WVSA Round Table: Democracy and Democratic Values (videos from the event)

In the last several years, democratic boom gave way to a democratic recession. The political developments of the past decade have led many scholars to argue that democracy has reached its peak and is no longer on the rise. Others claim that the long-term trend toward democracy has always come in surges and declines and is essentially linked to the cycles of modernization. Hence, the currently observed democratic retreat is a temporary phenomenon. At the same time, efficient institutions and good governance practices require certain cultural environment. Growing emphasis on emancipative values engenders a culture of trust and tolerance in which people cherish individual freedom, self-expression, activist political orientations; these attributes are crucial to democracy. This roundtable united leading scholars in the field with the aim to examine the implication of social value change for the quality and consolidation of democracies worldwide as well as the observed trends and challenges in the measure popular support for democracy, democratic governance. Participants have addressed such issues as the ongoing debate on democracy decline and the rise of populism, elite-mass linkages, public opinion and political participation, causal relationship between value change and democratic consolidation and threat to democratic rule, relationship between change in social values and future of regional and global integration, immigration and refugee policies.