Dr Janosch Prinz
I use philosophical tools to help citizens and scholars interpret and evaluate current democratic politics and public discourse. If you are a scholar, journalist, or prospective graduate student, please feel free to contact me in English, Dutch, or German.
My current research has three focal areas.
1) A democratic theory addressing the challenge of increasing concentrations of power
After the re-election of Donald Trump, many are left wondering what the power of the oligarchs behind him will mean for us. What will this power do to democracy, not just in America, but also in the Netherlands?
Together with Manon Westphal and Enzo Rossi, I direct a research project on the "Contours of Non-Oligarchic Futures", funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung (04/TG/2023, 2024-2027). We study what exactly oligarchic power is, how it can operate in democratic political systems like the US or the Netherlands, and how we can protect democracies from oligarchic power grabs in the future.
With Manon Westphal, I propose reinventing the Roman tribunate as an institutional innovation to respond to current concentrations of power in liberal democracies in Political Theory.
Prinz, Janosch and Westphal, Manon (2024): The Tribunate as a Realist Democratic Innovation. In: Political Theory, https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231191089 (freely accessible)
Prinz, J., & Scerri, A. (2024). From Politics to Democracy? Bernard Williams' basic legitimation demand in a radical realist lens. Constellations, 31(3), 338-353. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12710
2) The relationship between the organization of money creation and democracy
Is money essentially a public good or just a special commodity emerging from private exchange? The current way of organizing money production in the EU is torn between these two positions. The current hybrid public-private monetary order affects the distribution of wealth and of political agency. This is especially important in times of public indebtedness and fiscal constraint in Europe.
I explore justifications for the relationship between money creation and democracy in a NWO-Open Competition funded research project (406.XS.04.237, 2023-2024) under the title of "Banking on Democracy".
You can read my freely accessibly work on the related issue of public debt here:
Cross, Ben and Prinz, Janosch (2023): Can narratives about sovereign debt be generally ideologically suspicious? An exercise in broadening the scope of ideology critique. In: Journal of Social Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12511.
Prinz, Janosch and Rossi, Enzo (2022): Financial Power and Democratic Legitimacy: How to Think Realistically about Public Debt. In: Social Theory and Practice 48 (1), 115-140. https://doi.org/10.5840/soctheorpract2021121144
3) How to make political theory relevant to the real world?
I have co-developed the radical approach to realism in political theory and continue to work on realism as an empirically-grounded and critical approach to political theory. My research on methods in political theory is located at the intersection between normative and empirical forms of inquiry. It aims to bridge methodological and disciplinary divides between normative-analytical, critical-reflective and interpretive political thought. I co-host the “Realism beyond Liberalism” working group.
For a freely accessible impression of my work on methods in political theory, check out the following:
Burelli, Carlo, and Prinz, Janosch (2024): A genealogy of politics: vindicatory, pragmatic, and realist. In: European Journal of Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12965.
Prinz, Janosch (2022): Realism and Real Politics. In: Critical Review of International Political and Social Philosophy. DOI: 10.1080/13698230.2022.2120655.
Watch a brief introduction to my research here.
I am active in academic self-governance through my service on the Council of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences since 2023 and my work as spokesperson of WOinActie UM, the local chapter of the Dutch grassroots movement for defending publicly funded higher education. As Vice-Chair of the Maastricht Young Academy, I work toward improving the position of young scholars at UM and in academia in the Netherlands.
Before joining Maastricht, I was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in philosophy at University of East Anglia (2017-2019) and a lecturer in political theory at Queen's University Belfast (2015-2017). I hold a PhD from the University of Sheffield and an M.A. from Bonn.
I am further affiliated with the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies, based on my collaborative work on the legitimation and political geography of recent counterterrorism and development interventions in the Global South. My work on this line of research has appeared in Geoforum, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, and Alternatives.
Recent publications include
Burelli, Carlo, and Prinz, Janosch (2024): A genealogy of politics: vindicatory, pragmatic, and realist. In: European Journal of Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12965.
Prinz, Janosch and Westphal, Manon (2024): The Tribunate as a Realist Democratic Innovation. In: Political Theory, https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231191089.
Prinz, Janosch and Scerri, Andrew (2023): From politics to democracy? Bernard Williams’ Basic Legitimation Demand in a radical realist lens. In: Constellations, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12710
Cross, Ben and Prinz, Janosch (2023): Can narratives about sovereign debt be generally ideologically suspicious? An exercise in broadening the scope of ideology critique. In: Journal of Social Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12511.
Prinz, Janosch (2022): Realism and Real Politics. In: Critical Review of International Political and Social Philosophy. DOI: 10.1080/13698230.2022.2120655.
Prinz, Janosch and Rossi, Enzo (2022): Financial Power and Democratic Legitimacy: How to Think Realistically about Public Debt. In: Social Theory and Practice 48 (1), 115-140. https://doi.org/10.5840/soctheorpract2021121144