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(De)Politicization as the undercurrent of the creeping autocratization in the United States II - Epistemological diversification and the delegitimization of policies, politics and polity

Democracy
USA
Knowledge
INN402
Julia Simon
Universität Bremen
Vasiliki (Billy) Tsagkroni
Departments of Political Science and Public Administration, Universiteit Leiden

Building: A, Floor: 2, Room: SR6

Thursday 16:15 - 18:00 CEST (25/08/2022)

Abstract

Even more clearly than on January 6, 2021 itself, the year after the attack on the US Capitol has demonstrated that a new, single division – emanating from former President Trump’s ‘big lie‘ of election fraud – has come to structure the political arena in the United States. Underneath this dichotomy, common organizing principles of liberal representative democracies have begun to sway; traditional separations between branches of government and their respective functions and logics, between facts and fiction, and between issues outside and within the bounds of partisan controversy are increasingly blurred. In recent public discourse as well as scholarly analyses, the most radical and violent actions and actors and those around the former president have so far taken center stage. Yet, in order to grasp this creeping autocratization more fully, it is essential to examine the promotion and justification of a broader foundation in which major trends of deinstitutionalization, anti-liberalism and anti-science are being anchored in the political system, in the media and in society. The sister panels on “(De)Politicization as the undercurrent of the creeping autocratization in the United States“ zoom in on these developments to study them as processes of politicization and depoliticization that can strategically and significantly (re)define, (re)form, (de)stabilize and (de)legitimize the social, discursive and institutional context in which societal interactions, political conflict and decision-making can legitimately take place. This perspective also allows us to inquire into the particular knowledge(s), information or rationalities that these processes of (de)politicization rely on and that they (in)validate in turn. Against this backdrop, this panel inquires into the relationship between knowledge production, (dis)information, public communication and the democratic political system in the United States. Given their growing relevance and increasing influence in the political and media arenas, the panel will focus on (groups promoting) fringe ideologies, conspiracy theories and religious knowledge. This allows to address their expression in the Republican Party’s official communication, their underlying mechanisms and functions as well as their implications for electoral politics and intra-societal relations more broadly.

Title Details
Hyperdemocracy in America: Tocquevillian Perspectives on the Democratic Crisis View Paper Details
Modeling Trump’s Attack on the 2020 Elections and Applying the Model to 2021 View Paper Details
Insurrection as Apocalypse: Charismatic Rupture in Fascism and Authoritarianism View Paper Details
Pandemic, Politicization, and Post-truth: Conspiracy Theory and the Crisis Nexus in the United States View Paper Details
Covid-19 and US Politicisation of Fear View Paper Details