There are ways to 'spot a populist', the Guardian recently suggested. The Keele Institute for Social Inclusion cannot promise to provide the same kind of insight, but we are delighted to announce that KISI is hosting a two-day workshop on Democracy and Populism from 31 January to 1 February. It is the first time that scholars from various schools and faculties, including media specialists, political scientists, economists, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, lawyers and historians, will come together to discuss a subject that has been on the minds of many concerned with the future of democracy. The event will address the relationship between democracy and populism from a range of geographical (India, Britain, Europe, North America), thematic (civility, gender, ageing, Islam, refugees, austerity, employment), and conceptual (psychology, Kantian morality, deliberation, legitimacy) perspectives. It is hoped that the event will allow us to move ahead with larger national and international projects. 

Programme

31 January 2019 - Salvin Room, Keele Hall

Introduction: A. Kauders/R. Richards & Shane O’Neill (9.00 – 9.30)

The Big Divide (9.30 –10.30 a.m.)
Elisabeth Carter: The Concept of Populism: Poorly Defined and Increasingly Stretched
Robert Ladrech: Brussels versus the People?
Aristotle Kallis: Populism and Uncivility

Populist Politics Today (10.45 – 12.45)
Jon Herbert: Trump and the American Populist Tradition
Brian Doherty: Outreach? Populism and Environmental Activism
Shalini Sharma: Complicating ‘populism’: Hindutva, caste and decolonisation
Helen Parr: The Will of the People? The 1975 and 2016 Referenda on British Membership of the EEC/EU
The Causes of Anti-Democratic Populism: Exclusionary Discourses (1.30 – 3.30)
Linda Åhäll: Anti-Feminism in Populist Discourse
Pawas Bisht: Ageing, remembrance and imaginations of the future in Brexit Britain
Elizabeth Poole: Exclusionary Discourses and their Counter-Narratives: Muslims and the Media
Siobhan Holohan: Discourses of Otherness in the Mediterranean Refugee Crisis

The Causes of Anti-Democratic Populism: Socio-Economic (3.45 – 5.15)
Mark Featherstone: Neoliberalism, Debt, and Objective Violence
Carola Weissmeyer: Globalisation and employment relations
Orestis Papadopoulos: Youth unemployment and austerity
Jack Cao: Workers’ Democratic Management and Collective Wage Consultation in China

1 February 2019 - Old Library, Keele Hall

The Psychologies of Democrats and Anti-Democrats (9.00 – 11.00)
Anthony Kauders: Of Thick and Thin Democratic Minds
Moran Mandelbaum: Lacan and the Fantasy of Unity
Sammyh Khan: Lessons From the Past for the Future: The Definition and Mobilisation of Hindu Nationhood by the Hindu Nationalist Movement of India
Huseyin Cakal: Individual and Aggregate Level Predictions of Populism Across 23 Countries

Re-Imagining Liberal Democracy (11.15-12.45)
Sorin Baiasu: Kant’s Republicanism vs. Contemporary Liberalism and Populism
Marit Hammond: Deliberation or What?
Yossi Nehushtan: Judicial Review on Legislation and Democratic Legitimacy

Imagining Legitimacy beyond Liberal Democracy (1.30 – 3.00)
Rebecca Richards: Alternative Forms of Legitimacy
Anita Mangan: Legitimising Mutuality in Public Discourse: Explaining Parliamentary Debates on Credit Unions in Ireland, 1966-1997
Eva Giraud: Experiment, Entanglement, and Exclusion in Alternative Media

Plenary Session: And Now What? Conferences, Stakeholders, Grants (3.30 – 4.30)

Book event