How to depoliticize things and influence people – Merijn Oudenampsen (UvA, Political Science)
Date and time: 22 September, 16.00-17.30
Place: Amsterdam, Bushuis E1.02
Abstract
In this seminar, Merijn Oudenampsen will discuss his new book No Nonsense: A History of the Dutch Neoliberal Turn (Verso Books, 2026). In the sixties and seventies, Dutch politicians built one of Europe’s most generous welfare states. During the stagflation crisis of the 1970s and 1980s however, Dutch politics underwent a neoliberal turn. The Christian Democrat Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers presented himself as ‘a manager in politics’ and the country as an ailing business in need of restructuring. In stark contrast to the Anglophone world however, Lubbers depoliticized his controversial reforms and sold them to the public as ‘no-nonsense’ policies. Internationally, the development and rise of neoliberalism has been a prominent terrain of study for intellectual historians. Scholars have famously mapped the role of think tanks and networks of neoliberal thinkers in a wide range of countries. In this presentation, Merijn Oudenampsen will talk about the particularities of studying ideational change in a more depoliticized (and anti-intellectual) political context, such as the Netherlands.
Biography
Merijn Oudenampsen is a political scientist and sociologist, specialized in the study of political ideas. He presently teaches political science at the University of Amsterdam. Before that, he formed part of the NWO-funded research project Market Makers on Dutch neoliberalism, and worked as a Marie Curie fellow at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. His PhD-thesis on the ideas behind the rise of right-wing populism, The Rise of the Dutch New Right (Routledge, 2021) received the 2021 Choice Outstanding Academic Titles Award. He has published in leading journals such as Comparative European Politics, Economy & Society, Perspectives on European Politics, Political Studies, Contemporary European History and the Journal of European Public Policy.
This event is organized by the Research Group for Global Political Thought
Liberal Sentiments: The Origins of Representative Government in Nineteenth-Century Bombay – Tejas Parasher (UCLA)
Date and time: Tuesday 27 October, 15.30
Place: Utrecht, Janskerkhof 15A, room 101
Abstract
This talk explores how representative government emerged as a key institutional demand for the first generation of anti-colonial thinkers in modern India. Focusing on the particular regional context of Bombay Presidency (maritime western India) between 1840 and 1900, I first examine how a group of liberal reformers formulated a theory of leadership rooted in distinctive understandings of imperial political economy and social transformation. I then trace the evolution of this idea of leadership into a coherent theory of electoral representation in the 1860s and 1870s. As I show, political thinkers such as Dadabhai Naoroji, M.G. Ranade, and Pherozeshah Mehta envisioned representation as a hierarchical form of tutelage, institutionalizing elite leadership of a population seen to be incapable of modern political judgement. Revisiting the intellectual origins of representative government in India, I argue, highlights the tensions between popular government, mass politics, and parliamentarism that marked the imperial globalization of liberal political thought in the nineteenth century.
This event is co-funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO, xs-grant scheme)
Emotions and political thought – Round table
Date and time: Tuesday 27 October, 16.00-18.00
Place: Amsterdam, Bushuis, E1.02
Programme:
Paul van Els (Leiden), Emotion, Self-Governance, and Political Thought in the Wenzi (文子)
Serena Ferente (UvA), Love and Fear: late medieval and Renaissance debates on the ruler and the ruled
Shiru Lim (Leiden), Clemency, Recognizance, the Tsar and His Slaves
Devin Vartija (Utrecht), Equality and Inequality, Love and Hate
This event is organized by the Research Group for Global Political Thought
Italian Thought from Post-Humanism to Cyberfascism: a new book. With Joost de Bloois (UvA), Stijn de Cauwer (Leiden), Tim Christiaens (Tilburg), Serena Ferente (UvA)
Date and time: Wednesday 9 December, 16.00-18.00
Place: Amsterdam, Bushuis, t.b.a.
This event is organized by the Research Group for Global Political Thought