Conference - European Crises from Weimar until Today

Department of Business and Politics, CBS held a conference concerning European Crises from Weimar until Today: History – Economy – Politics – Law

 

Background: From the Weimar Republic and interwar period over the 1970s to the current debacle over the Euro, crises and crisis semantics has been a recurrent theme of European modern history. Although being very different in terms of causes, developments and consequences these three crises share that they were characterized by economic downturns, social upheavals and forceful ideological formations and semantic innovations which have both challenged and transformed democracy and the state of law.
 
This conference seeks to take a closer look at the many variants of the crises phenomenon in the European context from the early 20th century until today by looking at the complex interplay between structural transformations within the economy and institutionalized politics and law and the ideological formations and semantic innovations which complemented these transformations.

Organisers: Professor MSO Poul F. Kjaer, Department of Business and Politics, Copenhagen Business School and Assistant Professor Niklas Olsen, Center of Modern European Studies, University of Copenhagen. 

Venue: Department of Business and Politics, Copenhagen Business School, Porcelænshaven 20, 2000 Frederiksberg. Room PH 110.

Registration: Mette Grue Nielsen: mgn.dbp@cbs.dk before Friday 5th December 2014.

PROGRAMME

DAY 1: Thursday 11 December

8.45 – 9.00 Coffee and Registration

9.00 – 9.10 Welcome: Poul F. Kjaer and Niklas Olsen

Session I: Semantics, Notions and Narrative of Crisis

Chair: Christian Borch

9.10. – 10.00: David Runciman (Cambridge University): What Time Frame Makes Sense for Thinking About Crises?

Session II: Weimar and the Interwar Period: Anti-Modernism and Crisis of Legitimacy

Chair: Ruth Dukes

10.00 – 10.50: Balázs Trencsényi (Central European University Budapest): The Breakthrough of Anti-modernism: Towards a Typology of Crisis Discourses in Interwar East Central Europe

10.50 – 11.10: Coffee

11.10 – 12.00: John P. McCormick (University of Chicago): The Legitimacy Crisis of the Weimar Republic: Rational and Theocratic Authority in the Schmitt-Strauss Exchange

12.00 – 13.00: Lunch Break

Session III: From the Crises of Crowds to the Crises of the Consumer

Chair: Mikkel Thorup

13.00 – 13.50: Christian Borch (Copenhagen Business School): Crowds and Crisis: On Suggestible Sociality

13.50 – 14.40: Niklas Olsen (University of Copenhagen): Crisis and the Consumer: Reconstructions of Liberalism in Twentieth Century Western European Political Thought

14.40 – 15.00: Coffee Break

Session IV: Labour, Corporatism and Governance

Chair: Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann

15.00 – 15.50: Ruth Dukes (University of Glasgow): The Crisis in Labour Law

15.50 – 16.40: Chris Thornhill: (Manchester University): The Constitutionalization of Labour Law and the Failure of National Democracy

16.40 - 17.30 Poul F. Kjaer (Copenhagen Business School): From the Crisis of Corporatism to the Crisis of Governance

17.30: End of day 1

18.30 Dinner: "Restaurant Radio", Julius Thomsens Gade 12, 1632 Copenhagen V

 

DAY 2: Friday 12 December

9.15 – 9.30: Registration and Coffee

Session V: From Extra-Legality to Human Rights

Chair: Balázs Trencsényi

9.30 – 10.20: William E. Scheuermann (University of Indiana Bloomington): Crises and Extra-Legality: From Above and From Below

10.20 – 11.10 Mikkel Thorup (Aarhus University): Dreaming of European Civil War – Crisis Thinking on the Radical Anti-Muslim Right

11.10 – 12.00: Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (University of California Berkeley): Human Rights and the Ends of History

12.00 – 13.00: Lunch break

Session IV: The Return of Crisis: The Euro and the Future of Europe

Chair: Chris Thornhill

13.00 – 13.50: Claus Offe (Hertie School of Governance): Europe Entrapped. An Economic Crisis Paralyzing the Political Capacity for its Management

13.50 – 14.40: Christian Joerges (Hertie School of Governance Berlin/University of Bremen): What is left of the European Economic Constitution II?

14.40 – 15.00: Coffee Break

15.00 – 15.50: Hauke Brunkhorst (University of Flensburg): The Crisis of Economic Constitutionalism in Europe

15.50 – 16.00: Poul F. Kjaer and Niklas Olsen: Concluding Remarks and Publication Plans

16.00: End of Day 2