Shows
German Historical Institute London PodcastEva Marlene Hausteiner, Pascale Siegrist and Kim König: Federations, constitutions and the German Basic LawCan federations be stable? Should political orders last forever and constitutions be permanent?
75 years ago, the German Basic Law came into force.
In this GHIL podcast interview, Research Fellow for Modern History Pascale Siegrist and PR Officer Kim König talk to Eva Marlene Hausteiner, Chair in Political Theory and History of Political Thought at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, about her research on historical debates surrounding the introduction of the German Basic Law and the durability of federal constitutions.2024-05-2313 min
German Historical Institute London PodcastEva Marlene Hausteiner: Should Federations be Made to Last?In political theory and political debates, an implicit expectation looms large: a ‘good’ polity is durable, ideally even permanent. Federal polities are accordingly conceptualized as orders which can regulate heterogeneity and resolve conflict—for the sake of long-term stability. The lecture will question this expectation of permanence by pointing to exceptions in global intellectual history from early Soviet proponents of federalism and the founding fathers and mothers of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany: when and to what normative end is the idea of permanent federation subverted?2024-05-2335 min