New routes to social justice: Empowering individuals and innovative forms of collective actions

This years’, already 4th edition of the annual “Oxford Conference”, will focus on “New routes to social justice: Empowering individuals and innovative forms of collective actions”. As in the past, the two days closed seminar will be hosted in the magnificent premises of St Catherine’s College, where academics, politicians and experts from civil society will join forces to reflect on how to reshape the progressive agenda.

This time the focus is how to go beyond fragmentation and polarisation, while restoring a sense of community, prompt participation and ensure that the joint efforts translate into a qualitative social progress that everyone truly benefits from. This overall objective defined the core themes, which include: redefining citizen-state relationship; making state a creative and creativity inspiring actor; seeing the criteria of social standards and translating social rights into ambitious policies; transcending power to individuals and through them to politics; evaluating diverse level of governance and setting the ambition for social progress; finally meeting the challenge of new times with a modern idea of state, while going beyond comfort zones of the traditional social democracy.

The seminar will include presentation of 30 academic papers, alongside two rounds that will involve MPs, MEPs and Mayors. The organisers (FEPS, Policy Network and Renner Institute) hope that the deliberations will provide food for though and also expect that they will be further developped eventually becoming a material for the 3rd post-Oxford volume.

For the past rounds, please see:

– Progressive policies for fragmented social democracy

– The Predistribution Agenda (book)

– Progressive politics after crash (book)