{"id":285,"date":"2017-10-04T12:01:17","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T18:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s11\/?p=285"},"modified":"2025-09-24T13:05:01","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T19:05:01","slug":"2018-apsa-annual-meeting-boston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s11\/2018-apsa-annual-meeting-boston\/","title":{"rendered":"2018 APSA Annual Meeting – Boston"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Theme Statement for the 2018 Annual Meeting<\/strong><\/span>
\n Program Chairs:<\/strong><\/span>
\n Henry Farrell, The George Washington University<\/strong><\/a><\/span>
\n Anna Grzymala-Busse, Stanford University<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Democracy and Its Discontents<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The theme for this year\u2019s meeting of the American Political Science Association is Democracy\u00a0and Its Discontents. These are challenging times for democracy. In many established\u00a0democracies, the aftermath of the 2008 and the 2011 economic crises is opening up new\u00a0spaces for new challengers and popular grievances. The complex relationship between national\u00a0systems of rule and a global economy is leading to greater tensions both within democracies\u00a0and between them. Existing rules and party systems are under strain as new cleavages emerge,\u00a0with populism, nativism, and illiberalism all jostling for popular support, as well as new\u00a0experiments in representation. Developed democratic systems are experiencing greater\u00a0discontent among voters. Global flows of people, capital, and investment undermine national\u00a0identities and institutional arrangements. At the same time, there are challenges to the\u00a0legitimacy of international institutions that are seen as limiting economic and democratic\u00a0choices.<\/p>\n

The United States faces particular questions, as economic inequality, identity politics, and\u00a0polarization dominate political debates. The presidential victor, for the second time in sixteen\u00a0years, won office without a majority of the popular vote. Emerging and relatively new\u00a0democracies too are undergoing upheaval, as some leaders turn away from traditional norms of\u00a0liberal democracy based on contestation between plural forces towards an illiberal model, in\u00a0which leaders and ruling party are entitled to reshape domestic rules to their own benefit.\u00a0Informal norms of democratic behavior, such as opposition rights, accountability, and\u00a0transparency are being violated across several democracies. Non-democratic countries too are\u00a0being affected, both because there is no longer much of an expectation that they will become\u00a0democratic over time, and because their own policies and options are affected by the changes\u00a0in democratic states elsewhere. All this poses political theoretic questions as well as empirical\u00a0ones.<\/p>\n

The current dilemmas of democracy provoke scholars to work across different sub-disciplines\u00a0and specializations to understand these changes. For example, how do we understand the\u00a0impact of international factors such as migration, automation, and changes in economy on\u00a0domestic political party systems? The recent turn in several countries towards illiberalism is in\u00a0part a product of parallel evolution under similar pressures, but is also plausibly the\u00a0consequence of cross-national influence, as actors in one context learn from another. How do\u00a0security arrangements, predicated on coordination among democratic nations, survive the\u00a0erosion of liberal norms? What are the consequences of regime shifts for social policy, welfare,\u00a0courts, or the media?<\/p>\n

Taking a page from scholars of competitive authoritarianism and illiberal democracies, can we\u00a0fruitfully think about recent political developments in the United States as regime backsliding?\u00a0How are political parties, civil society, and interest groups responding? What is the role of the\u00a0center-left and the center-right here? Which comparative and historical parallels provide the\u00a0greatest insights in examining the discontents of democracy? How do informal norms depend\u00a0on and interact with formal institutions such as courts, parliaments, and central banks?<\/p>\n

Equally, understanding the dilemmas of national democracies requires an attention to\u00a0theoretical issues as well as empirics. Is the legitimacy of democracy in crisis, or is this simply a\u00a0transitory phase? Which institutional equilibria, regimes, and political configurations are\u00a0especially likely to be fragile, and which are resilient? How ought we to think about the role of\u00a0demagogues and anti-liberal rhetoric? Are there other plausible models for institutions of\u00a0representation and decision making that might lead to better democratic outcomes?<\/p>\n

As Chairs for the 2018 Conference, we welcome proposals that address the discontents of\u00a0democracy from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives. We particularly\u00a0welcome proposals that work across subfields and approaches to address the new questions\u00a0that are emerging, and work that looks to bring disciplinary debates and public dialogue into\u00a0closer alignment with each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Theme Statement for the 2018 Annual Meeting Program Chairs: Henry Farrell, The George Washington University Anna Grzymala-Busse, Stanford University Democracy and Its Discontents The theme for this year\u2019s meeting of the American Political Science Association is Democracy\u00a0and Its Discontents. These are challenging times for democracy. In many established\u00a0democracies, the aftermath of the 2008 and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3307,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apsa-annual-meeting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}