Methods of State Assessment from the Late 19th Century to Today. Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Beyond

/ Termine

Methods of State Assessment from the Late 19th Century to Today. Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Beyond

Veranstalter
Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe, Marburg; University of Birmingham, Arts & Humanities Research Council
Veranstaltungsort
Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung
Ort
Marburg
Land
Deutschland
Vom - Bis
03.07.2019 - 05.07.2019
Website
https://www.herder-institut.de/go/brU-52729
Von
PD Dr. Heidi Hein-Kircher

The way we view states has changed considerably over the past one and a half centuries. Imperial power is no longer seen as a criterion for successful statehood, while political experts of 19th century Europe would not have focused on economic growth and contemporary standards of good governance to determine whether a state will prosper or not. A critical, historical perspective thus challenges the objectivity of today’s methods of state assessment and sharpens our understanding of how markers of statehood have changed as part of broader historical developments. Further developing this historical perspective is the objective of a three-day interdisciplinary conference hosted in Marburg by the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe and the University of Birmingham on 3 – 5 July 2019. The conference will bring historians and political scientists together to critically scrutinise modern frameworks of state assessment by bringing them into connection with their historical roots. Thus, the conference will provide an alternative approach to the history of international relations as well as of the modern social sciences.

A main aim of the conference is to discuss when and how a “modern”, discursive framework of state assessment emerged and how it developed over time. For this, we want to investigate how the circulation of knowledge and practices associated with state assessment functioned and changed. We will examine how claims to scientific objectivity contributed to a broader international science of statehood that influenced international politics, economies, and state building over the 20th century. We will put a focus on practitioners of state assessment, such as social scientists, but also “laymen”, such as businessmen, politicians, journalists, and their networks. Another focus will be on the development of institutions of state assessment, such as inquiry commissions and scientific institutions.

Programm

WEDNESDAY, July 3

14.00-15.45 NORMATIVE CONCEPTS OF STATE ASSESSMENT
Chair and Comment: Peter Haslinger

Igor Milić, Luka Nikolić: Examining the Failure of Failed States: The Twofold Nature of the Incumbent
Samuël Kruizinga: Size Matters. Debating the Relative Size of European States, 1814-Present
Pedro Ponte e Sousa: Globalization and Foreign Policy Change in the Longue Durée: between Theory and Practice

15.45-16.00 Coffee break

16.00-18.00 ASSESSING WEAK AND FAILING STATES
Chair and Comment: Jonathan Gumz

Szilveszter Csernus-Lukács: The Formation of a New State: Austria-Hungary
Takehiro Okabe: Long Shadow of a Failed State: The Finnish Democratic Republic (1939-40), its Consequences, and the Soviet Finno-Ugric Studies - Elsbeth Heaman: Canada as an Almost-Failed State over Two Centuries
Ivan Sablin: Parliament for a Subaltern Europe: Russian and Soviet Statehood in the Works of Russian Language Intellectuals, 1900s-1990s

18.00-19.30 KEYNOTE André Liebich: East Central Europe, between empires and independence

19.30 Welcome Dinner at Restaurant Weinlädle (please register for the table reservation)

THURSDAY, July 4

9.30-11.30 IMPROVING STATE VIABILITY
Chair and Comment: Friedrich Cain

Máté Pétervári: State Intervention in the Economic Life: The New Bankruptcy Act in Hungary after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise
Christopher Pooya Razavian: The Rise of Perfectionism as the Moral Purpose of the Modern Iranian State
Başak Akgül: The Rationality of Irrationailty: „Corruption“ in Ottoman Forest Politics

11.30-11.45 Coffee break

11.45-13.30 THE PRACTICE OF ASSESSING NEW STATES
Chair and Comment: Heidi Hein-Kircher

Tamás Székely: How to assess a Dualistic Empire: The Success and Failure Stories of Austria-Hungary
Malika Bahovadinova: Building or Failing the Tajik State: the Presence and Work on International Community in Post-Soviet Tajikistan
Renáta Paládi: The State Assessment and its Impacts on International Politics by Example of Non-Recognized State of the Donetsk People’s Republic

13.30-14.45 Lunch break

14.45-16.45 SCIENTIFIC INNOVATION AND STATE ASSESSMENT DURING THE COLD WAR
Chair and Comment: Anna Veronika Wendland

Friedrich Cain: Concious Governmentality? Science Studies and East-West German Relations
Isaac Mckean Scarborough: On the Cusp / Over the Edge: The Inversion of Soviet Economic Self-Valuation
Eglė Rindzevičiūtė: Systems Analysis as Infrastructural Knowledge. Scientific Expertise and Dissensus under State Socialism
Jacek Tebinka: British Assessments of Communist Poland 1956-1989. From Development to Permanent Crisis
GUIDED TOUR: Collections of Herder-Institute

19.00 Dinner (self-payers)

FRIDAY, July 5

09.30-11.15 STATE ASSESSMENT AND HISTORICAL RUPTURES I
Chair and Comment: Klaus Richter

Marco Bresciani: Fascist Projects of Statehood and Empire: a Habsburg / Post-Habsburg Perspective
Maciej Górny: Back and Forth. Borders Assessment and Geography, 1914-1919
Metin Atmaca: Accomplished on the Paper Failed on the Ground: The Kurdish Delegation Initiative for a State in Paris Peace Conference of 1919

11.15-11.30 Coffee break

11.30-13.15 STATE ASSESSMENT AND HISTORICAL RUPTURES II
Chair and Comment: Marco Bresciani

Suparna Banerjee: State Assessment in the Third Reich through the Prism of Carl Schmitt
William De Jong-Lambert: Of Books and Bombs: Restoring the Ordered World in Defeated States after World War II
Paweł Jaworski: The Swedish Middle Way – Myth or Reality? How it Arose and Developed (1930s-1960s)

13.15-14.15 Lunch break

14.15-15.00 FINAL DISCUSSION Wrap up and Comments: Heidi Hein-Kircher, Klaus Richter

Kontakt

Heidi Hein-Kircher
Gisonenweg 5-7 35037 Marburg

heidi.hein-kircher@herder-institut.de

https://www.herder-institut.de/go/brU-52729