Location: Room 304, Asia Center (#101), Seoul National University, South Korea co-hosted by Seoul National University Center for Asian Urban Societies (CAUS)
11 July 2025, 2:00-6:00 PM (local time)
This workshop is an encounter between European, South Korean, and other international scholars. With members from the CO3 horizon project on the social contract, it explores how the social contract, theorised at the same time as modern political systems and democratic practices were built, can be a negotiated praxis or a heuristic for analysing diverse political contexts. Our societies are facing permanent challenges, from financial and pandemic crises to polarisation and even autocratisation. Democratic deficit calls for a theory of social contract that is continuously constructed, how societies can build resilient, democratic social contracts. It asks whether we require normative grounds for political theories of social contracts applied to social science research.
In this event, political and legal theorists from various discuss the key challenges their societies face, as well as whether and how social contract theories can help address or offer contours of solutions for these challenges from the micro-level of urban politics to social mediated public sphere. The event will discuss through the case of Hungary's oligarchisation of politics and the need to rethink the bases of democracy – perhaps new legislation and a more democratic social contract, something that could be interesting in South Korea.
The event connects the local with the online and transnational as the CO3 has engaged in a large-scale comparative analysis of the European Parliamentary elections in ten countries where researchers had been following feeds in three political profiles in Instagram and TikTok. Doreen Massey saw politics in the way people co-constituted themselves and the space around a conflictual problem to solve these issues with different perspectives on what is fair and just – there is a disagreement on how to solve the issues but there are some things we need to share to make sense and debate them. The same principles may apply to urban and online environments.
The event also marks the 20th anniversary of of the publication of Ernesto Laclau’s book On Populist Reason and the 40th anniversary of the publication of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards A Radical Democratic Politics. These books have been also intensively read in thinking of democracy and the democratic bases of the society in South Korea. The event is co-funded from the Horizon Europe project Continuous Construction of the Social Contract (CO3) and hosted at the Seoul National University by the Center for Asian Urban Societies (CAUS).
CO3 lead and organiser: Emilia Palonen (University of Helsinki), emilia.palonen@helsinki.fi
Host organiser: Seoungwon Lee (Deputy-Director, CAUS), ishi0920@snu.ac.kr
Opening 2:00-2:30pm Introduction and welcome
Opening with Seoungwon Lee and Emilia Palonen, the relevance of the work of Ernesto Laclau for the questions of democracy and the social contract, with a short welcome remark from Prof. Bae-Gyoon Park (Director of CAUS & Dept. of Geography Education)
Session 1: The social contract and theory
2:30pm –3:30pm: Szilvia Horváth (University of Helsinki) and Emilia Palonen (University of Helsinki): Laclau and Mouffe on the Social Contract – the case of Hungary
This discussion includes Emilia Palonen: Democratisation leading to political polarisation as a political problem: Book presentation of Birth and Death of Democracy in Hungary. The book accounts for the failed democratisation in Hungary from 1989, that also has been linked to the concentration of power in the hands of the few political and economic elites.
Comment: from South Korea Seoungwon Lee and Bulgaria Ruzha Smilova (CLS, Bulgaria)
3:30-4:00pm: Coffee & refreshments
Session 2: Discussing the social contract in a Fishbowl
4:00-4:15pm: Nathanael Colin-Jaeger (AUP, France): Political philosophy of the social contract revisited
This speech draws on Colin-Jaeger's paper, where he has been in the CO3 project engaging with theories of social contract. “As we confront the complexities of the 21st century, social contract theories offer a vital resource for justice. By shifting from static models to dynamic and inclusive frameworks, they remind us that we are not doomed to accept past social arrangements.” https://www.co3socialcontract.eu/post/reimagining-the-social-contract-toward-dynamic-and-inclusive-frameworks
4:15-5:00 A Fishbowl Event on the contemporary politics and the social contract
Round 1. Ana Matan (University of Zagreb, Croatia), Daniel Smilov (CLS, Bulgaria), Ruzha Smilova (CLS, Bulgaria), Stephen Sawyer (AUP, France), Roman Zinigrad (AUP, France): Roundtable discussion on the theories of continuous construction of social contracts
Round 2. Giorgos Venizelos (Cyprus University of Technology), Samuele Mazzoleni (Da’ Foscari University of Venice) and all the other colleagues
Round 3. Collective discussion
Fishbowls are a nice way of taking thinking further and sharing examples from the participants’ perspectives. We hope to combine a diversity of European voices and the South Korean and potentially other cases.
5:00-5:15 Refreshment break
Session 3: Social media, discourse theory in large data analysis and the social contract
5:15-5:45 Alexander Alekseev (University of Helsinki, Finland): Short Videos and the Social Contract
This presentation discusses politics on TikTok and Instagram on three political profiles in ten European countries. How to study contemporary debates, bases and challenges of the social contract? The experience of the 2024 European elections includes the development of the AC/DT methodology and the Laclau GPT.
Evening event and informal gathering TBC
Seoungwon Lee, Seoul National University, South Korea;
Prof. Bae-Gyoon Park, Seoul National University, South Korea;
Alexander Alekseev, University of Helsinki, Finland;
Szilvia Horváth, University of Helsinki, Finland;
Emilia Palonen, University of Helsinki, Finland;
Ruzha Smilova, Centre for Liberal Strategies, Bulgaria;
Daniel Smilov, Centre for Liberal Strategies, Bulgaria;
Ana Matan, University in Zagreb, Croatia;
Nathanaël Colin-Jaeger, American University of Paris, France;
Stephen Sawyer, American University of Paris, France;
Roman Zinigrad, American University of Paris, France;
Samuele Mazzoleni, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy;
Giorgos Venizelos, Cyprus Technical University, Cyprus
And more to be added...
The event is open for all.
If you would like to join this event as participants, please contact Emilia Palonen emilia.palonen@helsinki.fi and/or Seoungwon Lee, 이승원, ishi0920@snu.ac.kr
CO3 project has received funding from the EU's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement 101132631. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.