2017-05-04

Donatella Della Porta at the University of Westminster

On May 4, 2017 at 6 p.m., Prof. Donatella Della Porta will give a public lecture at the University of Westminster focusing on democratic practices in social movements

In this public lecture, leading scholar Professor Donatella della Porta explores democratic practices in social movements. Her extensive empirical and theoretical work investigates how social movements’ struggles for more democracy are paralleled by internal efforts to self-organise in democratic ways. By establishing deliberative and participatory practices inside social movement organizations, they challenge common conceptions of representative democracy. These processes of democratic internal decision-making and consensus-finding create new participatory spaces at the grass roots. Donatella della Porta’s work examines movements ranging from the Eastern European processes of democratization in 1989, the Global Justice movement, to the Arab Spring, the Indignados, and Occupy.

DATE AND TIME: Thu 4 May 2017, 18:00 – 20:00 BST

LOCATION: UG05, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW (United Kingdom) – View Map

Please, register via the link below:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/donatella-della-porta-democratic-practices-in-social-movements-tickets-33531294003?aff=ehomecard

News

08/06/2017

Call for Papers - Cosmos Conference "The Contentious Politics of Higher Education. Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism"

The Centre on Social Movement Studies, directed by Professor Donatella Della Porta, calls for papers addressing the recent global wave of student protests for a two-days conference to bel held in Florence, at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS), on 15-16 November 2017.

19/05/2017

Video available for the International Conference – Beyond Borders: Refugees and Struggles in Europe Mobilization, Solidarity and Political Challenges in the Long Summer of Migration

Watch the video of the International Conference – Beyond Borders, which was held at Palazzo Strozzi on May 12, 2017

19/05/2017

Marco Deseriis wins Best Paper Award at the Cedem17 Conference for e-Democracy & Open Government

Dr. Marco Deseriis, Marie Curie Fellow and Research Fellow at Cosmos, has won the Best Paper Award at the Cedem17 Conference for e-Democracy & Open Government (Danube University, Krems Au Donau, Austria)

Publications

Journal Article - 2017

The Electoral Success of the Radical Left: Explaining the Least Likely Case of the Communist Party in Graz

Manès Weisskircher

Recently, scholars have shown a growing interest in radical left parties (RLPs). In terms of electoral success, the rise of the KPÖ Graz, the Communist Party in Austria’s second biggest city, represents perhaps the most counterintuitive case in Western Europe. This analysis shows how the party has managed to ‘own’ the issue of housing and to exploit local political opportunities in order to be electorally successful. The findings point to the importance of agency and the subnational level for RLPs, and highlight more general questions in the study of this party family.

Journal Article - 2017

Non-deliberative politics in deliberative democracy: distinct approaches for different actors

Andrea Felicetti

In this paper Andrea Felicetti first illustrates the main ideas of the systemic turn, explores the distinction between ‘deliberative’ and ‘non-deliberative’ politics and investigates the main arguments justifying non-deliberative politics. Then, he builds upon these arguments to shed new light on the relationship between deliberative and non-deliberative politics. He identifies three distinctive actors in deliberative systems (political institutions, empowered agents, and public space actors). Finally, he argues that deliberative democrats should adopt three different approaches (intensive, moderate, and free) in order to assess whether the use of non-deliberative politics by each of these actors is legitimate.