Podcast - Political Science Matters

This lecture assembles scholars to discuss the extent to which both the East and the West are artificial constructs and shortcuts attempting to simplify the complex reality of contemporary democracy, and how to move beyond this outdated paradigm – bridging the East-West divide.

Organised by Charles University as part of our 2021 Joint Sessions of Workshops, this lecture assembles scholars whose work transcends the East-West divide to discuss the extent to which both the East and the West are artificial constructs and shortcuts attempting to simplify the complex reality of contemporary democracy and how to move beyond this outdated paradigm – bridging the East-West divide. The speakers, eminent scholars of political parties, social movements, and democracy, touch on these issues in their work and discuss routes to balancing out general trends and unique features of the Central European region.

There are few policy areas that are so often in some form of ‘crisis mode as migration and (migration-related) diversity policies. In this contribution, speaker Peter Scholten takes a complexity governance perspective on migration and diversity policy. Peter analyses why migration and diversity policies so often derail in their effort to come to terms with complexity. In this regard, he distinguishes various forms of alienation in policy processes, ranging from political forms of alienation to institutions, social and problem-related alienation. Building on complexity literature, Peter also sketches the contours of a governance approach to embracing complexity, while establishing links with the literature on environmental and gender mainstreaming as illustrations of complexity governance.

The pandemic and election year of 2020 revealed both the vulnerability and the potential power of overseas Americans (US citizen migrants), once again emphasising their differential inclusion in the United States. Providing votes that put President Biden over the top in both Georgia and Arizona, and forcing the run-off election for Senator Ossoff in Georgia, overseas votes have never been more powerful. Yet at the same time, lack of universal healthcare in the US was the key reason that US citizens residing overseas did not respond to the US Government’s injunction to ‘Return Home NOW’ in March 2020 (data from small opt-in survey). The differential inclusion of overseas Americans with respect to political engagement is known: voting in federal elections as individuals in one of 50 states, they form a diasporic block in one election only: the Democrats Abroad Presidential Primary. While they do not constitute, in the eyes of the United States population or government, a diaspora, they lobby and advocate on common issues of concern, including the requirement to file federal tax returns. Structurally, the American federal political system does not allow overseas Americans to constitute a single constituency, but even so, they have been able to make their impact. In this unusual year of 2020 where so much campaigning and GOTV (get out the vote) activities moved online, diasporic voters were thus on equal virtual footing with those based in the United States, even as waves of the pandemic moved around the world.

After half a century of nearly constant expansion and institutionalisation, political science and political scientists are at risk in many countries. This Lecture explores the threats to democracy and academic freedom, exposing the risks to political science in Europe and call for the urgent development of a strategic response.

The presentation looks at more than 40 years of anti-racist mobilisation in Europe. It first compared more specifically the mobilisation in the 1970’s and 1980’s with the mobilisations in the 2010’s and 2020’s to document the changes and the continuities between these two periods in terms of anti-racist struggle. It then discusses the hypothesis of a globalisation on the anti-racist struggle in the wake of the BLM movement in the USA. Finally, it looks at the structuration of a new leadership in anti-racist movement and its connection with the older anti-racist leadership.

Austria has been an outlier in terms of adapting its citizenship policies to international migration. With 24% of its population having a “migration background” (i.e. two parents born abroad), Austria is among Europe’s foremost immigration societies. Yet it has repeatedly tightened its citizenship law for immigrants, has been steadfastly refusing to join the international trend of dual citizenship toleration and has failed to introduce conditional jus soli for the second or third generation. Naturalisation is officially regarded as a reward for individual integration achievements. Income barriers to naturalisation are among the highest in Europe. The Austrian Constitutional Court has struck down weak attempts to extend local voting rights for EU citizens under EU law to third country nationals. In this seminar, Rainer Bauböck, suggests that the puzzle of Austria’s restrictive citizenship policies cannot be fully explained by the electoral strength of the far-right nativist Freedom Party. Explaining the persistence of this attitude over fifty years of massive immigration and changing government coalitions requires also a historical account of Austria’s construction of national identity since World War Two and the replacing of the discredited German nationalism of the past with an increasingly culturalist interpretation of Austrian national identity.

According to most policy analysts, academics and public commentators, there is a major risk of reversion to authoritarianism in some of the European Union's Eastern member states. However, the status of liberal democracy in post-communist countries is more fragmented and muddled than it would first appear.

In seminar, our speaker, Anna Triandafyllidou, builds on the line of research that focuses specifically on temporary migration, on one hand, and on the interplay between drivers and agency on the other. She presents a paper which develops an analytical framework that seeks to make sense of the role of policies on one hand, and of migrant agency, on the other, in the increasing prevalence of different forms of temporary migration. The paper looks therefore at temporariness as a policy category, and as a category of practice. As a policy category, the paper examines the role of the state or of international conventions that regulate migration and distinguishes among forced temporariness (refugees, people seeking temporary international protection); regulated temporariness: people who come as seasonal or temporary migrants for a limited period of time; and flexible temporariness: people who can circulate relatively freely within a given world region – within what is called ‘an enhanced mobility regime’ (such as the EU, or NAFTA, MERCOSUR or also ECOWAS). Looking at temporary migration as a category of practice, the paper explores the relationship between temporary migration and migrant agency: - Is temporariness intentional, planned or befallen upon the migrant? - How do migrants react to the opportunities and limitations forced upon them by policies and other structural factors (labour markets) - How do they work around them? - Does it make sense to distinguish between planned temporariness and unplanned/unforeseen or open-ended temporariness, where the initial intention is not fully thought through? The paper aims at building an analytical framework for better understanding temporary migration and uses examples from different countries and programs to illustrate the theoretical arguments.