Democracy of the last man: The politics of demographic imagination

The European Studies Centre (ESC) held its annual lecture on 4 June 2024. The lecture was titled “Democracy of the last man: The politics of demographic imagination.” It was delivered by Ivan Krastev, ESC Visiting Fellow, and chaired by Othon Anastasakis, ESC director.

Krastev’s lecture focused on the importance and influence of demography on contemporary politics. It sought to weave together demographic trends – low fertility rates and aging populations – with migratory flows, national identity, feelings of anxiety about the future the nation, and warfare. He outlined the traits of his ‘last man’. While Fukuyama’s ‘last man’ was satisfied but not ambitious, ‘married’ to democracy but not in love with it, Krastev’s ‘last man’ is full of anxieties and terrified that his nation is on the edge of extinction. He is the last European, the last white man – terrified of the extinction of the political power of his nation or race. Krastev characterised this as ‘demographic bulimia’ – an anxious feeling driven by the perception that they are simultaneously too many and too few people on a specific territory: too many of ‘them’ and too few of ‘us’.

The central argument of Krastev’s lecture was that demographic imagination is a new substitute for political ideology, and that demographic transition and democratic transition are closely interlinked. He substantiated his central argument by positing that: (1) demography and demographic imagination are key to understand the changes in both domestic and international politics; (2) while demographic change will affect both authoritarian and democratic regimes, at least initially it will have much more destabilising effect on democracies; (3) demographic changes and the need of migration that they bring put the focus on the rights of the majorities and as a result they expose the two conflicting notions of ‘the majority’ – the ethnic majority and the electoral majority; (4) while demographic anxiety fuels political support for the far right both in Eastern and the Western Europe, the fears in these geographical areas lead to two different types of illiberal regimes.

The fall of dictatorship in Portugal, Spain, and Greece: 50 years on

On 28 May, SEESOX, in cooperation with  the European Studies Centre (ESC) hosted a panel on the fall of dictatorship, and the transitions to democracy, including their legacies on current political developments in Spain, Portugal, and Greece.

The panel consisted of Joao Carlos Espada, Professor at the Institute for Political Studies at the Catholic University of Portugal, Ainhoa Campos Posada, historian at the Universidad Complutense Madrid, and Harris Mylonas, Associate Professor at George Washington University’ Elliott School of International Affairs, focusing on Portugal, Spain, and Greece, respectively. The seminar was chaired by ESC and SEESOX director, Othon Anastasakis.

According to Joao Carlos Espada Portugal, Spain, and Greece are the first cases of what Samuel Huntington called “the third wave of world democratisation” which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of Communism in Central and Easter Europe.

He argued that the military coup that heralded the establishment of democracy in Portugal on 25 April 1974 was followed by a clash between two radically different conceptions of democracy: on the one hand, popular/populist democracy, which was supported by the Communists in Portugal, and on the other, parliamentary democracy. Although (or perhaps because) the Communists were electorally beaten in the first democratic Portuguese elections in April 1975, they attempted a coup in November 1975 and they were defeated by a coalition of left and center-right parties led by Mário Soares, the leader of the Socialist party and lifelong opponent of the far right dictatorship of Salazar.

Reconceptualising the EU-member states’ relationship in the age of permanent emergency

On Wednesday 8 May, the SEESOX hosted a presentation by Stella Ladi (Queen Mary University of London) on “Coordinative Europeanisation.” Since 2008, the European Union has been engulfed in several crises. While distinct, these crises are feeding into each other and are testing the capacity and resilience of EU and member states. With the Covid-19 crisis, there has been a trend towards a new mode of “coordinative Europeanisation” in EU decision-making, altering the relationships between EU-member states in pursuit of fast policy responses.

Ladi defined coordinative Europeanisation as “a process where increased and often informal coordination between EU member states and EU institutions takes place during a crisis’ early stages in view of quickly devising policy solutions that work for everyone, thereby enhancing decision-making speed, reform ownership and policy compliance.” Coordinative Europeanisation, Ladi argued, may coexist with other pre-existing modes of Europeanisation, such as soft Europeanisation and coercive Europeanisation. At the same time, de-Europeanisation trends have also emerged.

In her research, Ladi seeks to understand the public policy agenda of the EU, asking whether the EU is managing to adequate
ly respond to global crises using existing as well as novel means. She raised three questions in particular. Firstly, in which policy areas is coordinative Europeanisation taking place? Secondly, is coordinative Europeanisation always linked to a crisis and/or an emergency? And thirdly, what kind of policy and governance solutions emerge out of these crises and how successful and long-lasting are they?

The Story Smuggler, or how to narrate the happened and the un-happened

On 8 March 2024, the European Studies Centre, together with South East European Studies at Oxford (SEESOX), hosted Bulgarian novelist, playwright, and author, Georgi Gospodinov, to discuss three of his works: The Physics of Sorrow (2011), Time Shelter (2020) and The Story Smuggler (2016). The discussion was chaired by Catherine Briddick, Andrew W Mellon Associate Professor of International Human Rights and Refugee Law and fellow of St Antony's College. Paul Betts, Professor of Modern European History and fellow at St Antony’s College, and Marilena Anastasopoulou, ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, provided commentary on Gospodinov’s works.

Gospodinov started by reading from his two books, The Physics of Sorrow and Time Shelter, and briefly discussed the writing process. The two books deal with markedly different themes. The Physics of Sorrow attempts to capture the nature of the Bulgarian sorrow. Gospodinov describes the Bulgarian sorrow as an experience which combines the sorrow of things that did not happen, or places that Bulgarians could not visit despite the hope or longing for them, and the culture of silence, which he describes as a combination of the culture of fear during Communism and patriarchal culture. According to the author, sorrow is both personal and political, connected with the developments in one’s country.

Building European defence through crises

The European Studies Centre, together with South East European Studies at Oxford (SEESOX), hosted Marilena Koppa, Professor at Panteion University in Athens, Greece. The seminar was held on 22 February 2024 and was chaired by Othon Anastasakis, Director of the European Studies Centre and of SEESOX.

Koppa’s presentation was based on her book The Evolution of the Common Security and Defence Policy: Critical Junctures and the Quest for EU Strategic Autonomy published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2022. The research for the book had taken place before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Koppa presented her analysis on the needs and challenges to build European defence by taking into account this latest crisis that the European Union has had to face.

Koppa noted that her time as a member of the European Parliament, when she also held the position of Coordinator of the Socialist and Democrat Group at the Subcommittee on Security and Defence, had prompted her to research European defence policy as an academic. In her presentation she discussed the origins of European defence, its evolution through crises, and its needs for the future.

Koppa argued that the EU’s Common and Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) sought to build European military capabilities that in the long-term would make the Union a global actor, but it did not seek to provide collective defence, which has been a NATO mission. The defence focus of the CSDP would be to prevent crises outside EU borders from reaching the Union.

Rethinking the Eastern Mediterranean in a volatile world

On 21 November, the European Studies Centre (ESC) (in collaboration with the Southeast European Studies Centre at Oxford - SEESOX) held a seminar on the opportunities and challenges to cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean region.

The region has become increasingly important as the European Union (EU) seeks to meet its energy demands after an almost complete ban on the import of Russian gas after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, the instability of the region coupled with a multitude of global crisis – amongst others climate change, trade wars, US-China competition, and inflation – are making the Eastern Mediterranean an integral part of the geopolitical space that affects regional and global balance of power.

The seminar convened on 21 November is part of a larger effort at ESC/SEESOX to tackle these issues through a special project, which we are expecting to launch in March 2024. The speakers for this seminar included Alexander Clarkson (King’s College London), Costandinos Filis (American College in Athens), Manal Shahabi (St. Antony’s College, Oxford), and Galip Dalay (St. Antony’s College, Oxford). The seminar was chaired by ESC Director Othon Anastasakis.

Heirs of the Greek catastrophe: The social life of Asia Minor refugees in Piraeus

The European Studies Centre (ESC) in collaboration with South East European Studies at Oxford (SEESOX) held a book discussion on the experiences of the Greek population of Asia Minor who settled in Greece after the population exchange agreement through the 1923 Lausanne Convention. Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus, written by Professor Renée Hirschon, was first published in 1989, whilst its third edition was published to commemorate the centenary of the Lausanne Convention.

The discussion was held on 25 October 2023, and it was chaired by Michael Llewellyn Smith, Fellow at St. Antony’s College. Renée Hirschon – Senior Research Fellow at St. Peter’s College, Oxford – presented the third edition of the book, while Robin Cohen – Emeritus Professor at Kellogg College, Oxford – and Başak Kale – Associate Professor at the Middle East Technical Institute – discussed the contributions of the book to the research on the topic and more broadly concerning questions of identity, belonging, nationalism, migration, and memory.

During the presentation of the book, Professor Hirschon provided some historical context to her research approach, discussed the key objective of the research, and presented some of the key themes. She first underlined some changes in the names of the locations where the field work had been conducted due to confidentiality concerns. The reader of the third edition should be aware that in the third edition “Nea Ephsus” is used instead of “Kokkinia” and/or “Nikaia”, while “Yerania” has replaced “Germanika”. The author then underscored that the research she was conducting in the 1970s was not part of what we may call today “refugee studies” or “migration studies”. The field did not exist at the time and in 1972, when Hirschon was conducting the research, the worldwide population of forcibly displaced persons was approximately 3.2 million. The purpose of the research conducted in the 1970s was to understand the interaction between the use of space and cultural values. But given the exponential growth of the worldwide number of forcibly displaced persons, she revisits her work and seeks to determine whether “we can learn something from the experience of people who were forcibly displaced in the early 1920s and whether that experience is relevant for us today”.