Call for Papers: Democracy Under Pressure: Conditions of the Authoritarian Turn Yesterday and Today, 24–26 May 2027 | WU Vienna
The conference “Democracy Under Pressure: Conditions of the Authoritarian Turn Yesterday and Today” (WU Vienna, 24–26 May 2027) brings law and socioeconomics into an interdisciplinary conversation to examine the current rise of authoritarian tendencies around the world. It explores key threats to democratic governance and analyzes which socioeconomic, legal and institutional responses could strengthen democratic resilience.
The conference addresses these issues in dialogue with four pivotal thinkers – Friedrich Hayek, Karl Polanyi, Hans Kelsen, and Carl Schmitt – whose influential yet antagonistic accounts of the proper economic and constitutional order still provide a highly relevant analytical framework for today’s challenges.
We welcome individual abstracts and complete panel proposals from scholars in law, socioeconomics, political economy, constitutional theory, political science, economic sociology, history and related research fields — at all career stages, and from all regions, including the Global South.
Keynotes by Katharina Pistor (Columbia University) and Quinn Slobodian (Boston University).
Abstract submission deadline: 15 October 2026.
This conference is free of charge. Please note that we cannot provide funding for participants.
For more details, refer here
