The Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) has set up a forum, which will hold eighteen sessions over the next two years, bringing together scholars of political science, law, history, media and communications, political sociology, economics and other related disciplines in order to discuss Trends in the Development of Contemporary Democracies.
The first meeting will be convened on Thursday, December 4th 2008.
The objectives of the forum, which will be directed by Prof. Yaron Ezrahi and Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer, is to examine the direction of the ongoing changes that have been occurring for some time at the deepest levels of many democracies, including Israel; to discuss the risks and challenges posed by these changes; and finally to come up with possible courses of action. Another goal of the forum is to distinguish between universal and the local elements comprising the trends that have been taking place in Israeli Democracy.
Experts in the field of democracy have recently pointed out the conceptual anachronism of contemporary democratic discourse, which makes it difficult to fully understand the ongoing developments that affect the structure, the political culture and the political process of contemporary democracies.
In the context of today's political and legal discourse, the terms "sovereignty", "legitimacy", "law", "political participation", "free market", "representation", etc., have a different meaning then they did not too long ago. We intend to conduct a critical examination of these developments in order to set the groundwork for an up-to-date theoretical and practical model based on the insights that can be drawn from the knowledge that has been collected over the past few years. In addition, we will consider the possibility of publishing the material that is collected and discussed in the forum.
Topics of Discussion
The first four conferences will focus on the following topics:
- A critique of the anachronistic terminology employed in the context of contemporary democratic discourse
- Globalization and its effects on the dwindling domestic legitimization resources
- Changes in the media and their effects on representation processes and participation in democratic politics
- Neoliberalism, before and after the financial crisis, from a perspective that is critical of contemporary democratic theory