Albena Azmanova is a political philosopher, commentator and activist. Educated in Bulgaria, France, and the United, she has taught political theory at Sciences Po in Paris and at the New School for Social Research in New York. She currently teaches at the University of Kent’s Brussels School of International Relations where she directs the graduate programs “International Political Economy” and “Political Strategy and Communication”. After taking part in the dissident movements that brought down the communist regime in 1988-1990 in her native Bulgaria, she took a critical stance towards the post-communist regimes in publications (beginning with “Dictatorships of Freedom”, Praxis International, 1992), and in policy advisory work at international bodies (among which the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and Commission). She is a founding member of the Forum of Concerned Citizens of Europe. Key themes of her recent publications are the replacement of the left-right ideological divide with an opportunity-risk divide in the early 21st century, the emergence in Europe of ‘economic xenophobia’ (she coined the concept in a report to the European Parliament in 2003), her analysis of the nascent post-neoliberal capitalism as ‘aggregative capitalism’, her diagnosis of the crisis of Europe as EU-driven socially irresponsible rule rather than as deficiency of democracy; she has put forward solutions to the crisis within a policy platform she has named ‘a political economy of trust’. Her latest book is The Scandal of Reason: a critical theory of political judgement (Columbia University Press, March 2012). |
The Scandal of Reason: a critical theory of political judgement (Columbia University Press, 2012)