Fudan-LSE Lecture Series No.91

复旦-LSE讲座系列第91期

Title/题目

Political Challenges to the Global Order

全球秩序面临的政治挑战

Speaker/主讲人

Prof. Vivien A. Schmidt,  Boston University

薇薇安·A·施密特教授 波士顿大学

Host/主持人

Prof. Yijia Jing, IGPP

敬乂嘉教授 全球公共政策研究院

Time/时间

12:00-13:20, May 22, Friday, 2026

2026年5月22日，12:00-13:20，周五

Venue/地点

Room 805E, 8th Floor, West Sub-building of Guanghua Towers

光华楼西辅楼8楼805E会议室

https://v.wjx.cn/vm/h4aLKrC.aspx#

*校外人员请提前在【复旦信息办】预约，并携带身份原件入校

主讲人介绍/ The Speaker：

Prof. Vivien A. Schmidt

Vivien A. Schmidt is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Brussels (ULB), Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Professor Emerita of International Relations in the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies and Professor Emerita of Political Science as well as Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Europe at Boston University. Schmidt has published thirteen books, over 300 scholarly journal articles or book chapters. Her research focuses on European political economy, institutions, democracy, and political theory—in particular on the importance of ideas and discourse in political analysis (discursive institutionalism). She was the first to systematically establish " discursive Institutionalism" as the “fourth neo-institutionalism,” following rational choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism, and sociological institutionalism, emphasizing the central role of ideas and discourse in the formation, maintenance, and transformation of institutions, and viewing institutions not merely as structures or rules, but as processes continually constructed and reconstructed through discursive interaction. Her latest book is Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy: Governing by Rules and Ruling by Numbers in the Eurozone (2020)—recipient of the Best Book Award of the American Political Science Association’s Ideas, Knowledge, Politics section and Honorable Mention for the Best Book Award of the European Union Studies Association.

讲座内容/ Abstract:

This presentation focuses on the twin political challenges to global governance, one from the outside, constituted by the US’s changing approach to foreign policy, the other from the inside, resulting from the polarization of national politics, in the US as well as elsewhere. Both represent major problems for the future of global governance. The problems can be summarized together in three words: geopolitical disruption, geoeconomic destabilization, and democratic destruction. While the Trump administration’s rapid destruction of US administrative capability and democratic practices has an indirect effect on global governance, through its mimetic appeal to antisystem, populist parties, in particular on the extreme right, its disruptive shifts in geostrategic vision accompanied by its destabilizing changes in foreign, trade and security policies have a more direct effect on global political and economic governance. How other countries responds to these external challenges depends not only on their ability to reinvent their external relations while reviving their financial and industrial capacity but also to overcome internal fragmentation due to populist polarization. Europe is a case in point, where European countries’ increasingly polarized politics make reaching optimal agreements in the EU on how to respond to global challenges increasingly difficult.