Sebastian Schäffer and Péter Techet at the RECET Festival of History and Social Sciences
The Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) at the University of Vienna hosts the annual Festival of History and Social Sciences on the Altes AKH Campus in Vienna. This year, the Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe (IDM) and the University for Continuing Education Krems (UWK) joined as partner organisations. The theme of this year’s festival was Migration, explored through various panel discussions, lectures, and workshops.
At the official opening, Friedrich Faulhammer, Rector of UWK and Chair of IDM, welcomed the festival, which was held for the first time in cooperation with UWK and IDM. Rector Faulhammer emphasised the importance of the diverse transformation processes we face due to crises or those we must pursue in response to current challenges. The regional focus of IDM and RECET on East-Central and Southeast Europe forms a central common ground: issues of political, cultural, and ecological changes in this region are highly significant and offer a strong foundation for deeper cooperation between RECET, IDM, and UWK.
Panel Discussion on “European Dis/Orders”
During the three-day RECET Festival, a panel discussion with Sebastian Schäffer, Director of IDM, and Péter Techet, Research Associate at IDM, took place on 6 June 2025.
The event also showcased the project “European Dis/Orders,” jointly developed by IDM and UWK. Techet, as responsible for the project, explained the theoretical framework: the project views democracy as a dynamic process — in this sense an “disorder” — while populism, as a promise of a “new order,” poses a threat to pluralistic democracy.
The discussion then turned to concrete examples of populist discourses. Given the festival’s focus on borders, Schäffer and Techet examined how populism discursively asserts borders, how these discourses are employed to exclude and shift boundaries, and the paradox of populist parties defending sovereignty while denying it to other states, notably Ukraine.
Another key topic was how cultural collaboration and shared memory in border regions can help overcome divisions. The debate revealed that “borders” serve a dual role amid populist challenges: populist forces socially exclude groups beyond borders, yet simultaneously expand the limits (borders) of what can be publicly said — though only in a one-sided manner.
A further point of discussion was the populist and anti-democratic use of the term “sovereignty.” Techet highlighted the exclusionary potential of populist politics through the example of “sovereignty protection” in Hungary. Schäffer added that populist actors in Europe even deny Ukraine, a country under attack, its sovereignty to defend itself.
In the subsequent audience discussion, distinctions between concepts of sovereignty in International Law and populist discourses were addressed.
The panel marked a successful start to the cooperation between IDM, UWK, and RECET. We look forward to a continuing and fruitful partnership.
