Prof Andrew Cottey, UCC's Dept of Government & Politics, Inaugural Lecture

23 May 2024

Professor Andrew Cottey, Department of Government & Politics recently gave his inaugural lecture in the Dora Allman room at UCC. 

Professor Cottey's well-received  inaugural lecture  was titled ‘Europe’s Liberal Peace: Liberalism in Illiberal Times’ at UCC. This is the first lecture in the Collective Social Futures inaugural series 2024. 

For more information about this lecture, please read the Abstract below and visit the following link for coverage by Irish Examiner.

Abstract

Against the background of Russia’s continuing war against Ukraine – Europe’s largest armed conflict since the Second World War – Prof. Andrew Cottey will explore the sources of war and peace in Europe and the prospects for peace on the continent in the 2020s and beyond. Drawing on international relations theory, he will argue that a liberal peace emerged in Western Europe after 1945, was extended into much of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s and 2000s, has fundamentally transformed international politics in Europe. For reasons that are likely to remain contested, however, Russia remains outside this liberal peace. Today, Europe’s liberal peace is threatened by illiberalism from without, in the form of Russia and other authoritarian powers, and within, in the form of populism. Cottey will also address the liberal imperialist critique of liberalism, arguing that it misunderstands the causes of war and peace in international politics. He will argue that we need to find a middle road between liberal hubris and liberal defeatism.

Main article photo by Bank Phrom on Unsplash