After the Democratic Age. Europe since the 1970s

In 1989, Europe appeared to have reached the pinnacle of its modern democratic transition. Since 1945, all the states of Europe had moved to a democratic norm: Western Europe in the initial post-war decade, Iberia and Greece in the 1970s, and finally the former socialist regimes in 1989. But over the last twenty years much of the confidence about Europe’s democratic identity has eroded. Democracy has become an embattled regime in contemporary Europe. Governments are challenged, historic parties are in retreat, and new political forces have emerged, along with languages of populism that challenge the democratic norms of the second half of the twentieth century. We live therefore in a new century, where past narratives no longer provide a road map for our present. The purpose of this lecture is not to add to the gloomy analyses of our current crisis. That is now an established fact. Instead, I want to discuss why the ascendancy of democratic values and structures, which seemed to be an established fact a generation ago, should have disappeared. The answers are of course complex. They are ideological and economic, but also above all political. To make sense of them is a duty for historians, whose eyes often remain too focused on the twentieth century. But it is also an obligation for understanding the character of our times.

Begrüßung: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Knöbl, Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung

Grußwort: Senatorin Maryam Blumenthal, Senatorin der Behörde für Wissenschaft, Forschung, Gleichstellung und Bezirke der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg

Laudatio: Prof. Dr. Sonja Levsen, Seminar für Zeitgeschichte, Universität Tübingen