Imitating Democracy, Imitating Authoritarianism: how to make sense of today's Russia
Prof. Stephen Holmes, Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law at NYU School of Law
Moderator: Ivan Krastev, CLS
Stephen Holmes is Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. From 1979 to 1985 he taught at the Department of Government at Harvard University. From 1985 to 1997, he was Professor of Politics and Law at the Law School and Political Science Department of the University of Chicago. From 1997 to 2000, he was Professor of Politics at Princeton.
He was the editor-in-chief of the East European Constitutional Review from 1993-2003. In 2003, he was selected as a Carnegie Scholar for his work on Russian legal reform. His fields of specialization include the history of liberalism, the disappointments of democratization after communism, and the difficulty of combating terrorism within the limits of liberal constitutionalism.
He is the author of Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Yale University Press, 1984), The Anatomy of Antiliberalism (Harvard University Press, 1993), Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1995), and co-author (with Cass Sunstein) of The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes (Norton, 1999). The Matador’s Cape: America’s Reckless Response to Terror (Cambridge University Press) appeared in 2007.
Currently, Prof. Holmes and Ivan Krastev are writing a book on contemporary Russia which will be published in 2011.
You can hear a recording of the lecture here.