The Future of Real-Existing Democracy

Thursday, January 7, 2010
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
(Pacific)
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Philippe C. Schmitter has been on the faculty of the European University Institute (EUI) from 1996 to 2004, after ten years at Stanford University.  He was educated at Dartmouth College, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the University of Geneva and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.  He taught for many years at the University of Chicago (1967-1982) and held visiting appointments at the University of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, the Institute for the Integration of Latin America in Buenos Aires, Harvard University, the Universities of Geneva, Zürich, Paris and Mannheim, the Wissenschaftszentrum in Berlin, the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris, the Fundacion Juan March in Madrid and the Instituto de Ciencias Sociais in Lisbon.  Before coming to Stanford in 1986, he spent the previous four years as a professor at the EUI. Currently, he has been a recurrent visiting professor at the Central European University in Budapest, at the Istituto delle Scienze Humanistiche in Florence and at the University of Siena.

Schmitter has conducted research on comparative politics and regional integration in both Latin America and Western Europe, with special emphasis on the politics of organized interests.  His dissertation dealt with the rise and persistence of corporatism in Brazil and his early work focused on the role of this mode of interest intermediation in Latin America and Western Europe. With Gerhard Lehmbruch, he edited Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation and Patterns of Corporatist Policy-Making.  He is the co-author (with Guillermo O=Donnell) of Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy (4 vols.) and is currently completing a book on Essaying the Consolidation of  Democracy.  In recent years, he has devoted increasing attention to the "emerging polity@ of the European Community, first in a co-authored book on Governance in the European Union (with Gary Marks, Fritz Scharpf and Wolfgang Streeck) and in a book entitled: How to Democratize the European Union ....and Why Bother?  With Alexandre Trechsel, he has written a Green Paper for the Council of Europe on The Future of Democracy in Europe.

He has been the recipient of numerous professional awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim in 1978, and has been vice-president of the American Political Science Association.  He was honoured with the award for lifetime achievement in European politics by the ECPR in 2008, and with the award for lifetime achievement in the study of European integration by EUSA, the Mattei Dogan Prize of the IPSA and the Johan Skytte Prize by Uppsala University - all in 2009.  His greatest achievement, however, was to have been rejected twice for membership in the political science section of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.