International Conference at BI

Berlin International has hosted an international conference to discuss ‘Support for Democracy: Citizens and their Representatives in Times of Crisis’. This was the final meeting of a project funded by the Swedish Riksbanken Jubileumsfond. Berlin International’s Vice-President, Prof. Dr. Peter Mantel, welcomed the participants.

Has there been a decline in support for democracy in the aftermath of the 2007/08 global fiscal crisis and the subsequent economic recession? This was the general question the speakers tried to answer. The empirical analyses compared five ‘young’ (Chile, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey) and two ‘old’ democracies (Sweden, Germany). The comparisons made use of survey data taken in 2007 and 2013 of citizens and members of the national parliaments allowing a ‘before and after the crisis’ design.

Prof. Dr. Heinrich Best, Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, gave the keynote address which dealt with general issues of elite theory and political representation. Six papers were read on specific issues by participants from Germany, Poland, Sweden and Turkey. Prof. Dr. Bernhard Weßels, Berlin Social Science Center, served as Rapporteur General and delivered a critical appraisal of results. The papers of this international conference will be published in a special issue of the journal Historical Social Research.

Following topics were addressed by the representatives:

• Elites and Citizens: Upward and Downward Channels of Interest Articulation and Interest Aggregation

Prof. Dr. Heinrich Best, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany

• The Impact of the Global Economic Crisis on Political Legitimacy in Old and New Democracies

Ursula Hoffmann-Lange, Universität Bamberg, Germany

• The Political Impact of the Global Economic Crisis in Poland: Delayed and Indirect Effects

Radoslaw Markowski and Agnieszka Kwiatkowska, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland

• The Impact of the Global Economic Crisis on Patterns of Support for Democracy in Germany

Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Berlin International University of Applied Sciences, Germany

• Not all Crises are Bad for Governments: The Global Economic Crisis and the Swedish Case

Patrik Öhberg, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

• The Global Economic Crisis, Dual Polarization, and Liberal Democracy in South Korea

Han, Sang-Jin, Seoul National University and Shim, Young-Hee, Hanyang University, South Korea (Summary presented by Ursula Hoffmann-Lange)

• Dimensions of Political Representation: Ideological and Policy Congruence between the Representative and the Represented in Seven Countries

Yilmaz Esmer and Bahar Ayca Okcuoglu, Bahcesehir University, Istanbul, Turkey