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Home ❯ News ❯ The 27th IQS Symposium analyzes the current risks to democracy from a global, economic, and technological perspective

The 27th IQS Symposium analyzes the current risks to democracy from a global, economic, and technological perspective

Chair of Ethics Institutional 14 January 2026

On January 8, 2026, the 27th IQS Symposium was held, organized by the Chair of Ethics and Christian Thought at IQS. It was entitled “Democracy in Danger: Three Approaches”, and brought together a large number of interested participants, given current world events.

The first speaker was Dr. Òscar Mateos, Professor of International Relations and Deputy Dean for Quality, Students and Studies at Blanquerna (URL), and Research Associate at CIDOB, with a presentation entitled “Democracy in the Global Context: Recent Evolution”. According to Mateos, globalization, a process that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980s, had the most vulnerable segments of the world’s population as its main victims, and the main winners were the large corporations in rich countries.

In its origin, however, it contained a promise of multilateralism in international relations that began to change sign with the 9/11 attacks in 2001; multilateralism began to be questioned, and with the growth of corporations and the arrival of communication technologies and artificial intelligence, a clear divorce between power and politics has now been completed: states have lost power, and the world’s decision-making centers are in private hands. Thus, democracy is becoming empty of content.

Secondly, Ramón Xifré spoke on “The democratic crisis in the capitalist context”. According to Dr. Xifré, professor at IQS and Policy Research Fellow at IESE, the old conviction that democracy is a key ingredient in economic development has entered into crisis. Currently, we see how China presents better economic and growth results than the EU, and in part better than those of the United States.

This last nation has clearly begun a political self-reform, also influenced by platforms close to power that are openly opposed to policies of social justice and the common good, and the government instrumentalizes the power of the state to do private business. For its part, the EU is trapped in an economy that is not growing or converging with the US and much less with China.

Finally, Dr. Liliana Arroyo, sociologist specializing in Digital Social Innovation, teacher and researcher at ESADE, spoke on “The role of social networks and artificial intelligence”. According to Arroyo, Communication technologies have a very strong impact on young people, since these new tools allow for segmentation and an intimate knowledge of their audience that traditional media did not have. This allows the generation of emotionally charged messages against which people are unarmed, reacting automatically and making manipulation possible.

Although social networks were initially seen as a marketing tool, today they have become, very eminently, a tool of political propaganda; they have gone from surveillance capitalism to an exploitation of the attention of audiences not only for commercial purposes, but also for political ones. With this new Symposium, the Chair of Ethics and Christian Thought at IQS continues to bring all university staff the opportunity to delve deeper into key issues of our historical moment, a symposium that has already become a tradition within the house.