19 89 19: Thirty Years After the Round Tables

In 1989, round table negotiations between undemocratic power holders and the democratic opposition led to a transition from autocratic regimes to liberal democracies in the Visegrád countries: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. Although the Soviet-type regimes collapsed not because of classical revolutions, the political transitions resulted in revolutionary changes in the constitutional systems.

On the thirtieth anniversary, the questions we are trying to answer at this workshop are the following: To what extent did the coordinated transformation in the region succeed or fail? Could a round table negotiation serve as a strategical device for restoring democracy and constitutionalism again?

The participants of the round table discussion will be Andrew Arato (The New School for Social Research, New York), Christian Boulanger (Humboldt University), Petra Gümplová (University of Erfurt), Jarosław Kuisz (2019/2020 Fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg), Ulrich K. Preuß (Hertie School, TBC), Michael Meyer-Resende (Democracy Reporting International), Zsuzsanna Szelényi (2019/2020 Fellow of the Robert Bosch Academy), Gábor Attila Tóth (2017/2019 Alexander von Humboldt Fellow), and Karolina Wigura (2019/2020 Fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg).

The discussion will be moderated by Kriszta Kovács (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, WZB Center for Global Constitutionalism).

The event will be held in English.

This event is part of the Supra-Nat project that has received funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 794368.