Lunch Lecture – How some democracies are more susceptible to polarisation than others

Activity: Talk or presentationTalk at a public lecture/debate

Description

For the EDMO BELUX Lunch Lecture that took place on 18 December at 13:00-14:00 CET, we were delighted to welcome as our guest speakers Kamil Bernaerts, a PhD candidate at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and University of Warwick. His PhD focuses on the relation between different forms of polarisation and democracy. Specifically, he is interested in exploring the “boundary” between harmless and harmful forms of polarisation.

All over the world, democracies are affected by polarisation. Nevertheless, remarkable differences between countries exist. Scandinavian countries, for example, do much better than France, the UK, or the US. A large-scale comparative study by VUB-researchers Kamil Bernaerts, Benjamin Blanckaert and Didier Caluwaerts attributes some part of that variation between countries to their political institutions. The message of this presentation was therefore hopeful: within the right institutional conditions, democracies can successfully curtail polarisation.
Period18 Dec 2023
Held atEDMO BELUX
Degree of RecognitionInternational