On September 23rd, the Department of Political Science will host the international seminar Populism, Post-truth, Pandemic. Challenges to Democracy or Democratic Challenges?
During the last decade, democratic regimes were faced with political, cultural and systemic challenges that brought to the fore some inherent limitations of the liberal-democratic order. Mainstream discourses interpreted those challenges through the lenses of categories such as populism, post-truth, disinformation, conspiracy theories and alike. The last of these crises, the COVID-19 one, represents another critical point of this trajectory. On the one side, the problematic outputs of the pandemic were mainly read in the light of political and epistemic deficits, creating binary distinctions such as science vs post-truth, populism vs responsibility, rationality vs conspirational thinking, etc. Yet, on the other side, democratic rights and liberties were put under pressure by the measures of government of the pandemic, thus giving rise to an idiosyncratic democratic deficit and a new cycle of challenges. The event aims to shed a different light on the manifold crises that characterise democratic regimes in post-pandemic times and the main narratives which often accompany them. From different theoretical and methodological perspective, Italian and foreign scholars will problematize those political developments, examining both their detrimental and constructive potential for democratic life.
The event will take place in the Lecture hall of the Department of Political Sciences (via Serafini 3, ground floor), but it will be accessible also through Microsoft Teams at this link. Participation to the conference is open to everyone and does not require any prior registration.
Scientific organization:
Matteo De Toffoli, Antonis Galanopoulos.