Voter ID laws and a creaking Electoral College in the United States, street protests against a democratic deficit in Brussels, Rome and Athens, increasingly noisy praise for authoritarian capitalism in Singapore and Beijing – the contemporary political world is confronted with the nature and limits of democratic representation. The La Pietra Dialogues at NYU-Florence have regularly probed these issues of late, with distinguished scholars leading sessions on dissent, the euro crisis and the US elections. The Max Weber Programme at the EUI, meanwhile, is home to post-doctoral scholars across four disciplines and from around the globe. Their research this year is concerned with judicial independence, migrant labor rights, trans-national social movements and constitutional law, to name just a few areas that bear on the question of democratic representation.
This multi-disciplinary conference, co-sponsored by the La Pietra Dialogues and the Max Weber Programme, brings together invited senior scholars, Max Weber Fellows and the NYU-Florence community, in a joint La Pietra Dialogues-Max Weber Programme conversation. The two-day conference will focus on how political and philosophical theories of democratic representation inform empirical social scientific research. For example, what can recent theories of global justice and democracy offer a political-scientist who researches Internet campaign fund-raising? What is a reasonable minimum condition for a government to be classified as ‘democratic’ or ‘representative’ of its citizens, and how can the social sciences help to answer this question with respect to any given state? Finally, how do such debates fit into contemporary political situations and scholarly practice?

These and other questions will be addressed in a two-day conference comprising six panels in total and held at Villa La Pietra and Villa La Fonte. In each panel, a senior invited guest and a Max Weber Fellow will give papers that enter into theoretical-empirical dialogue on a specific aspect of our broader rubric.

Tuesday 9 April
NYU Florence. Villa La Pietra (Villa Sassetti)

10:15 a.m. - Welcome Coffee

10:30 - Welcome Remarks
Ellyn Toscano (NYU Florence Executive Director)
Ramon Marimon (MW Programme Director)

10:45-12:45 – Panel 1: Elites, Technologies and Elections
Chair: Gregorio Bettiza (EUI-MWP)

Alessandro Pizzorno (EUI – Emeritus)
Two Functions of Political Electoral Representation

Maria Laura Sudulich (EUI – MWP)
Wired Voters: The Effects of Internet Use on Voters’ Electoral Uncertainty

13:00 – 2:30 p.m. – Lunch (participants)