WHO PROTECTS, WHO DECIDES, WHO IS ACCOUNTABLE? VULNERABILITY AND POWER IN DEMOCRATIC STATES

In contemporary societies, public authorities care for people in particularly vulnerable situations: children in residential care, older people and people with disabilities, psychiatric patients, survivors of gender-based violence, homeless people and migrants in detention centres. Very different contexts, yet all sharing a fundamental dilemma: how can people be protected without restricting their rights?

The lecture explores this tension between protection and autonomy, showing how it can give rise to forms of institutional harm – an increasingly urgent issue in the current context of a crisis of care and democratic backsliding.