Europe and the World 1989 and 2009: Trans-national and comparative perspectives on 
Eastern and Western Europe, 10-12 June 2009, University of Padua, Italy
Open for registration: http://www.cee-
socialscience.net/1989/conference/anniversary.html 

Important keynotes by Jacques Rupnik, Andras Bozoki, Antonio Papisca, George Lawson, 
Andreas Leutzsch, Paul Blokker and Chris Armbruster on:
The Global 1989: Continuity and Change in World Politics 1989 to 2009
The new Europe: Integration and Division 1989 to 2009
Democracy, the (neo-)liberal cycle and the economic crisis
Democracy and human rights

Programme, timetable and panel abstracts available, including
•	The new capitalist habitus of Europe: how social and political actors have responded 
to the changing capitalist environment after 1989
•	Democracy after 1989: the impact of dissident thought and action on democratic 
thought and structures
•	The boundaries of Europe: Analyzing discourses on European identity
•	The Nordic countries and European integration at the end of the Cold War
•	1989, China and the global politics of regionalization


2009, the twentieth anniversary of the revolutions of 1989, is overshadowed by a 
conjunctural crisis in global economics, world politics and military relations – a 
conflagration that is said to be the most serious since World War II, and which is more 
and more often compared to the 1930s. 
While it obviously cannot be said that the revolutions of 1989 led to the crisis 2009, it 
does seem equally obvious that way 1989 was interpreted by key actors did play an 
important role. Furthermore, the political revolutions of 1989 subsequently had economic 
costs and the economic crisis of 2009 brings political change.
We sincerely invite you to join us for an exciting conference project that seeks to equally 
address the global conjunctures of 1989 and 2009, and examines the cycle of liberal 
democracy, free markets and unilateralist interventionism that characterised the two 
decades from 1989 to 2009.
Some of the issue we invite you to consider:
A)	Scholarly judgement: For example, scholars associated with 1989 the end of 
History, the utopia of liberal capitalism, the ideological junctim between market and 
private property, the worldwide deregulation of financial and economic activity and so on: 
What, if any, is the connection with the present financial and economic crisis?
B)	Actors’ perceptions: For example, 1989 was interpreted by politicians and policy 
makers as triumph of the West, as confirmation of Western values, as conferring a set of 
historical lessons. Arguably this led to unilaterialist action in Bonn (German unification), 
Brussels (Eastward enlargement) and Washington (foreign policy and national security 
strategy generally). What, if any, is the impact of key actors’ perceptions on the course 
of events leading up to the present quagmire in world politics?
C)	Global ideas and trends: For example, the aftermath of 1989 saw the rise and 
spread of notions such as shock therapy, the clash of civilizations, the global network 
society and so on. Others have identified as key trends (and consequence?) such issues 
as the return of primitive accumulation, the rise of new autocracies and low-intensity, but 
unlimited warfare. If the twenty years from 1989 to 2009 constitute a conjunctural cycle, 
which are its main features?
D)	Europe and the EU: If 1989 was another ‘zero hour’ for Europe, how, with hindsight, 
would we evaluate the chosen and predominant solution of EU enlargement? What have 
been the consequences of organising the unification of Europe according to ideas of 
Western superiority, Eastern backwardness and fragility, the need for conditionality and 
restricted access for Easterners to the core freedoms of the EU? Some suggest it is the 
reinvention of Europe as empire. What, if any, is the connection between the reordering 
of Europe after 1989 and the present impasse in European integration associated with the 
failed constitution, the troubled Lisbon strategy, the problematic neighbourhood and so 
on?
E)	1989 as a model of peaceful, but revolutionary change: Arguably, the 
revolutionaries of 1989 forged a new type of organized and synchronous political and 
social change: the self-limiting or negotiated revolution. In how far is the large-scale, 
purposeful and rapid change achieved across a large space a model of significance in 
confronting the crisis of 2009? In tackling some of the very large issues ahead, such as 
energy and climate, or demography and poverty? In returning to peace, constitutional 
democracy and prosperity?

http://www.cee-socialscience.net/1989/conference/20/registration.html 

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