Please submit your proposals using the form below by 15 December 2025.
Congress Organization: Marlon Barbehön, Stefan Christoph, Burkhard Conrad, Timo Feilen, Sara Gebh, Silvia Haider, Oliver Hidalgo, Christian Leonhardt, Mascha Liening, Martin Nonhoff, Emily Katzenstein, Ragna Verhoeven, Lea Watzinger, Manon Westphal
The Second International Conference on Political Theory invites under the title Backsliding, Resilience, Renewal? Democracy in Eras of Transformation to submit abstracts in order to apply for open and semi-open panels with relevant contributions.
Background and Objectives
In a present marked by multiple crises, democracy, its shortcomings and authoritarian tendencies, as well as its potential for resilience and renewal, have increasingly come into focus. Critical analyses from political theory and the history of political thought are needed to examine established interpretative frameworks, assumptions, and concepts, to introduce historical perspectives for comparison, and to address current challenges and possible reform projects with analytical precision.
The conference aims to explore contemporary diagnoses of transformations in democracies, historical perspectives on past crises and processes of transformation, as well as conceptual analyses of democracy, transformation, resilience, and renewal. Scholars from all subfields of political theory—including, but not limited to, the history of political thought, international political theory, democratic theory, theories of action and decision-making, comparative political theory, and political economy— have been warmly invited to organise closed, open, or semi-open panels until the 6 November 2025.
At the same time, the present transformations cannot be understood from the perspective of political theory and the history of political ideas alone. Dialogue with other, empirically oriented subfields of political science is essential, as is the inclusion of related disciplines (e.g., political philosophy, sociology, history, law, cultural studies, area studies, systems theory) and a conscious broadening of perspectives beyond Eurocentric frameworks. The conference seeks to provide a forum for joint critical analyses, constructive debate, and innovative approaches.
Submission of Abstracts and Deadlines
After collecting and selecting panel proposals in the first step, we now invite submissions of papers from the disciplines and sub-disciplines mentioned above, ranging from 300 to a maximum of 400 words. The conference languages are German and English; there will be several English-language tracks so that non-German-speaking participants can attend events throughout. In order to promote lively discussions and personal exchange, the conference is planned exclusively as an in-person event in Passau.
Please submit your abstracts by 15 December 2025, using only the form below. If alternative submission options are specified in the panel descriptions, please disregard them. In any case, please use the form below and indicate the (open/semi-open) panel for which you are applying, as well as an alternative panel in which you would also be interested in participating in case of rejection.
The deadline for submissions is also the deadline for the finalization of closed panels. Please send the final panel composition directly to the email address below.
The decision on the acceptance of submissions will be made by 20 January 2026.
For organisational inquiries, please contact: Silvia Haider, University of Passau (second.congress@uni-passau.de).
The organising committee looks forward to your proposals.
Information about the individual panels can be found on the page Panels.
