The Political Economy of Liberty

« Rencontres Européennes de Sciences Po » (RESP)
Par Stefan COLLIGNON, Scuola Superiore Sant’ Anna, Pisa.

Benjamin Constant has compared between la Liberté des anciens et des modernes. Pre-modern liberty was based on participation in collective decision making, but not on individual rights of freedom. The lecture will highlight how holistic and individualistic principles of liberty have evolved and were articulated in the political philosophy of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau; and then present a model for explaining how the modern individualistic concept has gained global universality. The mechanism which has propagated modern liberty is the contract economy based on money and credit. This interpretation is derived from Keynes’ theory of money as liquidity and its corresponding concept of property.

Stefan Collignon is ordinary professor of political economy at Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, and International Chief Economist of the Centro Europa Ricerche (CER), Roma, since 2007. Previously, he was Centennial Professor of European Political Economy at the LSE and Visiting Professor at Harvard University. He has also has taught at the University of Hamburg, the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris and Lille, at the College of Europe in Bruges and at the Free University of Berlin (1997-2000). Previously, Stefan Collignon has served as Deputy Director General for Europe in the Federal Ministry of Finance in Berlin 1999 – 2000. From 1989 to 1998 he was Director of Research and  Communication at the Association for the Monetary Union of Europe (Paris). He has publishes recently Pour la République européenne, ed. Odile Jacob, 2008, Paris (with Christian Paul).

 

The Master of European Affairs and the European Centre of the Department of International Relations and Exchanges in association with the Master of Public Affairs, the Centre for European Studies, the CERI, and the MADP Chair, have launched the “European Lecture Series at Sciences Po”. This series of conferences will take place on Wednesday afternoons and will address different topics pertinent to European current affairs.