Call for papers: Conference “Institutional reforms in ageing societies”

Budapest, 8–9 June, 2017

>> The call (pdf)

The Centre for Social Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences will hold a conference on the 8-9th of June 2017 in Budapest on issues related to institutional reforms in ageing societies.

Population ageing poses important challenges for societies in general and their public finances in particular. One way to restore the financial sustainability of welfare states would be to reform welfare programmes that involve intergenerational redistribution, such as the pension system. However, pensions systems are difficult to reform as the elderly constitute an increasing proportion of the electorate. There is thus a possibility that ageing countries will continue to accumulate public debt, which shifts the burden of financing welfare-state provisions on future generations. This is problematic in an ethical sense since most accounts of intergenerational justice regard this as unjust. As an alternative to reversible policy measures countries might adopt more fundamental solutions to the problem of financial sustainability. Countries might decide to defend the interests of future generations in the constitution, might extend voting rights to children or their representatives, or adopt solutions which decrease democratic control over policy (e.g. independent pension management organization, automatic stabilizers in the pension system).

We invite papers from all related disciplines (sociology, political science, legal studies, philosophy, economics) dealing with one of the following topics (or related issues): intergenerational conflict in ageing societies, intergenerational redistribution in European welfare states, political economy of pension reform, intergenerational justice, constitutional responses to the sustainability challenge, Demeny-voting and related proposals.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Prof. Axel Gosseries (Université Catholique de Louvain),
Prof. Rainer Grote (Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law, Heidelberg),
Prof. Pieter Vanhuysse (Syddansk Universitet, Odense)

Submission:

Abstracts (between 300-500 words) should be submitted by 20 February 2017 to the following email address: institutional.reform@tarki.hu. Authors will be notified about acceptance of their abstract by 15 March 2017.

Local organizers:

Márton Medgyesi (TARKI and HAS, Institute for Sociology), Attila Bartha (HAS, Institute for Political Science), Róbert Gál (Hungarian Demographic Research Institute), András Jakab (HAS, Institute for Legal Studies).