Democratization

In 2025, the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought was awarded to Seyla Benhabib, a philosopher whose life’s work confronts one of the most pressing questions of our time: what social, political, and moral conditions are necessary for human beings to recognize one another as equals. 

Europe stands at a crossroads. Should it build its trade relations on fundamental values such as human rights, environmental sustainability, and labor rights—or align them with geopolitical interests? In our recent panel held in Berlin, we discussed the role of supply chains in German-Turkish relations.

Despite the popularity it enjoys as a topic of conversation, nationalism is not on the rise in Turkey, neither in its influence on the state nor in voter tendencies. 

A conversation with Carlos Hernández- Echevarría from Maldita.es, a Spanish independent journalistic platform focused on the control of disinformation and public discourse through fact-checking and data journalism techniques. 

A conversation with Danny Rogers from the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) on the business model behind disinformation activities and ways to defund and disincentivize their propagators by providing the industry with clear definitions and data.

A conversation with Sam Jeffers, Co-Founder of "Who Targets Me", about the power of social media, and particularly, of social media advertising in influencing people in election campaigns and ways of making the political campaigning environment more trustworthy, transparent and comprehensible for people.

A conversation with Nicole Krause from the Life Sciences Communication Department at the University of Wisconsin about science and political communication and ways to communicate more effectively with conservative, religious and rural audiences.

What does care mean in a Covid-19 pandemic context? Why does care fail and gender-based violence becomes even more resilient in itself, despite being conceptualised as a "pandemic within a pandemic" in a context of intensifying sexism, culturalist stereotypes and xenophobia, not to mention social policing and the intensive securitization of borders and mobility?

This backgrounder explores AI's impact on democracy, focusing on three areas: its influence on the public sphere, its role in election campaigns, and the accountability of automated decision systems in public services.

A conversation with Noa Barak about disinformation and the role of fact-checkers in Israel.