Despite its remarkable achievements since World War II and again after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the liberal model for organizing politics, the state, and the law is under pressure. Rising powers dispute the liberal international order for being dominated by and biased towards the “West”. Authoritarian leaders characterize liberal societies as weak, decadent, and indecisive. The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, Brexit, and rise of populism elsewhere indicate that the challenges to liberal ideas and institutions are growing rapidly. Where authoritarian populists rule, they seek to limit individual freedoms and undermine the independence of the judiciary to consolidate their power.
This course will explore why the liberal model has come under pressure. We will analyze external and internal challenges to the liberal model and their interrelationships. The course will incorporate different disciplinary and methodological approaches from international law, international relations, comparative politics and comparative law, aiming to facilitate a fruitful dialogue between these different disciplines on problems of common interest. We will address five sets of questions that are relevant for both (international) law and politics:
- To what extent do current challengers target the liberal model?
- Are alternative concepts of political and legal order on the rise, or are they varieties of existing liberal ideas?
- What are the consequences of these contestations for liberal values such as democracy, free markets, and the protection of human rights?
- What are their consequences for multilateral institutions, both on the global and the regional level
- What are the implications for the global challenges of our time in fields such as security and conflict management, human rights protection, economics and trade?
- Docente: Alberto do Amaral Junior
- Docente: Brigitte Weiffen