International Workshop

Counterstrategies to authoritarianism: Towards a politics of well-being?

In Cooperation with AHRC Wellbeing State Network

4-5  October 2024, Room C424, Neues Institutsgebäude (4th floor), University of Vienna

There is increasing concern in political circles, the media, and academia, about the rise of authoritarianism worldwide, and its association with misogyny, racism, and hatred of minorities. Researchers identify that the rise of anti-democratic politics is, at least in part, a response to the last 50 years of neoliberal economic, social, and cultural policies which have created extreme levels of inequality, social division, and precarity across the globe, decimating communities, and creating living conditions that take a severe toll on physical and mental. Nonetheless, the belief that there is no alternative (the ‘TINA’ doctrine) hinders development of state-level political practices that could protect democracy by seeking to respond to this decline. This impasse is aggravated by the lack of conceptual work defining authoritarianism (commonly used to simply mean ‘anti-democratic‘). The inaugurate workshop therefore sets as its task to

• better understand the relationship between, and the means of measuring, authoritarianism, democracy, and wellbeing;
• examine the social and political conditions that allowed for the rise of anti-democratic politics;
• identify counter-strategies to respond to cuts in social welfare and the decline of ‘the political’.