On June 29 and 30, the EDP network held a workshop on international democracy promotion („Internationale Demokratieförderung – Stand und Perspektiven eines Forschungsfeldes“) at the Center for the Study of Democracy at Leuphana University Lüneburg. The workshop’s goal was to reflect on the current state of the art as well as perspectives of democracy promotion as a research program. EDP members and participants took the chance to get to know each other(s work) as they presented current and future research projects and debated their contribution to a potential joint (international) research agenda.
In three panels, the participants of the workshop debated the challenges of finding theoretical and methodological approaches to international democracy promotion, the challenges of hybrid and authoritarian regimes, and the challenges of conflicts, war and violence. On June 29, the EDP-network hosted an open panel discussion on the topic. Hosted by Vera van Hüllen, Annette Jünemann (Professor for Political Science, Helmut Schmidt University), Annette Lohmann (Director Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in Senegal) and Jonas Wolff critically discussed and evaluated the prospects and challenges of external democracy promotion in the future from an academic as well as practitioners’ standpoint.
We would like to thank all participants of our workshop in Lüneburg for many constructive contributions and interesting discussions.