Lars Rensmann

Lars Rensmann
Universität Passau

PhD

About

105
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Introduction
Current projects: The "cultural turn" in comparative populism studies; populist parties in government crises of liberal democracies in Europe and the USA; models of differentiated European integration; authoritarian populism, conspiracy myths, and social media in Europe; the globalization of political antisemitism and nationalism; global politics after Arendt and Adorno; European and global political theory in the digital age; the politics of climate change in Europe and the USA

Publications

Publications (105)
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Anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe. The inhumane Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023 acted as a catalyst for hatred of Jews. The conflict in the Middle East may escalate permanently. This will also strengthen anti-Semitism in Europe. For this reason, this volume focuses on the new ideological dynamics that are intensifying in th...
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This article reconstructs Hannah Arendt's theoretical arguments in relation to current authoritarian-populist crowds, which can be understood as organized mobs of the twenty-first century. Drawn from all classes and originating in societal and political disenfranchisement, in Arendt's understanding they are rebellious nihilists who falsely believe...
Article
The goal of this introduction to the special issue is threefold. First, we map a nascent research field on connections between populism and the past and, in so doing, point to gaps in existing work. Second, we develop the contours of an integrated analytical framework that, addressing these gaps, reconstructs the relationship between populism and t...
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This article examines how and why the covid -19 pandemic featured as a central issue in the Alternative for Germany's 2021 Bundestag election campaign. Using a wide range of political communication tools, the radical right party's opposition to public health policies against the pandemic ranged from a critique of hygienic measures to hosting corona...
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In recent years, we have seen a significant increase of memory politics among far-right political actors. In public spheres across Europe, discursive repertoires and historical tropes that mythologize the past have been (re)articulated by far-right actors who construe themselves as the true heirs and bearers of national historical traditions and va...
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Der Artikel analysiert die Entwicklung der radikalen Rechten in den USA im Kontext der Präsidentschaft des autoritären Rechtspopulisten Donald J. Trump. In einer akteurszentrierten Perspektive, die indes die politische Nachfrageseite und gesellschaftliche Bedingungen einbezieht, werden Transformations- und Interaktionsprozesse der radikalen und pop...
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Der Artikel analysiert die Entwicklung der radikalen Rechten in den USA im Kontext der Präsidentschaft des autoritären Rechtspopulisten Donald J. Trump. In einer akteurszentrierten Perspektive, die indes die politische Nachfrageseite und gesellschaftliche Bedingungen einbezieht, werden Transformations- und Interaktionsprozesse der radikalen und pop...
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The enduring legacy of Moishe Postone's work in the fields of intellectual history, sociology, and social theory also finds expression in his influential theory of modern antisemitism and its role in the Holocaust. Grounded in critical reflections on Marxian thought yet unconvinced by Marxist functionalism, Postone theorizes antisemitism primarily...
Preprint
This paper focuses on the Frankfurt School’s critical theorist Leo Lowenthal (1900-1993) and the contemporary relevance of his theory-guided social research on authoritarian politics. Grounded in a close reading of his work, the essay reconstructs Lowenthal’s theoretical interpretations and empirical studies. Illuminating three critical paths paved...
Preprint
This paper focuses on the Frankfurt School’s critical theorist Leo Lowenthal (1900-1993) and the contemporary relevance of his theory-guided social research on authoritarian politics. Grounded in a close reading of his work, the essay reconstructs Lowenthal’s theoretical interpretations empirical studies. Illuminating three critical paths paved by...
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This article examines the current globalization of political antisemitism and its effects on the resurgent normalization of anti-Jewish discourse and politics in a global context. The focus is on three political spaces in which the “Jewish question” has been repoliticized and become a salient feature of political ideology, communication, and mobili...
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In this article, I respond to David McIvor’s and Lars Rensmann’s discussion of my recent book, The Politics of Repressed Guilt: The Tragedy of Austrian Silence (2018, Edinburgh University Press). Both invited me to clarify my use of Arendt in my conception of embodied reflective judgment. I argue for a stronger connection between judgment and emoti...
Chapter
Die Demokratie in Deutschland steht unter Druck: Soziale und kulturelle Ungleichheit, Fremdenfeindlichkeit und Antisemitismus sowie von vielen Seiten infrage gestellte demokratische Grundwerte machen es notwendig, Vereinigungs- und Integrationsprozesse nach 1989 von Neuem zu beleuchten. Im Dialog zwischen Theorie und empirischer Analyse vermessen d...
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Germany continues to face an inter-regional political divide between the East and the West three decades after unification. Most strikingly, this divide is expressed in different party systems. The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany and the left-wing populist Left Party are considerably more successful in the eastern regions, while German...
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This introduction addresses the increased levels of social, political and ideological polarization and the socio-political conflicts in contemporary Europe that are often subsumed under notions of ‘crisis’. We argue that the humanities and social sciences must react to these scenarios in at least two ways: by critically reflecting on the European p...
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Against the backdrop of the European Union’s contemporary legitimacy crisis, this article reconstructs Arendt’s still largely neglected writings on European post-national democracy. Arendt approached the ‘European question’ as a fundamental question for the future of democracy and civil rights in a globalized age, and a necessity for moving beyond...
Book
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FREE DOWNLOAD of the full book and individual chapters are available AT: https://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/books/10.16997/book30/ |.................................................| After President Trump’s election, BREXIT and the widespread rise of far-Right political parties, much public discussion has intensely focused on populism and a...
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Founded just five years ago, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) represents the biggest opposition party in the German parliament. This article addresses three questions in European comparative perspective: What is the nature of the AfD as a relevant political party in the Bundestag? What explains its rise and popularity? What is the party’s behavior...
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The article argues for a cultural turn in the study of populist politics in Europe. Integrating insights from three fields—political sociology, political psychology, and media studies—a new, multi-disciplinary framework is proposed to theorize particular cultural conditions favorable to the electoral success of populist parties. Through this lens,...
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Populism has become the issue of comparative political science today. The rise and continuing success of populist parties is by now evident across Europe, despite persistent cross-national variations. Populist parties’ electoral success and their participation in government have raised questions about their impact: not just on established party sys...
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Previous discussions of the Frankfurt School's work on Judeophobia have almost entirely neglected the Critical Theorists' pathbreaking analysis of “secondary antisemitism” after Auschwitz. This new form of Jew-hatred originates in the political and psychological desire to split off, repress, and downplay the memory of the Holocaust because such mem...
Chapter
International human rights have become an important global norm that has increasingly been incorporated into international law and global conventions. Human rights are a key reference point of mobilizations by diverse groups and international nongovernmental organization (INGOs) in global publics and global civil society. And human rights are also...
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Hannah Arendts (1906–1975) Origins of Totalitarianism ist eines der frühsten und bis heute maßgeblichen Standardwerke zur »totalen« respektiven »totalitären« Herrschaft. Arendts Studie, die Totalitarismus als genuin neue Herrschaftsform im Kontext unterschiedlicher moderner Entwicklungen versteht, gilt auch jenseits der Politik- und Sozialwissensch...
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Die Dialektik der Aufklärung ist ein Schlüsselwerk der Kritischen Theorie oder ›Frankfurter Schule‹, die schulbildend insbesondere von Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) und Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) geprägt worden ist. Unter Mitarbeit von Leo Löwenthal erarbeitet im amerikanischen Exil in Los Angeles zwischen 1939 und 1944, also während des Zweiten We...
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There are two dominant schools of thought addressing problems of cosmopolitanism and (international) conflict: democratic national sovereigntism, inspired by Hegel, and global constitutionalism, inspired by Kant and reformulated by Habermas. This paper develops a third position by reading Adorno's critique of both theoretical traditions. Rather tha...
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Despite their important role in forging, constructing and self-ascribing social identities and shaping popular culture, sports have long been a marginalized subject of social science inquiry, cultural studies, and research on international politics. Only in recent years this has begun to change. The article seeks to advance the still nascent but em...
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This article seeks to understand the 2009 Iranian anti-government uprising through an Arendtian lens, and re-read Arendt's conceptions of power, civil disobedience and revolution in the light of this event. Generating non-institutionalized, non-regularized public spaces both within and beyond the limits of the established order, diverse communities...
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Ulrich Beck is a German sociologist whose major contributions are in the field of social and political theory. Beck is best known for three pathbreaking and intertwined theoretical moves: first, his grand theory of “reflexive modernization”; second, the notions of “forced individualization” and “global risk society,” which refer to constitutive ele...
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Human rights claims are, by definition, universal in scope. They are rights supposed to be granted by virtue of the recipient's being human, and thus they extend to all of humanity. Insofar as they are grounded in one's “naked” human existence, they are often construed as categorical – that is, unconditional, non‐negotiable, and inalienable. Inhere...
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While still vastly underrepresented and lagging behind political representation in several other European democracies, more ethnic minorities and immigrants have entered the German Bundestag in 2013 than ever before. This is one of several indicators of Germany's political departure from hegemonic ethnic self-understandings, signaling the nation's...
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We continue our series on politics, political science and the World Cup (here are posts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7). Tomorrow Iran will open its 2014 World Cup campaign. Below Lars Rensmann and Pejman Abdolmohammadi analyze how soccer has been a catalyst for nationalism as well as protests against the regime.
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In contemporary sociology and political theory, the “global public sphere” mostly refers to an emerging horizontal globalization of public spaces, political agents, and normative discourses evolving toward a “global civil society” (Kaldor 2003). Engendered by new information technology and global media, the “global public sphere” is assumed to cons...
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Despite several breakthroughs that indicate radical right parties' significant electoral potential, they remain highly volatile players in both Poland and eastern Germany. This is puzzling because radical right competitors can benefit from favorable politico-cultural conditions shaped by postcommunist legacies. The electoral markets in Poland and t...
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The paper critically reappraises Kant's conceptions of international law, moral universalism and cosmopolitan right. Although still providing some politically explosive claims, Kant runs into severe limits and antinomies. In different ways, this paper argues, these antinomies are reinforced by the new cosmopolitans such as Habermas and their concep...
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This article explores Adorno's critical theory of totalitarianism in the age of global modernity. According to his model, modern totalitarian ideologies, regimes and movements are distinct in their ‘ruthless arbitrariness’. They aim at exterminating ‘others’ and, ultimately, at eradicating the very idea of freedom by means of unbound terror. Totali...
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The Playing Fields of Eton: Equality and Excellence in Modern Meritocracy. By LaVaque-MantyMika. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009. 248p. $60.00. - Volume 9 Issue 1 - Andrei S. Markovits, Lars Rensmann
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Der Begriff der Globalisierung tauchte in wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Zusammenhängen schon in den späten 1950er und frühen 1960er Jahren auf. Primär verwandt wurde er zu dieser Zeit im wirtschaftsjournalistischen Kontext und hatte eine eher neutrale Konnotation. Der Begriff bezog sich auf Phänomene, die bislang nationalen oder regionalen Charakte...
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Professional sports today have truly become a global force, a common language that anyone, regardless of their nationality, can understand. Yet sports also remain distinctly local, with regional teams and the fiercely loyal local fans that follow them. This book examines the twenty-first-century phenomenon of global sports, in which professional te...
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This article seeks to understand the Iranian anti-government uprising through an Arendtian lens. It is argued that models which exclusively focus on civil rights claims or tensions between “faith” and “democracy” within the theocracy fail to grasp key dimensions of the protest. Sparked by election fraud, the Green movement engaged in “principled ac...
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Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, unified Germany is still confronted with significant political divides. Two distinct party systems have emerged and are now consolidated, and a narrowing of the gap between them is not in sight. Among other dimensions, the differences in party spaces and competition are more fragmented, more unstable...
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The article examines the rise of extreme right hate crimes and violence in East Germany since unification, as well as the response by government authorities, legislators and administrators, prosecutors and law enforcement agencies. Focusing on the state of Brandenburg as a case study, the public policies on the state-level and the micro-level polic...
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The article examines Hannah Arendt’s analysis of ‘pan-nationalist Europeanism’ and anti-Americanism which may serve inherently problematic identity-generating functions for the European project. For Arendt, this specific form of Europeanism is often intimately linked to mobilizations of widely spread fears of global sociocultural and economic moder...
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German extreme Right parties have increased their political and electoral significance in recent years, in particular through some considerable regional successes in the East. However, in spite of noticeable nation-wide gains by the NPD in the Bundestag election, the extreme Right suffered from another defeat. Looking at the interplay of supply sid...
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In der europäischen politischen Landschaft ist der Begriff des Populismus weithin negativ konnotiert. Dies liegt nicht zuletzt an den spezifischen katastrophalen Erfahrungen mit demagogischen Mobilisierungen eines „Volkswillens“ durch charismatische Führungspersönlichkeiten, auf die „Populismus“ in Europa heute noch landläufig verweist. In der Bund...
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Emotion can result from interpreting group actions as reflecting on the self due to an association between the two. This volume considers the nature of collective guilt, the antecedent conditions necessary for it to be experienced, how it can be measured, as well as how collective guilt differs from other group based emotions. Research from Austral...
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Die vorliegende Studie ist die überarbeitete, gekürzte und aktualisierte Fassung meiner am Fachbereich Politik- und Sozialwissenschaften im Sommersemester 2002 verteidigten politikwissenschaftlichen Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde. Sie wurde eingereicht und angenommen unter dem Titel „Demokratie und Judenbild: Antisemitismus in...
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In dieser Untersuchung wurden theoretische Konzeptionalisierungen und Parameter zur Erforschung von antijüdischen Stereotypen und antisemitischen politischen Mobilisierungsversuchen in der demokratischen politischen Kultur entwickelt und in die politikwissenschaftliche Forschung überfuhrt. Fünf Dimensionen zur Analyse der zeitgenössischen politisch...
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Judenfeindlichkeit ist in jüngerer Zeit wieder verstärkt zum Gegenstand öffentlicher Debatten geworden. Antisemitismus ist somit erneut in den Fokus der politischen Kultur gerückt, entgegen weithin gängiger Beschwörungen, es handele sich nur um ein Problem der Vergangenheit. Hierzu haben ein seit der deutschen Vereinigung zu verzeichnender, insgesa...
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Debatten zum Verhältnis von totalitärer Herrschaft und liberaler Demokratie sind so alt wie die Erscheinungsformen, auf die der Begriff des Totalitären verweist. Er wurde ursprünglich in der Kritik des italienischen Faschismus geprägt und von Mussolini als Vision eines faschistischen Gesellschaftsmodells adaptiert und ästhetisiert (vgl. Gentile 199...
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Das Problem des Antisemitismus und korrespondierender kollektiv-identitärer Konstruktionen ist bereits ausführlich strukturanalytisch untersucht worden. Den Analysen zu Formen des modernisierten politischen Antisemitismus in der Demokratie und der Untersuchung der öffentlichen Diskurse werden nun nochmals zwei Ebenen vorangestellt, die den poutisch...
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Im Folgenden soll ein kurzer Abriss der Begriffe und Kriterien von ‚Antisemitismus’ (2.1) sowie unterschiedlicher theoretischer Zugänge zu seiner Deutung in der politologischen und sozialwissenschaftlichen Forschung (2.2) gegeben werden. Dabei werden auch die Grenzen bisheriger Erklärungskonzepte aufgezeigt. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden darauf fol...
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Piero Ignazi, Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) Cas Mudde, The Ideology of the Extreme Right (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003) Martin Schain, Aristide Zolberg, and Patrick Hossay, eds., Shadows over Europe: The Development and Impact of the Extreme Right in Western Europe (New York: Palg...
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Zwar hat es seit Sommer 2000 in allen demokratischen Parteien einen Zuwachs an Problembewusstsein gegeben, aber die Berliner Republik sieht sich selbst nach einer durchaus ernsthaften öffentlichen Debatte und einer Reihe von wichtigen Maßnahmen bisher außerstande, eine völkische Alltagskultur, die sich in Teilen Deutschlands etabliert hat, gesellsc...
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Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, provoked an unprecedented controversy in German society over the antisemitic origins of the Holocaust. The enormous publicity Goldhagen received in the German media, though, went along with almost unanimously hostile attacks against him and his work. Comparing the book's real content wit...
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In spite of their striking marginalization in the debate, Arendt and Adorno have much to offer to the contemporary debate about cosmopolitics. Their admittedly fragmented contributions to global political theory help generate critical perspectives that work as correctives to hegemonic variations of cosmopolitics, if not provide robust alternative m...
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This paper reconstructs Hannah Arendt’s cosmopolitan commitments and offers a critical re-appropriation of her work for a model of cosmopolitan republicanism under non-ideal conditions of globality. Rethinking global democracy and cosmopolitan right, this theoretical account leads to various venues for the actualization of republicanism and Arendt'...

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