State and State Capacities, Democracy and Development

Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague and Taipei Cultural and Economic Office in Prague cordially invite all those who are interested to the international conference State and State Capacities, Democracy and Development, which will be held at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague on 19th November 2015. The conference brings together academics to address issues on development and its impacts on states and democratic regimes.

The keynote speaker is Laurence Whitehead (University of Oxford).

Conference Topic

Although the close relationship between development and democracy was understood as the ironclad evidence, authoritarian regimes around the world demonstrate that these regimes can reap the benefits of economic development without relaxing their political control or proceeding to political liberalization. In addition, considering liberal hegemony, trends in democratization in states such as Afghanistan, or even democratic tradition in states like Papua New Guinea, we should take the state capacities and stateness into account as structural constraints on democracies and development. The conference takes up these complex questions about the relationships between the state, democracy and development. It intends to focus on the democracies in the developing world and compares the above-mentioned relationship in the developing world to Eastern Europe. However, our understanding of development covers broader view than just successful socio-economic development, paraphrasing James C. Scott, we have to be aware not only of successful schemes of development, but also of schemes that were supposed to improved human condition but failed.