Threats, Challenges, and Democratic Resilience

Director: Sebastián Lavezzolo

Location: Room 2.A.03. Madrid Campus – Puerta de Toledo.

Language of instruction: English

Target Audience

The course is designed not only for undergraduate and graduate university students in the social sciences, but also for citizens from diverse academic backgrounds, with the aim of promoting inclusive reflection on the risks facing contemporary democracy. The sustainability of democratic systems is not solely a concern for experts or academics, but a challenge that calls upon society as a whole. The course will feature speakers of recognized prestige who exercise significant leadership in the analysis and debate of this issue from multiple perspectives.

Speakers

Director: Sebastián Lavezzolo. Link to CV.
Speakers:

Sebastián Lavezzolo.
Vicente Valentim.
Pablo Fernández-Vázquez.
Lídia Brun Carrasco.
Lluis Orriols.
Aina Gallego.

Program

Monday, June 29
10:00–11:00 AM. Democracy at Risk: State of the Question. Sebastián Lavezzolo
11:00 AM–12:00 PM. The Normalization of the Far Right. Vicente Valentim.
12:00–12:30 PM. Break.
12:30–2:30 PM. The Normalization of the Far Right. Vicente Valentim.

Tuesday, June 30
10:00 AM–12:00 PM. Identity and New Axes of Political Competition: Challenges and Resilience. Pablo Fernández-Vázquez.
12:00–12:30 PM. Break.
12:30–2:30 PM. Identity and New Axes of Political Competition: Challenges and Resilience. Pablo Fernández-Vázquez.

Wednesday, July 1
10:00 AM–12:00 PM. Tensions from Macroeconomics. Lídia Brun Carrasco
12:00–12:30 PM. Break.
12:30–2:30 PM. Tensions from Macroeconomics. Lídia Brun Carrasco

Thursday, July 2
10:00–11:00 AM. How to Know if Democracy Is in Crisis? Sebastián Lavezzolo
11:00 AM–12:00 PM. The Consent of the Losers. Lluis Orriols.
12:00–12:30 PM. Break.
12:30–2:30 PM. The Consent of the Losers. Lluis Orriols.

Friday, July 3
10:00 AM–12:00 PM. Artificial Intelligence and Democracy: Challenges, Virtues, and Threats. Aina Gallego.
12:00–12:30 PM. Break.
12:30–1:30 PM. Artificial Intelligence and Democracy: Challenges, Virtues, and Threats. Aina Gallego.
1:30–2:30 PM. Roundtable. Vicente Valentim, Aina Gallego, and Sebastián Lavezzolo.

Course Objectives and Motivations

In the current context, democracy faces growing threats and complex challenges that test its foundations. In many countries, democratic institutions show signs of erosion, civil and political rights are increasingly vulnerable, and citizen disenchantment with the system has created fertile ground for polarization and populism. However, alongside these problems, examples of resilience also emerge where political actors, institutions, and societies have managed to resist and renew democratic values.
This intensive course, designed to take place over five days, proposes an in-depth and structured analysis of the contemporary dynamics affecting democracy. Through concrete case studies and critical reflection, it will address the main threats driving democratic backsliding, from the concentration of power and the weakening of citizen participation to the impact of disinformation and the crisis of trust in institutions.
The program will also pay special attention to the challenges facing democracies in a global environment marked by economic uncertainty, new technological advances, a new geopolitics, and the rise of authoritarian movements.
Despite this adverse landscape, the course will highlight key examples of democratic resilience. We will analyze experiences in which societies and institutional actors have managed to rebuild citizen trust, strengthen control mechanisms, and promote inclusive initiatives that renew commitment to democracy.

Upon completing the course, students will realize that the most emblematic value of the classical world is not the elitist character of its education or a particular monumental aesthetic (to cite two typical categories of the interpretation given throughout the 19th century), but rather the capacity to thematize every human problem, transforming it into a source of personal and collective teaching, fruitful and always enriching. From this experience, capable of converting the intimate drama of existence into a rational theme (thus allowing the birth of philosophy and Attic tragedy), or the difficulties of community life into political reflection, or the imitation of nature into art and technique, emerges that freedom of spirit that permeates all humanisms throughout history and that remains one of the priority ideals of the contemporary world.

Furthermore, the classical tradition is much closer to the paradigms of digital culture than one might imagine: if the “digital humanities” constitute in a certain way a form of re-imagining the traditional humanities, rethinking the development of the human being in relation to their history and culture through new possibilities for creating and disseminating knowledge, it is well known that the legacy of Greco-Roman civilization has been performing this same task for centuries, updating itself in each era, according to the urgencies of the societies that return to study Antiquity, to find in it answers about their own time.

CURRICULUM

Director: Sebastián Lavezzolo

Sebastián Lavezzolo is Full Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and member of the Juan Linz Institute. He holds a PhD in Political Science from New York University (2015) and a Master’s in Social Sciences from the Juan March Institute (2007), and was previously a researcher at IESE-Business School and Pompeu Fabra University. His work addresses political economy and comparative politics, focusing on financial systems and the challenges of representative democracies. He has published in high-impact international journals. Recently, he analyzed the crisis of traditional parties within the TECNOPOL project and currently leads the POLDOORS project, which studies “revolving doors” in Spain (1920-2020) with funding from the State Research Agency. He directs the Master’s in Social Sciences of the Department of Social Sciences at UC3M, where he teaches at undergraduate and graduate levels. Additionally, he founded the blog Piedras de Papel on eldiario.es, connecting academic analysis with public debate.

Teaching Team

The teaching team for the course “The Classical World in the Digital Age: New Challenges” consists of six people, including the Directors, with equal representation between men and women (3+3). Coming from different but complementary disciplines such as Philology, Law, Archaeology, and History, they have all been cooperating for many years, working together on the research lines of the “Lucio Anneo Séneca” Institute of Classical Studies at UC3M. This institute is at the forefront in Spain and internationally in the field of “digital humanities,” developing a series of projects for the online publication of databases and digitization of documents related to the classical world and its survival throughout history. With regard to teaching activities related to the promotion, updating, and scientific presentation of various aspects of the classical world, the six course instructors have extensive teaching experience, of which the following activities are worth highlighting:

Francisco L. Lisi Bereterbide was for many years coordinator of the Classical Studies area in the Department of Humanities at UC3M and instructor of the undergraduate courses “Classical Culture” and “Transmission of the Classical Legacy” and the graduate course “The Transmission of the Classical Legacy.” Founder and first director of the “Lucio Anneo Séneca” Institute of Classical Studies.

Rosa M. Carreño Sánchez has taught, in both Spanish and English, the Humanities Course “Daily Life and Norms in Rome” for more than five years. This course is taught at the Getafe and Colmenarejo campuses and is offered to students of different nationalities and from the most diverse degree programs (Law, Economics, Business Administration, Computer Engineering, etc.). She has experience in creating digital libraries and participated in the digitization and publication of the “Antecessores” ancient legal collection of the University of Girona Library.

Ana M. Rodríguez González was coordinator of the Conference on Greco-Roman Criminal Law: Crimes and Punishments in Antiquity, organized by the “Lucio Anneo Séneca” Institute of Classical Studies as early as 2008. Since then and to this day, one of the lines of her teaching activity has been dedicated to disseminating how criminal justice was perceived and organized in ancient history. On this topic and others also related to Roman culture, society, and law, she has taught numerous Humanities Courses and has published several didactic works designed to explain these subjects through a careful selection of texts. She has also participated in various research projects aimed at analyzing the relationship between Law and religion in the past of Greece and Rome.