more of military in western states have been privatized Britain at the center of that Britain has the world's most mercenary companies and so g4s the biggest employer on the under stock exchanges is in the private mercenary company which has bases in Afghanistan in Iraq at the moment when the Westminster voted not to intervene in Syria they 74 instead of sending British armies and these are mercenaries so the privatizing the very core functions of the stage and one part of the propaganda wing of that the psychological operations thing of that was a company called Street communication laboratories who decided a few years later to spin off an arm called Cambridge Athletica which is who ran Trump's campaign which is effectively who ran the brexit campaign and so we can't understand the way that politics is changing and the kind of powerful actors in it without understanding that the production of a collection of very wealthy individuals and companies which you no longer gain profit in the same way by going around the world but instead are trying to eat up the states on which they previously relied have achieved massive political power in our liberal States and I think that that's not very surprising when we look at the history of Western liberal state so again I'll talk about Britain which is where I'm what I'm most familiar with but you know British political settlement essentially dates from 1661 compromise between the monarchy and aristocracy at the time there's obviously been a series of other compromises in that period in 3d most importantly mass in front in front and Fantasma to women and the working-class but it's still the case that you know Britain most approach into Prime Minister's have come from the same school literally they're only four British universities who have produced a prime minister that you know the civil service was founded impression in the same government as they enfranchise most working-class men explicitly by the person who was responsible for British government policy during the Irish Famine in order to stop policy changing and ensure the ruling class so that control over the British state we still have in Britain you know deeply undemocratic structures which are comparable to other places where in many ways worse know the places the House of Lords I could go on but I think that you can extend the analogy and say that it is the case that you know modern liberal states were a compromise agreed largely in the 17th century and then copied in subsequent years and we're never really an effective way to answer to the question how as people we negotiate how we live together and so it's not surprising that when you go through periods of crisis people those structures and find them alienating I talked a lot about people's experience of government in my talk here yesterday and it's not surprising that people can then be preyed upon now I don't think that you know people like all ban off of the correct solutions I mean what happens is that in that context of anger the people you can take advantage of it are those with most power those with the organizational capacity to mobilize that anger behind their ideology and so this is what produces the or patterns of the world it's what produces you know all the far-right leaders that we see right across the world and it just as an aside to this I also think we need to and again I mentioned this yesterday we need to think much more carefully about the class politics of support for these groups so for those of you here yesterday I gave the statistics on krump supporters who are generally richer than Clinton supporters in 2016 it's the kind of media narrative the from working-class folks in America is just not backed up by any data I talked about breakfast and how most practices or wealthy people from the South of England not the kind of working-class northerners that we normally hear about if you look at Hungary which I'm not an expert in but you look at the basic fact so hungary has 90 percent if you've been hungry and they're at home possibly 85 percent people now in hungary own their own home that was the case or at rather live in a home owned by the family that was 90 percent infidels came to power the asset bubble in hungary has pushed a number of people out of that market particularly young working-class people in major urban centers and those people of people who are now beginning to revolt against food s the people who we see as you know the sort of rural poor although they re in terms of incompr tend to go in their own homes tend to be a new asset owning class and the main product of Thatcherism in the UK was producing people class of people who owned their own homes as asset builders because they understood that those people would likely be conservative because they're a stake in the capitalist economy and that it's not surprising that a country like hungry old Slovakia has similar rates of homeownership tend to produce a fairly conservative base because most people in their own home they earn the most important asset they can have in the economy it's similarly not surprising that the people who can't any longer afford their home because that economy over the last decades didn't propped up through a massive asset bubble and been auctioned off oligarchs of the world through essentially asset stripping beginning to backlash against it and that's why you're getting the elections as I would see it of progressive mayoral candidates in there is a grab for capitals because those countries have seen massive spikes in the housing market and that means people can't afford to buy homes because as has happened in London over the last two decades they're being bought up by by oligarchs and and you know the upper-middle class and so what next I suppose you know for me as I say the construction of states I'm not an expert on Eastern Europe but I would and they copy upon that yan made to me the other day that you know Eastern Europe was taught the told to try and emulate these sort of great examples of Britain and America and what we've seen in the last decades is that Britain and America are not quite examples the democracy there's deep deep crises in the politics of Britain in America and the question for all of us for all western states is in the 21st century in the 2020s how do we govern ourselves in a way that isn't a lien ating that is empowering that understands the people have more access to information than they have ever had before we have the most literate human populations in history the planets burning we have a deep economic crisis and the capital has no idea how to seek it return and its response to that has been mass surveillance in order to desperately try and construct demand in order to make us buy stuff we don't need which is causing the planet to burden and if we don't find a way through this crisis by unleashing your collective genius through some kind of updated version of democracy we're going to be in real trouble so that's Roland Thank You Adam okay I'll have a question for you afterwards now it's thanks a lot I'll try and be brief this is not completely something different but sort of looking at it from from a different angle and I I begin with an article that appeared in The New Yorker in the last issue on on you've al-hariri which I recommend because as you know he's a big are and you know he sort of explains and at one point the journalists who wrote it said well you all says he's really concentrating on the big issues and the big issues for him are climate change is nuclear and especially artificial intelligence and then the journalist says well what about inequality terrorism you know all of these things that we're talking about he says those are secondary this is what we need you know my sort of response to him as I was reading I said well wait a minute you know that's all well and fine but we're living in the here and now and you know I want a kind of a stable life for myself and friends and family and so this is what for him is secondary is primary to me as we tackle of course the the big issues that that we've been discussing I co-edited a volume with Mary Kaldor in 95 96 on democratization in Central and Eastern Europe where we kind of wrote the quote/unquote theoretical introductory chapter and where we used of course the an idea that that others who have written on theory of democracy have have written and that's the difference between substantive and formal democracy this was actually a project for for the European Commission then they asked us obviously that for these countries that we're going to join they asked us to look under the skin of these forming democracies and so that's that's what we try to do and we invited 10 people from from each of the candidate countries to write country chapters and all people that you know and and we wrote the kind of umbrella chapter and we you know came up with this idea how do we describe what's going on and the the simple version of this is yeah you know the institutions are being built we have constant democratic constitutions we have judiciary's that are becoming independent we have you know command economies that are turning into market economies and all the trappings of sort of beginnings of rule of law but they aren't infused with life and they aren't infused with the political culture and it's what many of you and what was saying also at the beginning and our conclusion was you know you have to come up with something in the community we said so these democracies will be kind of suey generous democracies now if you asked us then and now what what did we mean by that we simply meant it will be different than a Swedish democracy or you know a Westminster democracy and that means that and this goes to to the theme of events and Stephen Holmes this book and I sure what many of you others have written you know we in these countries that that were communist or you know sort of softer versions like Yugoslavia we all looked up to Westminster democracy and the green grass in Wimbledon and and the US Congress and it reminds me of two very liberal minded Serbian philosophers whom Jacque and I met in 89 in a cafe of hotel frog on a sunny day Jacques wanted to meet them because they wrote a very kind of critical book called pluralism versus monism I think was the title and they were advocating liberal democracy you know these were supposed to be the people who would take us eventually after 89 and everything else into a liberal liberal democratic or simply democratic society they both turned out of course to nitsa beat Milosevic in the famous elections in in 2000 but the reason I'm mentioning them is that they both turned out to be very nationalists after being very liberal you know they translated Locke they wrote about Tocqueville of course students that translated the Federalist Papers and you know so what happened and this again goes to - you know even theme of hypocrisy they they were then bombed by their ideal by liberal democratic countries and so they sort of to make a long story short they they were became disillusioned and say well let's reach ranch around the flag somewhat more complicated than that but you know we we need to stand up to these evil forces of you know whoever did evil things to us and thus I do believe this this issue of hypocrisy is important and you know I just love you know our new European Foreign Minister Jose por el reminding Polish and other East European friends that you know the the the US and the Vatican that helped them become democratic were the same United States and Vatican that kept Spain and Portugal fascist dictatorships for whatever it was 30 30 odd years and thus things as I think we've all said are somewhat more complicated than simplistic interpretations put to us I think there's sort of a we haven't mentioned political anthropology kind of you know what is it that we have in certain moments mentioned that today but you know where where have we come from well in in this broader part of the world we've come from very rural societies I mean you know up until 1939 most of these societies were whatever it was 80% peasant societies relatively poor except for the you know elites in in educated mostly educated in the West elites then then you have the war and you know when Easter on Bebo writes his book there's that sentence he said but these countries really never had a chance to take a deep breath and go forward because you know you had the First World War then you had this brief period of you know twenty years and then you had a second war and then you know sort of communism was slammed onto them so that they never really got a chance to stand up and then you had the communist period and then you have the opening and I you know I'm one of those and I'm here with with vanillin I think freedom was really important yeah of course money is important people want to live but if I you don't think of myself and sort of people in a broader circle and remember that the dissidents whom we know or knew did have these oases of civil society you know whoever whether it's Elam or honky she wrote about this or our Czech friends who described that you know you do try and create these oases these spaces where you try and live freely surrounded by a dictatorship according this totalitarian system in Yugoslavia it was something different but somewhat different but it still was oppressive so I think the urge and this is where you know call it political anthropology or whatever there is a propensity individual human beings to want to have space to do whatever they want maybe crazy things you know or like Voltaire go do your garden I mean you know not necessarily bigger things than you know living your own quiet life and that's why Benjamin constant think is important when we consider these things and so when when the the floodgates open and and people you know burst forward there is that recognition that the this freedom is possible now what happens after that and that's again was part of this discussion it's a it's a big mess right it it sort of goes in all sorts of directions but the the smear the direction is towards a return to Europe because that's where we belong and you know the Cold War and the Alta didn't allow us to go where we wanted you know my father was a student in Prague in the 30s he was in prison because he was young communists he said look they we had newspapers we had books we were allowed visits it was very very liberal and as we know Prague and Czechoslovakia was a very democratic you know country measured by the 19th and then it gets thrown into into darkness and so there is and this goes to Anna there is a trauma in in all this kind of political anthropology in this development from that rural to whatever went on and then in in communism where you were told to shut up otherwise you would be landed in in jail and suddenly things open up and then in countries like mine which fell apart there's the additional trauma which is our country not only mine and you then have a very weak terrain on which you're actually building this new sandcastle of democracy and what it's standing on are all these remnants of of the deeper substratum of history society sociology you're absolutely right Vannelli and i think you know there's there's a need to understand the sociology of these societies not to mention than the the ethnic differences and the various communist elites in in our country who you know try to retain power and when you know understood that nationalism was a great tool which you know as we've all said we were sort of the harbinger and so whereas we were thinking we were the exception to the wonderful westminster democracy and and the u.s. you know we were to find out later that we were not the exception but something that announced a new wave of of populism and then this this this movement to europe which which was genuine because you know you were regaining a a richer sort of lost family that you had found through through historical dynamic took you in and you know those who came in did it at the right time whereas some of us others did this early nativist identitarian illusion and that if you were doing it by yourself you could somehow do it better taking back control by herself and then only realizing that that it was in an illusion and that you were if you were to survive supposed to join this this bigger world because that was the only Savior however on savory that capitalist world out there was and just you know in passing as many sort of factories are closing down because of the on time supply chain just two days ago it was announced that the car factory in Serbia Fiat was also going to stop or slow down because there weren't parts from China coming I didn't realize that that factory also had parts from China I thought you know they were from other parts of Europe or Italy etc but there were only parts of China so you know someone talked about the globalization I think it was even yeah that's that's a real question you know is it possible at all and even is it even minimally possible to D globalize and you know what is the price and as as our Slovak friends have been saying you know they will be the first victims if the German car producers suddenly are hit by tariffs or China closes down or the u.s. starts closing down so there are really bigger things that are out there and that are rolling behind behind the hill one big question that I think and this is you know under the rubric of not only trying to understand which is extremely important it is also trying to understand but it it's also what is to be done and sort of this is the somewhat activist part of of myself I think there's there's a lack at least in in my country of oppositional intellectual forces trying to understand why is it that these populist leaders who are leaning who have authoritarian leanings what is it that makes them popular you know so yeah we mentioned Poland then the help to family and whatever the equivalents that Orban is engaged in you know you handouts you know and helps of social wear of welfare that have disappeared being brought in but though giving you know whether illusion you're not a sense of certainty to these people a sense of security again whether whether perceived or or or real I think this is something that that you know anyone who tries to oppose these incumbents take something out of the PlayBook that they are using clearly I mean it's all been mentioned the media and the control or or largely and and control but at the same time there's a lot of information that's around there I mean anyone who wants to be informed through social media that are spreading can can do so what what you have and this is I think what we witnessed from early on from the 90s is that in these weak institutionalized democracies early the 90s the tools that are being used by successful political parties are the kind of spaceship cambridge analyticals of this world so they are using kind of algorithms that are tracking plus positive and negative opinions on Twitter and Facebook as the President or the Prime Minister goes on television and in the advertising break the adviser goes in and says well you've you've gone too far on this you have to apologize or rectify and they go so you know to put it all to simply the the incumbents are driving you know spaceships and the opposition are on bicycles or some some version of that and that's an issue that we are also that that is the reality of the issue not that the opposition you know getting its own small spaceship will you know make our democracy better it probably won't but at least it will be a level playing field if they come up with ideas I think vanillin mentioned leadership in passing and this is a bigger issue and it relates to the relationship of these of these countries to Europe itself we were talking yesterday at dinner with with Jacques who traveled to to Poland with president macro you know he whatever we think of him he's the only one who's had this positive message on Europe that is not Europe bashing that everyone else has used from London to Budapest and and backwards you know the the ultimate scapegoat for everything you know from shape of banana to to the very very useful tool in domestic politics to have an outside player on on which to blame there has been on the European side a definite lack of leadership message on what Europe means and to put it all I think the message should be you will not be less French if you're part of the European Union you will not be less Serbian if you join the European Union you can still drink your rakia you know and have your goat cheese from the farm nobody will take that away but that is the message that has been used by the nationalist yes you will be less Serbian you will disappear in fact if you become Europe your soul will be taken away your Christian religion will be taken away and you will be forced into a straightjacket at procrustean bed that you know the the imitation of same broom and I think there's been on on of course in the countries themselves a lack of that to try and explain you know we we will remain Slovak but it is only it is the only way to save ourselves as Slovakia if we are part of of something bigger there it's been a total absence in the explanation that goes out there rather than and and wanting simply on on oneself and not to belabor all of this I think that I think one of the deeper questions is obvious in this goes to the the broader issue that the Drakh raised at the beginning it it's the character of politics globally and and what is happening happening to politics clearly the apathy the cynicism and the complacency of the modern citizen whom to repeat again you know people like Constance a does not have to be involved in politics to be a good citizen and there we have a problem but as you remember Constance famous essay on the liberty of the Ancients and the moderns ends up by saying but wait a minute somebody has to watch what those guys or gals who we've elected are doing and so not everyone can go just tend to their garden but but they have to be involved is it and how is it that we mobilize quote-unquote citizens to actually care for what is being done even though they feel that life is okay that you know they have something minimum you know a salary that they can fend for their kids and what is that breaking moment when they choose to the opposition or rebel and revolt go out into the streets and in all our countries people have been out on the streets massively but as all of us and and even and others have been asking that you know where does that energy end up nothing happens with it you know these are leaderless in the good sense anarchic movement you know we we don't want have a hierarchy we just want to voice best at this so to go back to this question oh is this a passing moment is this the ebb and flow that that we've seen throughout history I think there is an ebb and flow and that we are in whatever the the this particular moment but it's it's a mixed picture I will raise the example of Emilia Romagna where you know salvini was hoping to make a big score and then people mobilized and our friend Alicia into earth if they managed to mobilize a whole swathe of people and and salvini was was defeated in this particular election as was said he's not but it shows that if people understand what you know what comes behind the hill as we say idiomatically in my language if if they are presented the negative effects of neo-nazis of far-right people of these kinds of situations where you close yourself they they can be actually mobilized so you know many people have answering this question what is to be done well you know politics needs to be you know Adam Adam yesterday you know explained from his millions of conversations with people you know they're simply this distrust in politics we all it how do we bring back the trust in politics showing it's rational side rather than it's manipulative side and how is it that there's you know as others have said a sort of ennobling of politics very tough task given the kind of nature of the mediatised social media world that that we live in but definitely something that I think is opposing it and again you know whether it was Chaput Tova's victory we'll see what happens on Saturday in Slovakia I think it'll be another sign important sign of you know where we're going and the way that that that Germany is unfortunately in a complete stays state of stasis I think is extremely worrying and as has been warned you know this is a country that we hinge on and France cannot do it by itself and the southern European countries are in different stages of of turmoil but you know also showing that it is possible to reverse at moments this populist trend so I think you know to finally conclude there the jury is out on actually this stage of the of the ebb and flow but given the global challenges the fact that the u.s. is doing what it's doing the fact that the China is probably the only power in the world that has a clear strategy of where it wants to be in 30 years time and is slowly moving their truck forward unimpeded while coronaviruses is a bit of an impediment we have I think - through the work that we're doing help Europe actually try to stand up a little more firmly in this world then then it is standing at the moment okay so now we have comments and questions you are first ten to six I should be out I do believe in really made a very important methodological question that you know that you explain what went wrong we should integrate what went right and I very much agree with this because you know certainly part of the things that went wrong probably are based on the things that went right I don't believe that jiseok is as important as you believe I have not seen any major policymaker being basically influenced by jiseok so from this point of view no but this is an important problem because when you stay in the academia certain people stay very big but when she goes for the policymakers he's an entertainment this is not the idea and this is the three things that I wanted to make on the basis of this you are absolutely right when you go that the various idea of a liberal democracy has nothing to do with what we are discussing there because basically his article was a criticism to the democratic transition paradigm in which he said electoral democracy is not automatically to bring the rule of law he was in this debate and we are not in this debate and you are totally right that now illiberal democracy is based about the self-identification of the authors and this goes with particularly urban is the most articulate but it to things that Orban articulates and in a certain way you try to get out of and this is a problem of sovereignty you can never understand what is a liberal democracy if the idea is democracy is based on sovereignty political community that can take a sovereign decision and basically liberalism is eroding this surfer and this is instinct in a certain way is very strong because strangely enough you can see it in every democracy the moment basically Britain starts to discuss Russia today to be allowed to function or not is a classical story nobody wants anybody to interfere in their domestic politics but at the same time in a global world and particularly now with this type of permissive information area everybody can interfere and even more you don't know who interferes so from certain point of view this kind of a search for sovereignty is critically important and this is based on certain type of things which are not just the invention of these people part of what happened to urban was the effect of the 2008 2009 crisis on hungry and during the hungry it happens that all the major banks remained loyal to the places from which they come and not for the places where the operations were as the head of Bank of Britain is to say banks a global in their life but their National when they bankrupt and from this point of view he had a major decision to make 1 million Hungarians he have basically borrowed in Swiss francs and the Swiss francs basically foreign 3 to and 40% so he said the state has the right to save the middle class and this is what he did he put the price on the banks so in a certain way I do believe here Adam is right that the relations between democracy and the market always was and this is true for all populist movements both on the left and on the right they claimed the primacy of the politics not it is not about believing big government this I disagree I don't believe that the Polish government by the way Polish government is fiscally extremely stable and conservative government but they said in the emergency situation democracy is about the government you have the right to save certain constituencies and this is what is not allowed us and this is why I do believe it's not so easy to argue against these people because some of the points that they are doing at valid points they're using this valid point to justify policies which are destroying institutions they're destroying these that is trying that but on a certain point of view and this my last point go also closer to the idea of the legal impossible ISM the famous kajinski story so basically kajinski said i want people voted me for revolution they don't like what is happening I can do nothing central bank is not allowing me to change economic policy European Union is not allowing me did the judges all the time of voting out how I can be responsive to my voters with so much constraints and I do believe this is also very interesting in the Hungarian case because can carrying case is so clear because also by luck he ended up with constitutional majority so in a certain way you basically can do anything that you want you basically change the rules and here comes my story to what extent the rise of a liberalism was not very much the result for the same problem we see the financial crisis before the financial crisis economies convinced themselves that we are beyond the business cycles they are not busting booms in a certain way we have regulated the reasonable kind of an narrow passage of decisions and people should not be allowed to move out of it and I do believe on political level we did something like this basically a tell the people listen you can choose between this and that center left center right you can do this and that and beyond it you cannot go but this is based only to the moment when people satisfied with the status quo if they are not satisfied with the status quo if they want to go for a radical change they're going to be pushed to go against the system in one way or the other so from my point of view is exactly because it was successful to achieve certain things but because he didn't give a perspective for people for radical change when there was a demand for radical change you end up with political leaders which are not anti-democratic particularly I don't believe that Kachinsky is a classical thorat Aryan he basically simply does not believe in the nature of institutions so which means that every institution that is not controlled by me is controlled by my enemy it's a return to Carl Schmitt Ian's idea of politics but I do believe if we are not going to recognize certain type of a legitimacy of certain anxieties and problems and that people came as a result of a successful transition will not go there so from this point of view you're right that no liberalism explains too much everything easier but what I'm going to call not neoliberalism but certain a day of constrained understanding to constraint understanding of democracy particularly when it comes to economic policies probably contributed to this and this is not by accident that European Union in many of these places this kind of a movement became an ante you movement because you was perceived as the embodiment of the constraints in a certain embodiment of what you cannot do I think that this panel was quite interesting for me because I felt that actually people come from quite different ideological perspectives I think it would be an exaggeration to say that you agree 85% wait I disagree at this I believe ok now I just wanted to ask several things - to make matters a bit clearer to me now vanillin the way I understand the term you are using democratic backsliding it's something that follows a period of success in than between the 1980s and the 2000s and what strikes me here is what is success in terms of building liberal democracy and I'm sure that there was quite a lot of success in this respect coincided at the same time with great suffering for people in many countries in Central and Eastern Europe certainly where I come from in Bulgaria and from everything I've read and seen in Russia even more so and I just wonder whether this doesn't take splain is not one of the factors that explains also the Democratic back I think that you know the very fact that the successful building of liberal democracy can actually drink and coincide and coexist with failing to deliver for for many many people so this is one I don't know if I express myself clearly and then the other thing is that I was a bit worried about myself because you described a lot of these ideas of the anti new liberal narrative and I felt I agreed with them and this worried me but I don't think that I'm on the same I don't feel I'm on the same side of our bond or Kachinsky and all of that because I do believe in liberal values but that tells me that there must be a lot of people who believe in liberal values and at the same time find very similar problems that urban and others of that sort have articulated but surely they would come up with different solutions and reach different conclusions so I wonder why this is so and I wonder if it doesn't reveal something about the complexity of the situation that you have people from different sort of ideological perspectives agreeing about where the problem starts but coming up with different answers of what needs to be done yes I run through three things the first thing is the Hungarian housing market is fascinating and crazy and I just want to just to kind of build them what Yvonne was saying I mean I I didn't know till I was looking into it recently that they had a round of quantitative easing in 2018 you know when it was already you clearly a bubble they you know you asked the question why are these government's popular there one way to begin with that is why do they think they're popular what are they doing what crazy things they do they surely must have to think they have to do in order to maintain their popularity and to me the most obvious example looking at Hungary but you can see it say this about Istanbul and Turkey as well we were talking about this earlier look at the stats about the Istanbul housing market it's very clearly if you go there the most ridiculous bubble that we've seen since are under in Spain and Portugal in 2007 and you know so the first thing is Hungarian at any one quality is very clearly geared towards pumping up a massive housing bubble the only reason you do that knowing the risks as you do because they're not stupid is if you think your support is dependent on the continuing inflation or asset prices so presumably that's what they think they have to do you know continue I mean I on freight is about the long list of policies they've got to inflate the housing bubble but it's most of the rachni policy seems to be geared towards huge asset price inflation the second thing I want to say again sort of in responders so what if I would say not disagreeing but just to build on that and this is partly what I was going to say before I changed what I was going to say is I think that you know for me the kind of most important point in the way about a lot of this is that the prevailing narrative of anti liberalism if what we mean by that is sort of dislike of LGBTQ people women's rights etc is that these things come up from the working class to the top but I see very little evidence of that I think you know in the work we do on this subject what's going on is quite clear that this is stuff this is coming down from the top so give you some examples 18 months ago as in Zagreb but and though people when every street corner getting petitions signed to oppose the Istanbul convention and when we went which is on gender violence and we talked about why it was it was because they're against trans rights now where are they this idea that they hate trans people never knowingly messer trans person this isn't a sort of part of their daily experience and yet they're dedicating their lives to campaigning on this or in Khajiit say in last week when I was there I was talking to a guy outside the ice hockey stadium who started talking about gender ideology you think it wasn't very good but you need the English term for gender ideology now he didn't just you know come up with this idea that he hated trans people this is something that has come to him and so last year my colleagues know you went through all the financial returns of the major American conservative organizations which are mostly funded by the famous American billionaires many of you heard of and also the big kind of often middle-class churches in America the evangelical churches in America and found that in the last five years they've pumped about 50 lost five years about thirty five million pounds of dark money into Europe promoting exactly these messages and setting up grassroots organizations in places like Croatia in places like Slovakia promoting these ideas so the point is that I think you're very careful not perpetuate the idea the bigotry is a phenomenon which starts at the working class and goes up and that all our middle-class friends are sort of much better and the elite sir you're not bigoted at all when the data doesn't show that the evidence doesn't show that I'm certainly I'd say that the research we do consistently shows that bigotry is a tool promoted by the ruling class in order to persuade working-class people to blame someone from them for their problems and the third thing I want to say is this in response to your comment which is that the vast majority of people in the world can see some basic facts they understand that the planets burning they understand that over the last 40 years inequality has soared they understand there's deep feelings of economic insecurity they understand they have very little power over the political system and probably less and less power and they used to have and they can therefore see that the system is failing and most of politics is a debate about how to replace the system that is clearly failing and there's a few people who are trying to cling on to a system which is very obviously failing and I think that you know that to say that all these people agree is obviously not true some people who very right-wing to consumer systems failing because it obviously is all he will do the very left-wing some people in the middle lots people with all kinds of political ideas understand the system is failing and to spend the time saying why is it this all these people agree that the system is failing is to fail to understand the reality of the world which is unless we radically change the system the planet will burn and we'll all die [Music] our tanks even very helpful comments you and I disagree on this thing about lack of choice as you know I mean I do think that in the nineties in particular there were moments when the choice was very real you can even say turning points about Gary 97 Slovakian Romania 98 the elections did make a lot of difference that the countries followed a very different trajectory so I think the point you and Steve making the book that there was no choice this is a little bit of a simplification second rhetoric constraints oh I cannot do this because I'm constrained by the RMA this is obviously rhetoric I mean when you steal money you cannot just say I stole the money that's right I cannot increase your you find an excuse oh I you know there's not money well the reason there isn't money because you stole it but of course you blame it on the IMF so I do not think that politically speaking there were so many constraints on you know policymaking in Eastern Europe in the 90s or mm Kachinsky is being very strategic it's simply empirically not true that the Polish Constitutional Tribunal has interfere in economic policymaking it's just not true the tribunal deals with other issues judiciary independence individual rights religion risk but you know whether the budget should whether the government should redistribute 40 percent or 60 percent there has never been a case so the Kachinsky is blaming the court but that's because he wants to control the court so yeah we need to be a little bit aware of the fact that you know politicians may be manipulative this median point yes the issue of sovereignty is there but it Schmitt is helpful which is what I'm working out right now how come it can help us understand Democratic backsliding but there is an interesting twists with the Schmitt Ian you know paradigm friends and Falls extraordinary see - what is it the the state of emergency and the interesting point and in that sense I think both Kachinsky Norborne have two phases so to speak is that actually they justify everything they do as normal they do not say what we have is a state of emergency therefore we need to forget about the Constitution we need to suspend none of them has suspended the Constitution quite the country they do something and then they say well that's pretty normal because that's the call they do it in Netherlands that's how they do it in Germany how they appoint judges that's not median right this is the or or if you will the proverbial Schmidty indecision of what happens the sustaining of emergency and that's who the sovereign the sovereign is whoever says we have a state of emergency that's the Schmitt Ian paradigm in Eastern Europe is the exact opposite whoever is able to say what's happening is normal that's the sovereign because you know they've been challenged by those who say what you do is extra extraordinary they say no it's normal so which again is not to dismiss the Schmitt Ian thinking about how sovereign exertions yes I'm not dismissing it and I'm still grappling with it you know try but but that's what I would say clementa suffering in the 90s of course there was a lot of suffering we can probably argue about the causes of that suffering it really strikes me as inexplicable the fact that in the discussions about the suffering of the 90s the notion of the legacies of communism has also disappeared we talk about this period as if the suffering is causally came about causally because of the reforms what about you know the economic social cultural legacies of communism this was a very lively conversation the legacies of communism there was books there were in the nineties and then it was all weekly by this you know blame blame the neoliberal I'll forget about it actually now there isn't differently how positive were the legacies actually of communist solidarity not the police or like people felt more solidarity you know there this you know nice the quality of life nostalgic yeah it's and that is really I can understand this I mean places of the the world like Africa India you know they still talk about the legacies of colonialism in the United States they still talk about that for a good reason by the way the legacy of slavery in Eastern Europe it's like the 90s end of it and then forget about communism let's look at the Democratic liberal where that's where the cause of all suffering is anyway the fact of the matter is that these societies went through this suffering while maintaining their liberal democracies this is quite remarkable I would say this is quite a serious cultural achievement I fully agree with professor Rudnick's point that economic variables if your economic factors very relevant for understanding there is no suffering right now there is no poverty has declined dramatically people have jobs people have disposable income probably not as much as they would like to so I fully agree with your analogy of the two lanes and the fast cars and but but no this is not an economic phenomenon this is a cultural phenomenon this probably psychological phenomena but but certainly not economic and as to the your doubts about whether you're a secret or benign or I guess all of us will have to my god I agree with Orman I mean I've had these moments with with Paul Krugman actually Paul Krugman I agree with Paul Krugman this shouldn't be happening so all of us can see but it it is a matter of definition again probably we need to do more conceptual work on this distinction between liberals and new liberals I'm not exactly sure which way we should go with this distinction me there's the general conceptual level which is one thing but then the resistant Europe again I think in Eastern Europe this is a very difficult distinction to draw but my advice would be don't freak out we're complicated beings and the subconscious which always surprises so you eat it make another non subconscious level you like the you know or Banyon approach to policymaking but for them communism did not end in 1989 this is one of the strongest discourse and basically they said the whole period before us communism never ended because the Communist Alize had been controlling the situation so from this point of view your accusation that basically the Communist legacy discourse has disappeared not for these people even was saying I mean the main argument of Kachinsky in actually of our bond was first of all you have the network the communist network they did a deal 1989 was not a revolution it was an agreement between the moderate dissidents and the moderate communists and it was a fraud this is how privatization etc etc this was a verse of the liberal consensus we are revolting against and we have to dismantle the network who clad in Polish you know the conspiratorial kind of thing you know we have to dismantle the network and we have to do the true revolution that didn't happen and we have to do the D Communist Asian this is why we last week you know this is why we have to replace the judges this is a new law in Poland you have to appoint all the judges why your honor oh because they are the guys who did terrible things and them you know martial law in poor martial law is not 1981 I mean these guys were wearing you know were in Pioneer camps and in in 1981 they were they were not communist judges or they sit like that this is like 30 years after communists we had discussion during lunch time you know when people keep bragging about the Communist legacy so for them this is communist legacy but purely useful for political purposes they are not serious about chasing communist judges in Poland today anyway I don't I didn't mean to but since I have the mic I might as well use it no this is just following your comment about neoliberalism I okay I maybe it's overdone and maybe people use it to conveniently to demonize or blame everything when in doubt you know blame it on neoliberal policies or what-have-you but still that that distinction being economic and political liberalism what happened in the post 89 there was this alliance of the political and economic liberals and this is what has backfired this is what has broken apart and I think this this is worth exploring further I mean you have you have two interesting takes on that on the economic liberalism there's marching crawls SA boosts my groupie we were stupid and he describes the infatuation of dissident liberal intellectuals with the economic gurus you know boxer of which oh he knows how to do it we don't understand economics but you know so and and he says that was that was a terrible mistake and he sort of with hindsight sort of does the Scot of self-criticism you could call it but kind of collective and then you have on the political liberalism that was something else you have another attack but from a completely opposite side from the good call it says no the mistake is political liberals what is it they bring us they bring us this European mix of gender gays tbh what have you multiculturalism which is destroying the nation the family etc and on this in these culture wars the the new nationalist conservatives whatever you wanna call them are closer to put in and the ideologies in Russia than than to what you have as well Europe they they they consider Europe decadent weak permissive and something that on top of that is so arrogant as wanting to impose you these notes so this is going not only against Democratic sovereignty etc and so this is interesting because our of course rabid anti-russian in foreign policy but in terms of their cultural societal criticism of European liberalism pretty close to what you get from the Putin stable and inaccurate is worse reading some of that stuff there is this guy Dugan worse reading I recommend and surkov held had last year very interesting article about basically justifying he talks about Putin's long term don't go he goes with ours for Poochyena long this is this is long term so yeah this is it Western democracy is hypocritical Western liberal democracies hypocrisy we at least are explicit yes we want to strongly big we want to because there is okay there is deep state but there is a deep people uses the term deep people this is for popular you wanna understand public this is deep people who is deep state and deep people and deep people identify with a strong leader guess who etc so in this mode I mean they they formulated in a much more blunt way than urban in his liberal speech with liberal speech made everybody you know shake in it was to Europe but the real thing is the other yeah and I'm talking to no but final footnote about Carl Schmitt in Polish Parliament the oldest and one of the most prestigious and peace for peace the father of Marathi etske the Prime Minister made a great speech where he actually quotes because there's opposition saying but we have voted this we have met no and says there is nothing that can be contrary to the will of the nation there is nothing above the will of the nation so you people here parliamentarians you can you can chat but there is nothing against the will of the nation it just so happens that we we represent it so this is car Schmitt revisited by peace it is in the family of the Prime Minister so it's in safe hands and and to be continued do you have more time how much longer maybe before taking further comments I would just like to comment briefly on exclusive I like the way you systematized the problem the questions and pose the problem but I would not agree with all the inferences you you made I do think that kristef is correct when he says there is no alternative what explains according to me this negative definition of liberalism as ideology so it's a non - the only existing existing ideology I agree with you that there is a conflation between neoliberalism and liberalism that these are two different things and that we have to be in intellectually vigilant and distinguish the two not commonsensical conflate them I agree with that comment nevertheless I disagree with this idea that neoliberalism is some kind of spontaneous occurrence of pure economy of naturalized economy of naturalized capitalism actually I I would agree with David Harvey when he says that neoliberalism has always been an ideological project and highly political and that it's miss a completely misleading actually conception and the devil has fooled us that he does not exist by believing that there is anything deregulated about neoliberalism quite to the contrary in the Enigma of capital he explains how actually over it overly regulated politically this deregulation was so according to him as political project and one more remark about Schmidt why does it have to do with the the matter we discuss here Schmidt does not only explain us how the state of exception is declared but also how laws are made so that the law actually originates as if ex nihilo and the law is literally it's a law because I said so so there is an initial violence in this law in law making itself corrosive is correct I think when he insists that this is something that the populists s-- recognized and exploit and according to me by doing so they managed to create this aura around them of authenticity of being more real than the duplicitous liberals this is what Trump see is admired for his real he talks like it is so I think that exposing the fact that that this whole thing is structure instructed that there is nothing natural or spontaneous both about liberal democracy and about lawmaking and the alleged division of powers is what yeah Christie creates this impression of authenticity and it's peculiar to realize that they are actually winning on this metaphysical grounds if you wish they seem more real more sincere than you know this hallucinatory world of the globalization of the 90s so because I am supposed to moderate had to come on something so I that I believe all of the presentations and if we have five more minutes I assume we can uh you have sure yeah I spent this time to say that we call them populist but my experience is these people really aren't very popular if you go should nearing Hauser which is very strongly Fidesz voting place or you go to you know you go to yellow in northern Italy or Navarre and northern Italy very strongly leg aversion places it's very hard to find people who like the people they vote for if you go to Northern Ireland and talk to DP voters they hate them my yesterday if you go around the north of England and talk to people who voted for Boris Johnson they usually hate him there's not this idea that populist is a popular I think is often based on a failure to talk to people who support them about why they support them and you know what's also true though is if you offer people a choice between Hillary Clinton and a regime people can see is entirely broken and corrupt and Donald Trump they'll choose Donald Trump if your choice between David Cameron and Brax is tell choose Breck's is your thing a choice between all band and magining at a Frenchie name or stereo authoritarianism they'll always choose the alternative to the status quo yes he is entirely broken but it's not the case that these people are popular and the task that we have is to talk to them to talk with them and to build up a popular alternative to what they're being offered because at the moment the only people talking with people in the places that vote for authoritarian populist are the authoritarianism populist and that's why we keep losing I won't finish on a quick question which is on how and people in this room you keep your hand up Levin knocks on the door a stranger to talk about politics just is so the question was how many of you and keep your hands up have ever knocked from the door of a stranger or stopped a stranger in the street or whatever to talk about politics canvassing comments I'll just I am really grateful to you for this idea of the negative definition I think this is quite enlightening and the fourth is to think about the improvisational component of pokers they do have to improvise and yeah Orban keep switching from illiberal diamond bin mentioned recently I agree with you to conservatism and then makes you wonder how does he appear authentic hope today smitten lawmaking surely what he called motorized legislation did arrive in Eastern Europe in the nineties both in the countries that wanted to enter do you because this is what the adoption of the Akio is it was just without any but also countries like Macedonia that were not involved in the eastward expansion it was still however still this doesn't explain the slide towards the liberalism because you know parliamentary procedures in Eastern Europe haven't really changed all that much since the nineties laws are being passed quickly and without the liberation however the general directionality of political development that has changed it used to be towards liberal liberal democracy in the 90s so that by the early 2000s there were many countries in well mining several countries in the region which were legitimately labeled and then that changed so it seems that we we cannot just invoke Schmidt so idea that parliamentarism has been perverted which unfortunately I think is correct but that in itself doesn't suffice as an explanation of that change of direction just very briefly and all too simplistically the kind of rubber-stamping parliamentarianism that all these countries of the so-called new member states went through is you know I sort of liken it to the metaphor of university you know you you enter and you know that you'll get a diploma in the end and you cram for exams for four years and if you're really diligent you finish it in three years like many in Eastern Europe were in my country you study for 15 years but let's say you do it for four years that you know it's it's tough it's it's a really a kind of pressure cooker where you go through and then you know you binge after you get your diploma and so you know as I say it's all too simplistic but there's been a sort of binging and I would say and this is something that we need to look at you know the the fact that you enter the quote-unquote playpen of the European Union which is safe because parents are standing around it and you know you have all the toys inside you you can sort of binge playfully in in the safety of the framework and I think that the the the really high levels that we have in in nearly all of the Member States may be bar in Greece and Italy Italy at this point of support for the European Union when asked you know has the big European Union been good for you or to you do you think it's good to be in the European Union you get anywhere between you know 55 and 75 percent of the countries and I think that that's a very important moment in all of this because you can you know make strange decisions in your vote but somehow in the back of your mind you know that there is and I think somebody mentioned that this morning and abrade you know there's there is the the the the foolproof overseer who will stop you as you want to go over the cliff now we're seeing that tested and I agree with with what Jacques was saying about the EPP you know it is a really important part of this equation you know where does it go and does it does it hold the ground of democracy and democratic values but I think in the grand scheme of things of what we're looking at you know what does it mean to be a member of the European Union I don't believe for a second in what Putin said about 2028 that you know once the funds leave disappear that countries will will slowly leave because I think you know when you look at the that some of the very practical things you know to be a citizen of the European Union from another country than Austria makes life much more easier than for me who I'm not a member of the European Union living in Austria simply the the the the easiness of you know free travel and whatever whatever you call it and and documents and and other things you know not to mention Schengen and the Euro whatever you think about it is is there's a huge ease of living and not to mention businesses of course who whose life is much easier because there are no you know tariffs and checks at the borders is just humongous and so when when you start breaking it down and and listing all the things that people have benefited yeah neoliberal or liberal economy is whatever you want to call it on all the inequalities that it creates nonetheless the fact of being part of this bigger family and Union has brought huge benefits to to the citizens and you know I love the the quote of of Nikko Demeter of the the North Macedonian Foreign Minister when asked in in in in the in the Netherlands by journalists you know why why do you want to join this thing I mean look look at it it's falling apart you know and all this and his simple answer was you don't know what it is to be outside and so I truly believe that that you know that's something that we haven't mentioned that but you know there is something about being in this you know as we call it the most successful peace project and all of that and the EU simply doesn't know how to sell itself a little better and a little more forcefully and as you know people have been saying with a little more power projection and I would definitely you know if if I come to write about this that that'll be an element that I think is is extremely important a wonderful comment for for the end I don't know if somebody else wants to add something more should we close the discussion for now okay I'm closing the discussion thank you very much thanks to everyone for contributing to the discussion [Music]

Channel: IWMVienna

Views: 562

Rating: 4.7142859 out of 5

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Id: TovwgBkG6XE

Length: 109min 54sec (6594 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 05 2020