Zoltán Gábor Szűcs from the Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest will present a paper on ‘The challenge of living in and making sense of illiberal regimes: A normative political theoretical enterprise’ on 5 November 2021 at Nobel Parken, Room 1453-415, at 11am–12.15pm.

Registration is required. If you would like to receive the pre-circulated paper and attend the event, please contact AIAS fellow Kei Hiruta on e-mail kei.hiruta@aias.au.dk. 

This event is co-hosted by AIAS and the Research Unit for the History of Political and Economic Ideas at the Department of Philosophy & History of Ideas and will take place at Building 1453, Nobelparken, Aarhus University.  

Paper abstract

Normative political theory routinely addresses the examples of injustice and unfreedom within tolerably just and free polities as well as the examples of injustice and unfreedom within utterly unjust and unfree polities but it seems to largely overlook the particular political-ethical challenges of living in polities that are tolerably unjust and unfree like contemporary illiberal regimes. Such regimes maintain a level of political and media pluralism and electoral competition, an entire democratic facade, lack massive political violence, avoid large-scale electoral fraud while systematically skewing the political playfield to their advantage. People who live in such regimes are confronted with political-ethical challenges significantly different both from those of people who live in liberal democracies and the political-ethical challenges of people living in fully authoritarian regimes. In my presentation, I will examine some key elements of this experience and the difficulties of examining it in terms of normative political theory, especially for one who oneself lives in such a regime.

About the speaker

Zoltán Gábor Szűcs is a research fellow at Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest and he teaches at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest as a senior lecturer. He is a political theorist interested in political ethics (especially but not exclusively in the context of unfree polities), the theory of political obligation, and the general questions of political realism. He published about Aristotle's regime theory, Tacitus' understanding of political failure, political obligation in illiberal regimes, the a-theoretical core of political realism. A further paper of his about philosophical anarchism has been currently accepted in CRISPP. His presentation will be about his current book project entitled Political ethics in illiberal regimes. The first draft of the book manuscript has been recently submitted to the publisher.