Debating Democracy in/and Europe

Within academia as much as in political practice, democracy remains a contested concept. The term 'contested' in this respect refers to a number of aspects: On one hand, while most democratic theorists, politicians and citizens endorse and claim to promote democracy, they hold different ideas about what democratic rule implies and requires. On the other hand, newer approaches in the social sciences that focus on (for example) political movements, and the activists in these movements themselves, are critical of established concepts of representative democracy that they criticize as e.g. being male- or western-dominated. Moreover, citizens hold different views of how to conceptualise and judge representative democracy, and these differences are influenced by their national backgrounds and whether they regard the national level or the EU as a polity. Finally, besides such discussions inside Western and European states, democracy both as a concept and in the shape of the liberal western democracy is challenged by autocratic politicians and states. The war against Ukraine has repeatedly been framed as a war between an autocracy and the liberal western European democracy. In sum, democracy as a concept today is widely contested and debated. Understanding the plurality of conceptions of democracy voiced in academic and public discourses and held by political actors thus is an essential task for political scientists and scholars of democracy and concepts. Against this backdrop, this Section seeks Panels that analyse and discuss how democracy is (to be) debated and conceptualized today, inside and outside Europe. Panels will address conceptions of democracy in light of the foci of the current academic debate sketched above, with regard to contemporary challenges such as populism, polarization and autocratization, and regarding democracy and democratization beyond the nation state, with a particular emphasis on the European Union.