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What lessons can be drawn from Europe‘s historical process of democratization? In an age when democratic reversals, backsliding, and competitive authoritarianism are rampant among new democracies, taking a „long-run“ view of democracy‘s own long-run history in today‘s stable democracies provides insight into the determinants of settled and unsettled paths of democracy more generally.

Not since the mid-1960s had the United States taken a significant step toward national health insurance; meanwhile the corporatization of American medicine has propelled a $2.5 trillion dollar enterprise full of vested financial interests and health inequities. This year the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which promises to reform private insurance company practices and extend coverage to about half of the 50 million uninsured Americans.

Moderated by Klaus Schlichte


Neil Smelser will identify recurrent and possibly insoluble issues in defining, explaining, and defending against contemporary terrorism. He will also explore a number of special „entrapments“ in our response to terrorism, including the role of the mass media, the tension between security and civil liberties, and the tension between the tendencies toward national unity and partisanship in the face of terrorist threats and attacks.

Drohen Staatsbankrott, Inflation und Massenarmut?