31303

SoSe 21: Social Contracts and Moral Economies

Mihai Varga

Kommentar

This seminar takes as its starting point the notion that each contemporary society has reached or developed a general framework regulating the relationship between classes, regions, capital and province, ethnic groups, and so on. This common fundament is a political, usually informal settlement called “social contract” or "moral economy". Modern democracies and societies in general co-evolve with the development and enlargement of these settlements (Andreas Wimmer). They have been shown to explain revolutions as well as growing or falling support for authoritarianism in settings as varied as post-colonial regions from Latin America (Andreas Wimmer) to South-East Asia (James C. Scott), and to the countries of the Soviet and post-Soviet bloc (Linda Cook). We explore these concepts by showing how they shed light on the erosion of support for liberal democracy in post-communist societies. Schließen