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Conference

Panel 4 | Are Constraints on Democracy Good or Bad?

February 28, 2025
3:45pm - 5:15pm
Lower Level Conference Room, Adolphus Busch Hall
Back to Conference

Conference

Panel 4 | Are Constraints on Democracy Good or Bad?

February 28, 2025
3:45pm - 5:15pm
Lower Level Conference Room, Adolphus Busch Hall
Claudia Landwehr
Speaker
Claudia Landwehr
Professor of Political Theory and Public Policy, University of Mainz
Fabio Wolkenstein
Speaker
Fabio Wolkenstein
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Vienna
Daniel Ziblatt
Speaker
Daniel Ziblatt
Director, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies & Eaton Professor of the Science of Government, Harvard University; Unit Director, Transformations of Democracy, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
 
February 28, 2025
3:45pm - 5:15pm
Lower Level Conference Room, Adolphus Busch Hall

The fourth panel of the conference will include the following presentations:

  • Claudia Landwehr – Insulating and Changing the Rules of the Game. To What Extent Should Democratic Procedures be Protected by Supermajority Requirements?
  • Fabio Wolkenstein – Remedying the Anti-Liberal Capture of Constitutional Courts.
  • Daniel Ziblatt – Where the Majority Should Rule.

Landwehr, Wolkenstein, and Ziblatt will analyze supermajority rules and non-majoritarian institutions regarding their effect on democratic quality. They will focus on how constraints on majority can both preserve stability and safeguard individual rights, but also potentially reinforce entrenched power structures and contribute to democratic stagnation.

About

When are constraints on majorities justifiable from a democratic point of view? Which institutions are, and which, not? And what are the consequences of different types of constraints on majorities for the stability and resilience of democracy?

This conference brings together European and American political scientists, legal scholars, and political theorists in a series of panels to discuss the consequences of majority-constraining institutions on democracy. For a full conference program, see here.

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