Is There Such a Thing as Populist Constitutionalism?

Full program: Workshop_programme_20_November_2017.
Registration here.

This workshop will examine recent deviation from the shared values of liberal constitutionalism towards a kind of ‘populist, illiberal constitutionalism’. The participants will explore the relationship between populism and popular sovereignty, populist leaders’ constitutional projects, and the use of legalism for their, often autocratic, agendas. Particular attention will be paid to ‘populist constitutionalism’ in the new democracies of East-Central Europe, contributing new perspectives to a theoretical debate which has so far largely focused on cases in other parts of Europe (Greece and Spain), Latin-America (Bolivia), and the US. The workshop also aims to address the broader theoretical question of whether populism and illiberalism are reconcilable with constitutionalism. (The workshop comes with six blog posts published on our blog, links below)

Speakers:

• Keynote speaker: Prof. Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School and the University Center for Human Values,  Princeton University (blog post)
• Prof. Paul Blokker, Associate Professor and Jean Monnet Chair, Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University, Prague (blog post)
• Prof. Bojan Bugaric, Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana (blog post)
• Prof. Gábor Halmai, Professor and Chair of Comparative Constitutional Law, Department of Law, EUI (blog post)
• Théo Fournier, PhD researcher, Department of Law, EUI (blog post)
• Julian Scholtes, LLM researcher, Department of Law, EUI (blog post)