New populisms and diverse paths of Euroscepticism

New populisms and diverse paths of Euroscepicism

Public debate and an academic conference 

November 29-30, 2017

Venue: Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

Organizers: Monique Canto Sperber (ENS/CNRS) & Evens Foundation

The rise of various forms of populism seems to be a blatant reality, both in Europe and in the Western world in general. This is certainly not the first wave in the international history, yet the impression of its originality is widespread. A technical novelty of the situation raises no doubts: all movements have a strong Internet presence, and they use the web to broadcast their positions. The political situation is also unusual, given the reassuring framework of the European Union. Yet this framework is increasingly designed as being the source of many problems, which tend to erase the very reasons why it was established.

After 70 years since the signature of the Treaty of Rome, we would like to raise a number of questions that seems to be relevant in most of the countries of contemporary Europe, whether these questions are indeed new or they are only an enhanced version of an ever-existing phenomenon. We must get a better understanding of reasons why these problems arise in order to re-think the definition of the European project and find ways to answer these persistent worries.

The conference will unite a number of expert of European issues, political philosophy and political history of the continent.

We would like to raise several questions, including, but not limited to, what follows:

• Distrust toward elites (political, intellectual, scientific)
• Increasing similarity between the arguments used by the far right and the far left politicians
• The People and its enemies – are immigrants part of the people?
• Sovereignty – against whom and why?
• Identity – cultural, national, religious or universalist?
• Anti-System discourses and ideologies (both in politics and in science, with “alter-science”)
• Disqualification of public debate and of the notion of truth

Public debate

November 29, 2017, 18:30 – 20:30

• Thierry Chopin, political scientist, senior researcher at the Robert Schuman Foundation, professor at the Catholic University in Lille
• Thomas Serrier, historian, expert of European memorie, professor at the  Université de Lille 3 and at the Europa-Universität in Frankfurt. 
• Mauve Carbonell, historian, University of Marseille, working on the political and economical history of the European construction and the history of European elites
• Cédric Durand, economist, associate professor in Paris 13 University, working within the tradition of Marxist and French Regulationist Political Economy
• Maja Bajevic, artiste, currently on display in the Pompidou Center 
• Bruno Mantovani, composer and the head of the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse in Paris

Academic Conference  

Translation French / English (both ways) will be available  

November 30, 2017, 14:00 – 20:00, Pompidou Center  

Keynote Speaker:   Wolfgang Merkel, Head of the Bridging Project. Against Elites, Against Outsiders: Sources of Democracy Critique, Immigration Critique, and Right-Wing Populism.  

14 h – Monique Canto-Sperber – introduction  

14h10 – 15h45   Session 1 : Les populismes, entre l’économie et la politique

• Cédric Durand (Université Paris 13)
• Fabrice Flipo (Télécom-EM/Paris 7 Diderot), Populismes : une convergence des extrêmes ?
• Louise Hoon (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen; Vrije Universiteit Brussel & Université Libre de Bruxelles), Political conflict and opposition in crisis-struck Europe
• John Pitseys (Centre de recherche et d’information sociopolitiques / CRISP), Le spectre des années 30 : les populismes contemporains sont-ils la conséquence de la crise économique ?

Pause café : 15h45 – 16h05  

16h05 – 17h25   Session 2 : La démocratie et le populisme  

• Marc-Antoine Dilhac (Université de Montréal), La démocratie face au danger du populisme et de l’épistocratie  
• Anderson Borges (Freie Universität Berlin), Populism and the Two Deficits in Democracy  
• Speranta Dumitru (Université Paris Descartes), Enfermés dans l’État-providence: le populisme est-il intrinsèque à l’État-nation?  

17h30 – 18h30 – Wolfgang Merkel, Right wing populisms and its impact on democracy  

18h30 –19h00 – Discussion de clôture   

19h00 – 20h00 – Film d’Els Dietvorst (Evens Arts Prize 2017)