[PHILOS-L] Call for Papers // Revolution and Democracy: Perspectives from the History of Ideas // 5-7 Oct 2026, Passau

[Sara Gebh]

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Call for Papers

Revolution and Democracy: 
Perspectives from the History of Ideas on a Tense Relationship

Open panel at Second International Conference on Political Theory 
“Backsliding, Resilience, Renewal? Democracy in Eras of Transformation” 

October 5–7, 2026, University of Passau

Chairs: Sara Gebh (Vienna)/ Marcus Llanque (Augsburg)

The relationship between revolution and democracy is marked by ambivalence and historical transformations. While democracy was once considered a revolutionary idea—a break with monarchical rule, social inequality, and political exclusion—it seems to have lost its transformative momentum today. The normative aura of a new beginning has given way to a defensive stance: instead of thinking of democracy as an ongoing process of self-empowerment, the imperative to defend its endangered status quo dominates. This shift marks a double disenchantment—disillusionment and disappointment with both the political practice and the theoretical self-image of democracy.

At the same time, the idea of revolution has also lost its political and ideological appeal. Jürgen Habermas’ diagnosis of the “exhaustion of utopian energies” (1985) is paradigmatic for a time in which radical visions of the future appear discredited, delegitimized, or historically obsolete. The decoupling of these two ideas—revolution and democracy—refers not only to political developments, but also to a theoretical problem: How can democratic renewal be conceived when the revolutionary moment of a new beginning itself has become suspect?

The panel takes this tension between revolutionary origins and democratic disillusionment as its starting point for systematically reexamining the relationship between revolution and democracy in terms of the history of ideas. The focus will be on analyzing concepts, actors, and traditions in the history of political ideas that have linked or contrasted the two concepts. However, the panel aims not only to assess the theoretical relationship between revolution and democracy retrospectively, but also to explore its current relevance: What impulses can reconstructions of the history of ideas provide for the debate on democratic resilience, transformation, and renewal? Under what conditions could the idea of democracy once again be conceived as a project of change, not merely of preservation? Can a new, reflexive form of democratic self-transformation be derived from the crisis of revolutionary horizons? And what role does revolutionary thinking itself—as criticism, as myth, as resource—play in a democracy that must assert itself in an era of backsliding? 

Please submit your abstracts (300-500 words) by December 15, 2025 only via the congress website: https://www.uni-passau.de/en/backsliding-resilience-renewal/call-for-papers. The decision on the acceptance of submissions will be made by 20 January 2026. The conference will be held in person. 

For questions regarding this panel, please contact Sara Gebh (sara...@univie.ac.at). 
For organizational inquiries, please contact Silvia Haider (second....@uni-passau.de).

We welcome contributions in German or English.

-- 

Sara Gebh, PhD

Postdoctoral Researcher

ERC Project "Prefiguring Democratic Futures. Cultural and Theoretical Responses to the Crisis of Political Imagination" (PREDEF)

Head of Subproject "Archive. Refiguring Forgotten Institutions"

University of Vienna

Department of Political Science

Universitätsstr. 7/ Room B207

1010 Wien

sara...@univie.ac.at

https://politikwissenschaft.univie.ac.at/en/about-us/staff/gebh/

 

** recent publication: Gebh/Seitz, 2024, Postfundamentalismus (open access) **

 

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