Jésus Casquete

Jésus Casquete is PhD in Sociology and PhD in History. He is Full professor of History of Political Thought and of Social and Political Movements at the University of the Basque Country. Former scholarship-holder of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin and the universities Humboldt, Technische Universität-Berlin, Munich and Augsburg.

The project

Title: Are classic philosophers useful to understand the current democratic regression ? Plato as example

"Liberal democracy as a political arrangement for organizing social complexity is under siege. Indicators used by political scientists such as participation in elections or confidence in politics, politicians and institutions show a steady erosion of the strength of democracy, where not of its retreat. The latest wave of populism worldwide has been widely pointed out both as a symptom and as the spearhead of the current crisis of representative democracy.  Over the last few decades, populism in general and, as far as the Western world is concerned, its right-wing variety in particular (the so-called nationalpopulism), has made substantial electoral inroads in ancient democracies and in most recent ones alike. In Hungary, Poland, or Israel nationalpopulism seems to have consolidated “illiberal” democracies, hybrid political forms in still formally democratic regimes with authoritarian overtones in which the political process still qualifies as free but no longer as a fair one. Nationalpopulism has become a major actor in the “regression” or “degeneration” of liberal democracies. It is not anymore because of coup d’etats that Western democracies fail; nowadays they die on a slow fire, and nationalpopulism is a major driving force behind this. My focus is on four countries of the European Union: France and Germany, the leading countries in the European Union; Spain, the country I am more familiar with, where nationalpopulism is making important electoral inroads; and Austria, because this country features the oldest nationalpopulist party in the European political landscape."

Hosting institution: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) - Centre de Recherches Historiques (CRH)

Selective Bibliography

• Politics of Death. The Cult of Nazi Martyrs, 1920-1939, London, Routledge, 2023.
• La repubblica di Weimar: Costituzione e contesto (with Javier Tajadura), Milan, CEDAM, 2022.
• El culto a los mártires nazis, Madrid, Alianza, 2021.
• Vox frente a la historia, Madrid, Akal, 2023.Editor.
• La Constitución de Weimar: Historia, política, derecho (edited with Javier Tajadura), Madrid, Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2020.