Nicholas Westcott
Managing Director, European External Action Service

Nick Westcott has been Managing Director, European External Action Service, since February 2011. He was British High Commissioner to Ghana and non-resident Ambassador to the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger and Togo from January 2008 to January 2011. He was Chief Information Officer and Head of IT Strategy at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 2002- 2007, managing the FCO’s £100m annual ICT budget.
Prior to that, he served as Minister-Counsellor at the British Embassy, Washington (1999-2002) handling trade, transport and e-commerce issues; as Deputy High Commissioner in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (1993-6); and at the UK Representation to the EU in Brussels (1984-9). He has also held a number of jobs at the FCO in London, including Head of the Economic Relations Dept, in which role he was responsible for managing the Birmingham G8 Summit in 1998.
He has a PhD in African studies from Cambridge University is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in December 1998.

Respondent:
Christian Ultsch, Foreign Editor, Die Presse

Moderator:
Georg Lennkh, Member of the Board of the BKF

Katja Gentinetta, Politikphilosophin und -beraterin
Heike Scholten, Politik- und Kommunikationsberaterin
Thomas Hofer, Politikberater

Moderation: Agnes Streissler-Führer

Single Issue Kampagnen oder breite Partizipationskultur? Welche Rolle können Instrumente der direkten Demokratie bei der Belebung des demokratischen Diskurses spielen?

Abstimmungskampagnen. Politikvermittlung in der Referendumsdemokratie. Hrsg.: Heike Scholten, Klaus Kamps. Verlag Springer VS 2013

Philippe Legrain
Author and former economic adviser to the President of the European Commission

Europe is in a mess. Our economies are failing to deliver higher living standards for most people – and most Europeans think younger generations will have a worse life than they do. Social tensions within countries are multiplying, as are political frictions between them. The European Union has never been more unpopular; most people now associate it with austerity, recession and German domination, with constraints on what they can do rather than how we can achieve more together. And many people have lost faith in the competence, motives and even the honesty of establishment politicians, with support for extremists soaring in many countries. Are stagnation, disillusionment and a lurch to extremism inevitable? If a brighter future is possible, what needs to be done?

Moderation:
Robert Misik, Journalist and Author

Praise for European Spring
“Essential reading” – Financial Times
“A splendid book on Europe’s malaise” – Martin Wolf
“Philippe Legrain provides an original and insightful analysis of what has gone wrong with Europe’s economies and politics and a timely warning that the crisis ultimately threatens our open societies. Better still, he provides a blueprint for a brighter future and how to achieve it.” – George Soros

Jonathan Israel
Princeton University

Committed enlighteners looking back on the history of the Enlightenment from the perspective of the early nineteenth century tended to agree that the Enlightenment as a broad program of social, political and educational amelioration had failed so far and after the initial success of the American Revolution (1775-83) met with nothing but setbacks and reverses. Nevertheless, the political leaders, journalists and publicists of the late Enlightenment mostly trusted that somehow the goals of the Enlightenment by which they meant better and more representative political institutions, a fair social system, less religious authority and maximum personal and social freedom, would ultimately be achieved in the future. Whether or not they were right about this, it is striking that they remained deeply divided even at this late stage into moderate and radical streams and that the two wings of the Enlightenment continued to clash at many levels.

Jonathan Israel is a British writer on Dutch history, the Age of Enlightenment and European Jewry. Israel was appointed the Modern European History Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, U.S. in January 2001. He was previously Professor of Dutch History and Institutions at the University of London and is one of the world’s leading historians of the Enlightenment.

Moderator:
Philipp blom, Historian and Author

Partner:
Der Standard Album
Rainer Rosenberg, Campus Radio

Diese Serie wird unterstützt von:
Daniel Kapp, Strategic Consulting & Responsible Cooperation GmbH
ithuba CAPITAL
Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich AG

Interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6mBDdcNIuw

Vortrag:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KjS6el04mY

with:
Georgy Nodia, political analyst and President of the Caucasus Peace Institute, Georgia
Andrei Shevchenko, Member of Parliament, Batkivshchyna (Fatherland Party), Ukraine
Raya Kadyrova, Founder and Chairwoman of the Foundation for Tolerance International, Kirgizstan
Andrei Sannikov, former diplomat and prominent opposition politician in Belarus, Bruno Kreisky Awardee for Human Rights

Moderator:
Nina Khrushcheva, Professor at New School University, New York, Senior Fellow of BKF

For over a decade now, Russian foreign policy has been animated by defensiveness and suspicion. Russia even has uneasy relations with the congenitally non-threatening European Union. It is touchy about the independence of the near-abroad countries, especially those geographically close to the West – such as Ukraine or those that has forcefully put forward its Western aspirations such as Georgia. What does political “Westernization” of these, and other neighbouring countries, mean to Russia and its president Vladimir Putin, who seems to consider democracy an affront to his autocratic, restrictive and increasingly oppressive governing style?
The participants will also discuss the role of regional organizations such as, for example, the recently formed Eurasian Customs Union between Kazakhstan, Belorussia and Russia. Does this kind of alliances hold real power? Do they serve as just the front for the Russian dominance? Will the Eurasian Union have a potential to become a counterpart or an adversary to the European Union? And finally what are the prospects for the near abroad countries to tear themselves away from the Kremlin sphere?

Hartmut Rosa
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

Die rasante Beschleunigung des sozialen Lebens ist eines der hervorstechenden Merkmale der Gegenwart, wird in den Sozialwissenschaften aber häufig übersehen. Hartmut Rosa hat mit seinen maßgeblichen Untersuchungen diesbezüglich Grundlagenarbeit geleistet. In seinem Vortrag wird er darlegen, wie eine kritische Gesellschaftstheorie verfasst sein muss, die den Zusammenhang von Beschleunigung und Entfremdung ernst nimmt. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Frage nach dem guten Leben – und warum es uns heute vielfach nicht gelingt, ein solches zu führen.

Moderator:
Robert Misik, Autor und Journalist