Professor Sawyer

Professor Stephen Sawyer is Director of the Center for Critical Democracy Studies (CCDS) at AUP and the Ballantine—Leavitt Professor of History.

What brought you to France and AUP?

I’m a French historian by training. Studying Asian history and French literature as an undergraduate, I came to France as an undergraduate; that’s when I went from being curious about France to thinking I might want to pursue further study on the country. After completing my coursework in graduate school at the University of Chicago, I received a series of grants to come back for archival research from the École des Hautes Études, the Fulbright Foundation and Sciences Po. I then held teaching positions while finishing my PhD at the École normale supérieure-rue d’Ulm and University of Chicago’s Paris center. I joined AUP the year I received my PhD.

What is it about Paris that most interests you?

Paris is deeply cosmopolitan: there is a feeling that the whole world is here. It is also an extraordinary democratic experiment. What astounds me about Paris is how municipal governments are able to transform the city, like ripping up half the street to put in bus or bike lanes or transforming a massive public square like République or Bastille into a more pedestrian and bike friendly space. At the same time, because of its past and monumental character, it is an important stage for popular protest for Parisians, the French, Europeans and the world.

Let’s talk about CCDS. What kinds of projects is the Center involved with?

CCDS works to promote the practice, study and life of democracy both within and beyond the walls of the University. We do this in a number of important ways. First, through major projects. We currently have three projects funded by Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe focusing on essential questions of contemporary democracy, including how to democratically manage radicalization and extremism, and rebuild durable social contracts in the face of contemporary political and social challenges. Second, through talks and conferences, such as our speakers series and our annual colloquium with the Tocqueville Society, the most recent of which explored the authoritarian challenge to contemporary democracies. Third, we publish The Tocqueville Review and its sister-website, Tocqueville21, both of which build on the discourse surrounding transnational questions of politics and society. We are now also supporting the publication of Analyse & Kritik, a fascinating journal that focuses on questions of philosophy, social theory and social sciences.  Lastly, we sponsor the development of academic courses, in particular the Democracy Lab and our Prison Education Project.

Your latest research project is called OppAttune…

It’s our second major grant in three years from the Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Grants, one of the European Union’s leading research initiatives. CCDS is one of 15 participating multidisciplinary research teams spread over as many countries. The project focuses on how we can prevent extremism from leading to civilian violence and undermining the opportunities for political dialogue that are essential to democracy. To have the opportunity to work on a publicly minded project on the contemporary problems of democracy, framed by an institution like the European Union, is extremely exciting.

The first Horizon Europe grant you received was for a deradicalization study.

D.Rad is running from 2020 to 2024. We developed a research project relating to the identification and de-escalation of radicalization hotspots, which are identified when a specific event of physical and emotional violence is committed by a radicalized group of civilians against other civilians. We produced five reports on various aspects of radicalization processes in the French context, including a legal and policy framework for deradicalization in France. As part of the final stages of D.Rad, we also sponsored an exhibition in Paris displaying works from six international artists who offered perspectives on themes relevant to our research.

Tell us about your three-book research project.

I’m working on a three-volume book project that aims to move away from a history of democracy and towards a history of the demos. Democracy is both a political regime and a way of organizing society. In this context, it is possible to have a democratic society, that seeks claims some type of formal civil equality and rejects various forms of natural or aristocratic privilege, but does not have robust democratic institutions. Many authoritarian regimes today would fall into this category. I understand the demos to be a democratic society that also chooses to govern itself democratically. In this multi-volume project, I trace the emergence of a modern demos in France from an international perspective. The project covers the mid-18th century through the French Revolution and up to the beginning of the twentieth century. The first volume of the series, Demos Assembled, was published by The University of Chicago Press in 2018 and covered the second half of the nineteenth century. I have signed a contract for the second volume, Demos Rising, which covers the first half of the nineteenth century. It should appear in fall 2024. The third volume will cover the period of the late Enlightenment, the French Revolution and Napoleon.