Liberal democracy is under pressure worldwide. At our confer­ence “Rethinking Liber­alism, Renewing Democracy” on 24 November in Berlin and online, we discussed with inter­na­tional guests from academia, politics, think tanks and business how liber­alism and liberal democracy must evolve in order to sustain. 

Lukas Daubner argues that the liberal forces of all stripes should once again take a positive view of the future.

Only temporarily, says Michael Zürn, Director at the Berlin Social Science Center. 

Liber­alism is a political persua­sion devoted to the pursuit of human flour­ishing. It demands that, at a minimum, every indi­vid­ual must be per­mit­ted to write its own life’s story, unob­structed by fear,...

Emotions play a huge role in populist politics. Liberals have largely overseen the impor­tance of emotions. Populists are able to use fear and other emotions against liberal democracy. But the answer...

Wednesday October 14. 7 pm‑8.30 pm – via Zoom

Over the last 200 years, Liber­alism has been a stunning success story. It brought forward liberty and pros­perity for the many instead of priv­i­leges for the few. Yet, today liberal thinking and...

Karen Horn reminds us of forgotten, pioneering thinkers on liberty and high­lights the necessary contra­dic­tion within which a modern liber­alism exists: the tension between limiting state influence and recog­nizing that influence...

The rapid pace of moderni­sa­tion renders people suscep­tible to populism. In cosmopolitan milieus, this came as a surprise. Yet the warning signs had long been apparent.