Greek Politics in. Challenges to the Open Society. One-day conference, Friday 29 November 2013 London School of Economics, Shaw Library PROGRAMME

Transcription

1 By WallStreetGreek.com Greek Politics in Challenges to the Open Society One-day conference, Friday 29 November 2013 London School of Economics, Shaw Library PROGRAMME

2 Foreword The depth of the economic recession in Greece inevitably poses major political and social issues. On a scale comparable to that of the Wall Street crash of 1929, and at a level not experienced by any other EU member since 1945, Greece has grappled with turning around its economy. Indeed, it has already achieved the biggest fiscal adjustment seen in Europe since the end of the Second World War. But, the street protests, the loss of support by the established political parties, and the public disillusionment are evidence of the severe strains on the political system. And the crisis has brought into much sharper relief some of the underlying problems of the polity, built up over decades. In this conference, we will explore the crisis impacts on politics and political activity, from the grass-roots to the state institutions, in order to explore the ramifications for Greece s future path. Moreover, the crisis has brought into much sharper relief some of the underlying problems of the polity, built up over decades. Political parties have lost the trust of voters, and politically motivated violence has become an urgent issue. Social tensions around migration have been stoked up by political actors, while the public administration is struggling to reform its methods of handling asylum and migration. Can Greece exit the crisis with a more open and inclusive society, a state more responsive to future needs, and with new forms of political leadership? We look forward to you joining us and our expert speakers for what promises to be a fascinating set of discussions. Professor Kevin Featherstone Director, Hellenic Observatory, London School of Economics Heather Grabbe Director, Open Society European Policy Institute

3 Programme 9:00-9:30 Registration & Refreshments 9:30-10:00 Welcome and Introduction Heather Grabbe, Director, Open Society European Policy Institute Kevin Featherstone, Director, Hellenic Observatory, LSE 10:00-11:15 SESSION 1: Is this An Age of Extremes? Interpreting the new electoral behaviour Protest, revenge, or belief? Explaining extremist voting in Greece Vassiliki Georgiadou, Associate Professor of Political Science, Panteion University The banality of Golden Dawn support Sofia Vasilopoulou, Lecturer in Politics, University of York Daphne Halikiopoulou, Lecturer in Comparative Politics, University of Reading Discussant: Paul Taggart, Professor and Head of Politics; Jean Monnet Chair, University of Sussex 11:15-11:45 Refreshments 11:45-13:00 SESSION 2: An age of resistance? Street protests and a new civil society Is Greece a modern country? A critical reading of Greek protests Anna Triandafyllidou, Professor, Global Governance Programme, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence, Italy Rage and Protest: The case of the Greek piazza movement Marilena Simiti, Assistant Professor, Department of European and International Relations University of Piraeus & Hellenic Observatory Visiting Fellow Politics in the Age of Resistance Costas Douzinas, Professor of Law; Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London Discussants: Kenneth Newton, Emeritus Professor of Comparative Politics, University of Southampton Mary Kaldor, Professor of Global Governance; Director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, LSE 13:00-14:30 Lunch Break (lunch not provided) 14:30-15:30 SESSION 3: The state as a block to the open society Public administration and the break-up of the public sphere Aristos Doxiadis, Venture Capital Professional, Partner at Openfund Looking at the open society from two different angles: as a member of an NGO and from a government post Angelos Syrigos, Assistant Professor of International Law & Foreign Policy, Panteion University; Board Member, Transparency International Discussant: Catherine Fieschi, Director, Counterpoint 15:30-16:00 Refreshments 16:00-17:00 CONCLUSIONS: Future leadership - what visions for the open society? An open discussion with participants from previous sessions chaired by Professor Kevin Featherstone Discussants: Julien Etienne, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Centre for Analysis Risk & Regulation CARR, LSE Maro Pantazidou, Independent researcher and facilitator; Lead Advisor, Learning and Accountability, Amnesty International Marilena Simiti, Assistant Professor, Department of European and International Relations University of Piraeus

4 Speakers and Discussants Costas Douzinas is Professor of Law and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London. Educated in Athens, London and Strasbourg, Costas has taught at the Universities of Middlesex, Lancaster, Prague, Athens, Griffith and Nanjing. He is a founding member of the Critical Legal Conference, of the Birkbeck Law School and Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities; managing editor of the journal Law and Critique and managing director of the publishing house Birkbeck Law Press. Costas has written extensively in legal and political philosophy, human rights, aesthetics, literature, art and critical theory. His books have been translated in twelve languages. Aristos Doxiadis is a business economist and venture capital professional based in Athens. He is on the management team of OpenFund, an early-stage technology fund. Doxiadis has been in the private equity industry since Recently he has been researching and writing on the institutional and cultural determinants of the Greek economy. Doxiadis other experience includes managing consulting and auditing companies, working on anti-poverty programs for the European Commission, planning industrial policy for the Greek government. He blogs at aristosd.wordpress.com. He has a B.A. degree in social studies from Harvard University, and an M.Sc. Economics from Birkbeck College, London. Julien Etienne is post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation at the LSE. He has worked on regulation, and particularly on behaviours of compliance and non -compliance with public rules. His work has been published in Law & Policy, Regulation & Governance, and the French Review of Political Science. Recently he has written on pervasive non-compliance and non-enforcement in Greece before the crisis and what they imply for our understanding of Greek state-society relationships (published in June 2013 in the GreeSE papers of the LSE's Hellenic Observatory). Kevin Featherstone is Eleftherios Venizelos Professor of Contemporary Greek Studies and Professor of European Politics. He is the Director of the Hellenic Observatory and Co- Chair of LSEE Research on South-East Europe within the European Institute, and he served as Director/Head of the European Institute twice. He held academic posts at the universities of Stirling and Bradford, and visiting positions at the University of Minnesota; NYU; and Harvard University. He has served on an advisory committee for the reform of the Greek government, and is the first foreign member of the National Council for Research and Technology (ESET) in Greece.

5 Catherine Fieschi is the director and founder of Counterpoint, a research and advisory group analysing the impact of culture on politics and markets. She has spent ten years in academia before moving into the policy world. Catherine holds a PhD in Comparative Politics from McGill University. She is the author of In the Shadow of Democracy: Fascism, Populism and the French Fifth Republic (MUP) and of numerous pamphlets and articles on extremism, populism, citizenship and identity politics. She has advised governments, businesses and foundations on aspects of risk, strategy and policy. Catherine is a fellow of the Department of Government at LSE and founder of the mentoring scheme 50 Foot Women. Vasiliki Georgiadou is Associate Professor of Political Science at Panteion University, Athens. She holds a PhD from the University of Münster. Her research interests focus on political behaviour, far right parties and political extremism. She is author, among others, of Non-capitalist Aspects of Development in Greece in the 19th Century (in German, 1991) and of The Far Right and the Consequences of Consensus: Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Germany (in Greek, 2008). She is currently working on a collective project on the rise of right-wing extremism in the city of Athens and participating in a THALIS EU research programme on social radicalism in Greece. Heather Grabbe is director of EU affairs at the Open Society Foundations. From 2004 to 2009 she was senior advisor to then European Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn, responsible for the Balkans and Turkey. Before joining the EC, she was deputy director of the think-tank Centre for European Reform, where she published widely on EU enlargement and other European issues. Her writing has appeared in the Financial Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian, among others. Her academic career includes teaching at the LSE, research at Oxford and Birmingham universities, Chatham House (London), and the European University Institute (Florence). She speaks English, French, Italian and German. Daphne Halikiopoulou is Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of Reading. Her work examines contemporary issues related to the study of nationalism in Europe, including political mobilisation and violence, religion and the politics and policies of radical right and radical left wing parties. She is author, among others, of Patterns of Secularization: Church, State and Nation in Greece and the Republic of Ireland (Ashgate 2011) and Nationalism and globalisation: conflicting or complementary (Routledge 2011 with Sofia Vasilopoulou). She is currently working on a comparative study of violent right-wing street movements across Europe.

6 Speakers and Discussants Mary Kaldor is Professor of Global Governance and Director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit at the London School of Economics. She is the author of many books, including 'The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon: Human Security and the Changing Rules of war and Peace', New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era and Global Civil Society: An Answer to War. Professor Kaldor was a founding member of European Nuclear Disarmament and of the Helsinki Citizen s Assembly. She was also convenor of the Human Security Study Group, which reported to Javier Solana. Kenneth Newton is Professor Emeritus at the University of Southampton and Visiting Professor at the WZB Social Science Centre Berlin. He was Executive Director of the European Consortium for Political Research and has served on the Executive Committees of the ECPR, IPSA and the PSA. He works on trust, social and political participation, and media and politics, and recent publications include Foundations of Comparative Politics (with Jan Van Deth), Evaluating Democratic Innovations (with Brigitte Geisel), and The Wit and Humo (u)r of Political Science (with Lee Sigelman, Kenneth J. Meier and Bernard Grofman). Maro Pantazidou is a human rights and social development practitioner specialising in issues of participation, power and learning for social change. For the past three years she has collaborated as a research consultant with leading institutions and organisations - including the Institute of Development Studies, LSE, Hivos, INTRAC and others - on research projects with a focus on emerging forms of citizen action and the changing nature of the global civil society. Her article 'Treading new ground: A changing moment for citizen action in Greece' was recently published with Development in Practice. She is currently the Lead Advisor for Learning and Accountability with Amnesty International. Marilena Simiti is Assistant Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Piraeus. She holds an MA from Columbia University and a PhD from the London School of Economics. She has been a member of the editorial Board of Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans and of the Advisory Body of the European Non- Governmental Confederation for Relief and Development (Brussels). Dr Simiti has published articles and chapters in edited books concerning civil society and its actors. Her research interests focus on civil society, alternative modes of political participation, social movements and non-governmental organizations. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Hellenic Observatory, LSE.

7 Angelos Syrigos is Assistant Professor of International Law and Foreign Policy at Panteion University-Athens is a graduate of the Law School of the National University of Athens. In 1994 he was conferred the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in the field of public international law from the Faculty of Law of the University of Bristol. Since 1991 he is a member of the Law Bar of Athens and practising lawyer in Athens. In August 2012 he has been appointed as Secretary General of Population and Social Cohesion of the Greek Ministry of Interior. He is a founding member of the Greek Chapter of Transparency International, Vice President ( ) and member of the board ( ). Paul Taggart is Professor of Politics and Head of Department for Politics at the University of Sussex and Jean Monnet Chair, Editor of Government and Opposition, former Editor of the journal Politics, co-convenor (with Prof. Aleks Szczerbiak) of the European Referendums, Elections and Parties Network (EPERN). He has been a visiting scholar at the Universities of Gothenberg and Sarajevo and is a visiting scholar at the Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University. Anna Triandafyllidou heads the Research Strand on Cultural Pluralism at the Global Governance Programme of the European University Institute (Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies). She is Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges and Editor in Chief of the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies. Her recent books include: European Multiculturalism(s) (with T. Modood and N. Meer, 2011), Migrant Smuggling: Irregular Migration from Africa and Asia to Europe (with T. Maroukis, 2012); The Greek Crisis and European Modernity (with R. Gropas and H. Kouki, 2013); European Immigration: A Sourcebook (with R. Gropas, 2014, second edition); What is Europe? (with R. Gropas, 2014). Sofia Vasilopoulou is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of York. Her research interests include political behaviour and party politics. She holds a PhD in European Studies from the London School of Economics. Prior to joining York, she was a Fellow in Comparative Political Analysis in the School of Public Policy, University College London. She currently works on a number of projects examining the theme of political dissatisfaction with democracy and democratic institutions across Europe, including Euroscepticism, the rise of the far right, partisan response to the Eurozone crisis, and democratic legitimacy of the European Union.

8 Hellenic Observatory The Hellenic Observatory (HO) was set up in October Its aim is to promote the study of contemporary Greece & Cyprus via research, research training, and public lectures and conferences. The emphasis is on cross-disciplinary and comparative work. The main disciplines covered are: economics and economic geography; political science (including public policy); and international relations. The core academic staff attached to the Hellenic Observatory comprises the Eleftherios Venizelos Professor of Contemporary Greek Studies (Kevin Featherstone), Dr Spyros Economides and Dr Vassilis Monastiriotis. The HO Manager is Ismini Demades and Polly Liouta is the administrator. Since 2012 we also welcomed the addition of senior research fellowships on contemporary Cyprus. In addition to this staff, each year a number of sponsored fellowships are awarded to facilitate academics from outside the LSE to come and carry out major research projects. The Hellenic Observatory also welcomes applications for Visiting Fellows, Visiting Senior Fellows and Visiting Professors for work that is relevant to the research of the Hellenic Observatory. The HO holds regular seminars open to the public on issues related to contemporary Greece, taking place fortnightly during term times. (normally every second Tuesday in MT and LT, pm in COW 1.11). In addition, it hosts special public lectures with leading public figures from Greece & Cyprus. Its biennial PhD Symposium at the LSE attracts over 100 students and staff. The HO also hosts conferences and workshops, both at the LSE and in Greece. Since 2002, over 10,000 guests have attended its public events. The HO has a dedicated discussion paper series and publishes an annual Newsletter. Open Society The Open Society European Policy Institute is the EU policy arm of the Open Society Foundations. We work to foster open societies inside and outside Europe by leveraging the EU s policies, legislation, funding, and political influence. The institute brings into EU policy debates evidence, argument, and recommendations drawn from the work of the Open Society Foundations in more than 100 countries. The foundations priorities include human rights, justice, and accountability pursued through a wide range of policy areas including health, media, information, youth, and education. The European Union is capable of effectively promoting democracy, human rights, and conflict management abroad, but this requires a robust approach to defending human rights, civil liberties, and justice at home. The Open Society European Policy Institute s role is to propose positive measures that will sustain these values within policies and widen the political constituency that supports them. We also work to provide warnings when European political actors are moving away from or even undermining the founding principles and fundamental values of the European Union. We pursue both of these roles by doing the following: - providing evidence and arguments to inform political debates and policy-making processes; - linking the Open Society Foundations network with EU institutions and member states; - engaging in the broader debates about the EU s future institutions and policies, in order to promote open society values within their operations; and - building strong relationships with officials, politicians, NGOs, and other actors to keep civil liberties, rights, and justice on the EU s agenda. The Open Society European Policy Institute works closely with Open Society foundations and programs to help them expand their own capacity to do successful advocacy directed at the European Union. We assist foundations and grantees with their engagement with policymakers and their participation in formal and informal consultations, from EU human rights dialogues to annual progress reports on enlargement and neighbourhood countries.