THE RATIU DIALOGUES ON DEMOCRACY 2021
EVENT PHOTOS 2021
2021 SCHEDULE
WELCOME
10.00 - 10.15
DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Cluj-City Plaza, Sindicatelor 6-9, Cluj-Napoca
The Dialogues on Democracy conference will be opened by the Chairman of the Ratiu Family Foundation, Mr Nicolae Ratiu, with a brief overview of the Ratiu family’s history and interest in democratic resilience that will be covered. He will introduce the internationally renowned speakers from academia and government who will share their expertise with us over the two-day event.
WELCOME
10.00 - 10.15
DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Cluj-City Plaza, Sindicatelor 6-9, Cluj-Napoca
The Dialogues on Democracy conference will be opened by the Chairman of the Ratiu Family Foundation, Mr Nicolae Ratiu, with a brief overview of the Ratiu family’s history and interest in democratic resilience that will be covered. He will introduce the internationally renowned speakers from academia and government who will share their expertise with us over the two-day event.
Ion Rațiu Journalism Ceremony Award
14.30 - 15.00
DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Cluj-City Plaza, Sindicatelor 6-9, Cluj-Napoca
With an introduction by Nicolae Rațiu, Chairman of the Rațiu Family Foundation, and an address by this year’s recipient of the Ion Rațiu Journalism Award, Victor Ilie, who currently reports for Recorder.
According to the members of the Jury Committee that evaluated this year’s proposals, the article written by Victor Ilie is an example of quality journalism produced by an independent press project, an investigation carried out at a time when the access to information was often limited for journalists. Read the press release here.
Panel: Journalism and the media in Central Europe
15.30 - 17.30
DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Cluj-City Plaza, Sindicatelor 6-9, Cluj-Napoca
Speakers include journalists Mr John Lloyd, Financial Times, Mr Alison Smale, Institute of Human Sciences Vienna, Mr Wojciech Przybyski, Visegrad Insight and Res Publica.
A free press is a hallmark of a free, liberal democracy: journalists hold governments to account, keep citizens informed, and expose wrongdoings by those who wield power and influence. The media, however, can also hold considerable influence itself, and is continually at risk of political and business interference. These tensions have come to particular prominence in Central Europe.
To discuss the state of the media in the region, this dialogue brings together journalists with a wealth of experience reporting in, and about, the Central European region:
John Lloyd is a Contributing Editor at the Financial Times, and Chairman of the School of Civic Education (Russia). He was based in the USSR and Central Europe in the 1980s and 1990s as East Europe Editor and the Moscow Bureau Chief
Wojciech Przybylski is the editor-in-chief of Visegrad Insight and chairman of Res Publica Foundation in Warsaw, and former editor-in-chief of Eurozine.
Alison Smale reported from Central Europe for many years, for the United Press International, the Associated Press, The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune. She served as the Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, and is now researching Central European media at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.
Panel: Ideas, ideals and ideology in democracies
10.30 - 12.30
Ratiu Democracy Centre, Piata 1 Decembrie 1918, Turda
This panel discussion will include Professor Slobodan Markovich, Professor Christopher Coker and Doctor Erica Benner.
Do – or should – ideals, or ‘values’, matter in a democracy? What are the differences between values and ideology? Have post-cold war democracies lost sight of their ideals? Are we living in a post-ideological age?
In this wide-ranging discussion, Professor Christopher Coker, Professor Slobodan Markovich and Dr Erica Benner will explore the ways in which ideas, ideology, pragmatism, and realpolitik do – and should – influence domestic and international politics.
Christopher Coker is Director of LSE IDEAS, LSE’s foreign policy think tank. He was Professor of International Relations at LSE, retiring in 2019. He is a former twice serving member of the Council of the Royal United Services Institute, a former NATO Fellow and a regular lecturer at Defence Colleges in the UK, US. Rome, Singapore, and Tokyo. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the National Institute for Defence Studies In Tokyo, the Rajaratnam School for International Studies Singapore, the Political Science Dept in Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok and the Norwegian and Swedish Defence Colleges.
Slobodan G. Markovich, MBE is a Full Professor at the School of Political Science of the University of Belgrade where he lectures Political Anthropology, Political History of South-East Europe and Image of European Other. He is also a Full Professor at the Institute for European Studies in Belgrade. He has been Research Associate at LSEE/LSE since 2012, and at LSE IDEAS since 2018. He has been the head of the Centre for British Studies at the School of Political Science in Belgrade since 2017. His research interests include Construction of Ethnic/National and Religious Identities in the Balkans, British-Balkan Relations, psychoanalytic anthropology, and History of European Pessimism.
Erica Benner is a political philosopher who has held academic posts at Oxford University, the London School of Economics and Yale University. She was awarded a DPhil by Oxford in 1993. She is the author of the books Really Existing Nationalisms (Oxford University Press, 1995), Machiavelli’s Ethics (Princeton University Press, 2009), Machiavelli’s Prince: A New Reading (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli’s Lifelong Quest for Freedom (Penguin Allen Lane, 2017). Be Like the Fox was one of The Guardian newspaper’s best books of 2017 and shortlisted for the 2018 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography. She is currently writing a book on democracy.
Closing keynote address: Global Challenges to European Values in the Contemporary Era
14.30 - 16.30
Ratiu Democracy Centre, Piata 1 Decembrie 1918, Turda
Professor Richard Higgott, Brussels School of Governance, VUB, will speak in conversation with Professor Christopher Coker, LSE IDEAS.
Are there values that are exclusively European? Values that are often attributed to Europe—and sometimes called universal values—are currently contested not only outside Europe but inside Europe too. If we can identify core European values, what are the challenges that Europe faces in both defending them and advancing them in the wider global context in the current era?
In this keynote address, Professor Higgott will embed the discussion of European values in a comparative global context, with reference to Asia in general and China and India in particular.
Richard Higgott is Emeritus Professor of International Political Economy at the University of Warwick, Senior Researcher in the Brussels School of Governance, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Visiting Professor of Political Science at the University of Siena. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy at Vesalius College at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel working on an H2020 project on European cultural and science diplomacy.
Christopher Coker is Director of LSE IDEAS, LSE’s foreign policy think tank. He was Professor of International Relations at LSE, retiring in 2019. He is a former twice serving member of the Council of the Royal United Services Institute, a former NATO Fellow and a regular lecturer at Defence Colleges in the UK, US. Rome, Singapore, and Tokyo. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the National Institute for Defence Studies In Tokyo, the Rajaratnam School for International Studies Singapore, the Political Science Dept in Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok and the Norwegian and Swedish Defence Colleges.
Closing remarks at the Transylvanian Night Gala Dinner
by Professor Gordon Barrass, LSE IDEAS
So here we are now, thirty years after the Cold War. Romania is one of the successful democracies in Eastern Europe and Post Brexit the UK is trying to establish ever closer bilateral relations with EU members. Both our countries have a very realistic view of the threat from Russia, which cannot be said of many other EU members. That bodes well for the future relations between our two countries. In this context it seems almost preordained that LSE and the Ratiu Foundation would have such a special relationship. That, however, was not the case. So I would like, if I may, to take a few moments to reflect on the part that chance has played in our links here today.