Marlène Laruelle, winner of Choose France for Science, rolls out her illiberalism studies program in Paris
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French researcher, Marlène Laruelle, is a specialist in contemporary ideologies and the founder of the George Washington University's Illiberalism Studies Program. Selected for Choose France for Science, the program is setting up a branch in Paris, at Inalco.
A colloquium titled AI and Ideology: The Political Transformations of Tomorrow program will be held on Tuesday, April 28 at Inalco's Maison de la Recherche and will mark the launch of the Paris branch.
This event will address how artificial intelligence is shaped by ideological presuppositions, political values, and competing visions of social order. It will also pose the question of how it is transforming contemporary debates on democracy and liberalism.
The program's Paris branch
The program's Paris branch focuses on two research streams.
The first looks at the intersections between technology and illiberalism, examining how digital infrastructures, platform governance, artificial intelligence and informational ecosystems are reconfiguring the production and circulation of illiberal ideas and challenging democracy.
The second focuses on illiberal trajectories in the Global South, where challenges to liberalism are often expressed through civilizational narratives, postcolonial critiques and the idea of alternative modernities.
Choose France for Science
The first research stream is supported by the Choose France for Science program, while the second is in keeping with Inalco's long intellectual tradition in non-Western areal studies and is closely linked with the RESEARCH PROJECT DÉCRIPT, dedicated to the study of the return of civilizationism to the world stage.
Steering the program
Marlène Laruelle is a historian and political scientist by training, specializing in political philosophy on contemporary ideologies. She has long worked on Eastern Europe and Russia, and now mainly studies the USA and Europe.
For over fifteen years, she was Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the George Washington University, - in Washington D.C. - where she directed the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies.
Illiberalism Studies Program
In 2020, Marlène created the -"Illiberalism Studies Program"-. It was the first research program to propose moving away from the concept of illiberal democracy, which was then being used to define Central European regimes, and to propose looking at the concept of illiberalism as an alternative political offer that unfolds in all political and cultural contexts, including in our liberal democracies.
Illiberalism is a topic increasingly relevant in the US and Europe, and it seemed important to have the opportunity to participate in debates on democratic renewal in Europe itself. The European and American political systems are different. Until recently, the American system sported a higher level of economic clout than the European system, elevating its importance and profile. However, it also has fragilities that have recently been revealed in terms of its dependence on financial and political stakes.
I think the European system may be slower to set up, but it has the capacity to be independent of political pressures, and we can see at present that it is precisely the European system that has a greater capacity for resilience. Thanks to the establishment of the Illiberalism Studies Program in Paris, Inalco will be able to build around the program a whole ecosystem of young researchers, particularly post-docs, who will be able to find an institutional setting in which to develop their research.
Marlène Laruelle
We'll be able to consolidate a whole ecosystem that's already in place, and move the program up the conceptual and institutional ladder once it's launched in the coming weeks.
