WHAT THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN REVEALS ABOUT A CHANGING AMERICA

The quadrennial U.S. presidential election campaigns are famously emotional, and often unpredictable affairs. This year's nomination process, however, has broken new ground, both in decorum and for shattering long-held assumptions. In the Democratic Party, Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-styled democratic socialist, has enlivened a broad, youthful base to mount a serious challenge to the odds-on favourite, former Senator and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But even more surprising has been the campaign of businessman Donald Trump, whose irreverent, take-no-prisoners style has catapulted him to the forefront of the Republican presidential aspirants and, in the opinion of some observers, even threatens American democracy. Trump's unorthodox campaign has confounded the experts and necessitates a re-examination of the U.S. society and economy.

Mike Haltzel
Foreign Policy Institute Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Former faculty member at Hamilton College and vice president for Academic Affairs at Longwood University; guest professor at Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik; was staff director of the Subcommittee on European Affairs of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and senior foreign policy adviser to U.S. Vice President (then-Senator) Joseph Biden; was chief of the European Division at the Library of Congress; served as director of West European studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and deputy director of Aspen Institute Berlin; headed the U.S. delegation to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe's (OSCE) 2009 Human Rights Conference in Warsaw, the 2010 OSCE Copenhagen Conference and the 2010 OSCE Vienna Review Conference; and was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe's 1990 Copenhagen conference; served as OSCE monitor for the first post-war elections in Bosnia; recipient of state decorations from Austria, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Sweden; Frequent contributor to the European and U.S. print and electronic media; Author or editor of ten books on European history and international relations; B.A., Yale University; M.A., Soviet Studies and Ph.D., History, Harvard University.

Moderation
Eva Nowotny, Member of the Board of the Kreisky Forum, former Austrian Ambassador to the US