Collegium Civitas, room 1222
March 19, 2015, hours. 10:00 – 12:30

Ivan Krastev will discuss the relationship between protest and democracy.
Or protest is a better instrument to hold elites accountable than the election?

In five short years between the events of “Occupy Wall Street” and the occupation of the Crimea, Vladimir Putin, we have seen – the Arab Spring, the Russian Winter, Summer and the partition of the Turkish Ukraine – all were part of a global wave of protests. Each of them – as well as many smaller – were not only a local expression of anger, but also on an international scale phenomenon.
– Are they showing signals a radical change in the way of doing politics?
– Or are spectacular public outbursts of anger, which ultimately do not matter?
– Is it technology, economics, psychology of the crowd, and social movements have caused a global outbreak of the rebellion?
– Is the protests are evidence of the technologically magnified the power of citizens?
– Do you, as an alternative, they mean the collapse of the political influence of the middle class and growing dissatisfaction with democracy?
– What will shape the future of democratic politics? Inspiring energy or sharp protest conservative opposition to him?

Ivan Krastev is president of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, and a regular contributor to the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (IWM). He is a founder and board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the assistant editor of the World Europe and the editorial board of the Journal of Democracy and Transit – Europäische Revue. From 2004 to 2006 he was executive director of the International Commission on the Balkans, chaired by former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato. He was editor-in-chief of the Bulgarian edition of Foreign Policy and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London (2005-2011). He received fellowships at the College of St. Anthony (Oxford); Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars (Washington, DC); Collegium Budapest; Wissenschaftskolleg (Berlin); Federalism Institute at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland); Remarque Institute and New York University.

His latest book in the English language are: “In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Do not Trust Our Leaders?” (TED Books, 2013); “The Anti-American Century” – co-edited with Alan McPherson (CEU Press, 2007) and “Shifting Obsessions: Three Essays on the Politics of Anticorruption” (CEU Press, 2004).