Micha Fiedlschuster

Research Area 5

Stay at EEGA: September 2019 – February 2020

Research Project: The Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum: A transnational  ‘school of democracy’ or  ‘school of management’?

Dr. Micha Fiedlschuster works at the intersection of political science, political sociology and global studies. His research interests include concepts of democracy, in particular in the context of globalization processes; transnational social movements and global civil society; and democracy promotion of the European Union and other international actors. During the fall and winter term 2018/2019, he was a DAAD visiting Postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Politics at York University in Toronto. During his stay he worked on the conceptual variety of democracy in the world and its uses and misuses in the case of EU democracy promotion. His most recent publication “Neoliberalism and European Democracy Promotion” was published in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism (ed. by Immanuel Ness and Zak Cope). He holds a Dr. Phil. in Global Studies from Leipzig University (2017) where he was part of the research training group Critical Junctures of Globalization. His book “Globalization, EU Democracy Assistance and the World Social Forum: Concepts and Practices of Democracy” was published in 2018 in the Palgrave Series European Political Sociology.

During his stay at the EEGA, he will work on a research grant proposal to apply for third party funding of a project on democracy promotion and civil society with a regional focus on the EU partner countries of the Eastern Partnership (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine). Focusing on the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum, Fiedlschuster aims to understand whether and how civil society organizations become effective actors at the transnational level. Furthermore, he is interested to analyze whether the forum can be considered as a space in which civil society actors can become protagonists of democracy. He will critically examine whether the EU’s governance approach in development cooperation is an obstacle towards realizing the democratic potential of the forum. He aims to do field work at the transnational level but he will also take a comparative perspective on civil society at the country level.

Read more about Micha Fiedlschuster and his stay at EEGA ScienceCampus here.