On 13 January 2016, for the first time in its history, the European Union launched an investigation against one of its full member states, Poland. The dispute is about new Polish laws that allegedly disempower the Constitutional Court and the public media, thus breaching EU democracy standards. The dispute reaches far beyond Poland and questions the further perspectives of integration of the Central Eastern European (CEE) states within the EU. At the same time, it is closely connected with the current multidimensional European crisis. This article argues that the EU-Poland dispute is an outcome of the combination of the specific problems of governance in CEE with a superficial institutionalism of the EU. Poland’s governance controversies show that new attention of the EU to its CEE member states is needed, as they were for many years marginalized because of other concerns such as the economic and financial crises since 2007, the threat of a ‘Brexit’ and currently the refugee crisis. In order to salvage the European integration project, it will be crucial for Europe’s credibility to support the CEE countries to reform their socio-economic systems. At the same time, the case of Poland offers a chance for a debate about how the EU can cooperate more effectively and in extended manners.

This article attempts to view the idea of a “crisis of democracy” through a lens of individualization of the society. As the consequence of the impact of the individualization on existing liberal democracy, new forms of niggling democracy have been emerging. This article maps varieties of such emerging democracies in contemporary Japanese society.

That the present moment ties multiple crises together—not least because each is a future of pasts that wound(ed) through each other—must be factored into our intercessions and visions. If every crisis is also a call to order, then what order, old or new, does the pandemic call us to? Its literality provokes us to keep both the pan and the demos in sight, just as they are being extinguished through borders, disease, poverty, insecurity, hatred, and disposability in the global postcolony. We are asked to remember that capital and colony are inseparable, that the nation-state is too suspicious a source of comfort, that the eroding claims of citizenship across the postcolonial and post-democratic fascist failed states are instructive and prophetic, and that the assumptions of place and movement in our frames of the democratic political need revisiting.

During crises such as the present coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic, nonprofits play a key role in ensuring support to improve the most vulnerable individuals’ health, social, and economic conditions. One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, an extensive automated literature analysis was conducted of 154 academic articles on nonprofit management during the pandemic—all of which were published in 2020. This study sought to identify and systematize academics’ contributions to knowledge about the crisis’s impact on the nonprofit sector and to ascertain the most urgent directions for future research. The results provide policymakers, nonprofit practitioners, and scholars an overview of the themes addressed and highlight the important assistance academic researchers provide to nonprofits dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Democratic innovation is one way the multiple crises of democracy can be addressed. The literature on democratic innovation has yet to adequately interrogate the role of social movements, and more specifically the movement of democratic imaginaries, in innovation, nor has it considered the specific mechanisms through which movements translate democratic imaginaries and practices into innovation. This article provides a preliminary roadmap for methodological and conceptual innovation in our understanding of the role of social movements in democratic innovation. It introduces the concept of democratic innovation repertoires and argues that: a) we need to broaden our conceptualization and analysis of democratic innovation to encompass the role of social movements; and b) we need to understand how the relationship between democratic movement imaginaries and the praxis that movements develop in their quest to “save” or strengthen democracy can shape democratic innovation beyond movement arenas after mobilizing “events” have passed.

This paper begins by identifying how, as a result of the confluence of a number of factors, civil organizations (COs) in Mexico have shown an exponential development in the past 15 years. However, it is argued that COs are suffering a fiscal crisis and, in some sense, an economic one, provoked by the political reaction of the government toward this growth. At the same time, there is no crisis of legitimacy; their increasing levels of social support suggests a trend in the reverse direction. However, the legitimacy attributable by the population to nonprofits seems to be due to the novelty of this sociopolitical actor in the context of a disappointment with more traditional ones including government and political parties—as opposed to an endorsement of their proven capacity or efficiency in solving the problems of development. To take advantage of what seems to be a golden opportunity for its positive development, in addition to changing the unfavorable economic environment, it is argued that the sector has to face the challenge of thinking in its long-term interest and making sure that it is positioned to act as capably efficient.

This article examines elite European discourses during the Greek financial crisis from its pre‐history in September 2008 up to the arrival of the SYRIZA government in January 2015. The article employs the conceptual literature on Discursive Institutionalism (DI) and Historical Institutionalism (HI). Having coded 1,153 unique quotes drawn from a dataset of 15,354 news wires from Reuters, the authors argue that the communicative discourse of 63 senior European (and IMF) officials on the Greek crisis during that period demonstrates significant volatility. Four distinct narrative frames are identified: ‘neglect’, ‘suspicious cooperation’, ‘blame’ and ‘reluctant redemption’, punctuated by three discursive junctures in 2010, 2011 and 2012, which reflect the content of the changing communicative discourse of the Greek crisis. The article's contribution is twofold: empirically, it is the first to provide a systematic analysis of the protagonists’ communication of the Greek crisis; and theoretically, it combines DI and HI in an effort to conceptualise an important part of our understanding of ‘bail‐out politics’ throughout the Eurozone crisis.

This article analyses the consequences of the narrative construction of the group of countries that has been grouped as ‘PIIGS’ (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) for their sovereign debt risk rating. Acronyms for groups of countries can provide a useful shorthand to capture emergent similarities in economic profile and prospects. But they can also lead to misleading narratives, since the grounds for use of these terms as heuristic devices are usually not well elaborated. This article examines the process whereby the ‘PIIGS’ group came into being, traces how Ireland became a member of this grouping, and assesses the merits of classifying these countries together. The contention is that the repetition of the acronym in public debate did indeed shape the behaviour of market actors toward these countries. It is argued that this involved a co‐constituting process: similarities in market treatment drives PIIGS usage, which in turn promotes further similarities in market treatment. Evidence is found of Granger causality, such that increased media usage of the term ‘PIIGS’ is followed by increased changes in Irish bond yields. This demonstrates the constitutive role of perceptions and discourse in interpreting the significance of economic fundamentals. The use of acronyms as heuristics has potentially far‐reaching consequences in the financial markets.

This article introduces the Special Issue examining the growing dissensus over liberal democracy in the EU. While the early twenty-first century appeared to herald democratic triumph following the Cold War and the democratization waves of the 1980s and 1990s, recent decades have witnessed an increasing contestation of liberal democracy. The Special Issue explores this phenomenon and aims to understand the nature of the current dissensus over liberal democracy, the roles of different actors, and its implications for EU policies and instruments. Dissensus is defined as a conflict between different types of actors, either about the fundamental principles of liberal democracy and rights or their implementation through specific policies, or both. This article explains the puzzle and situates the concept of dissensus in the literature. It then discusses how dissensus can be studied as the dependent and independent variable and provides an overview of how the contributions in this issue address these questions. The Special Issue examines how this dissensus shapes both policies and polity in the EU context, particularly as it coincides with the growing success of radical and populist parties at the national level and increasing centralization of powers among executives at the EU level.

Social relevance has become a key element to assess the social legitimacy of an academic discipline. This contrasts with a widespread sentiment among political scientists about the existence of a relevance gap. The context of multiple crises Europe has experienced since the late 2000s has provided political scientists with a multitude of opportunities to demonstrate the social relevance of their work and the usefulness of the discipline. This introductory article to the special issue aims to offer an explorative framework and a preliminary discussion of empirical examples to assess the phenomenon of political scientists’ relevance in the public sphere during recent turbulent times. The framework (which emphasises three basic dimensions of social relevance – partisanship, visibility, and impact) is used to interpret the main results of the five case studies included in the special issue. Results show that contextual factors (salience of the issue, political and media contexts) influence political scientists’ engagement in the public sphere, the role they adopt and their visibility. The article ends emphasising the importance of collective action within the discipline as an instrument to enhance its social relevance.

It is often argued today that representative politics is in crisis. Trust in politicians, political parties and even the political system is lower than ever, and for many people politics is at best an entertaining spectacle. At the same time, new forms of politics have emerged. In The End of Representative Politics, Simon Tormey argues that these new forms of politics represent a hope for the future. They do so by eschewing old forms of representative politics in a ‘politics without representatives’, and we have seen this in, among other places, the alter-globalisation protests, the Zapatistas in Chiapas, the indignados in Spain, Occupy Wall Street, and anti-government protests in Brazil and Turkey. These new forms of politics challenge our assumptions about politics and representation, and force us to think beyond the traditional party based democratic institutions – and that’s a good thing too. In this review symposium, Lisa Disch, Pablo Ouziel, Neal Lawson and Simon Tormey discuss the future of representative politics.

The introductory article to this special issue highlights three fundamental yet often neglected questions related to the current diagnosis of a crisis of democracy: What is meant by the term “crisis”? Which democracy is in crisis? And what, if anything, is “new” about the current crisis of democracy? We answer these questions by considering the multi-vocal contribution of purposefully curated short articles in this special issue. We argue that when engaging with the “crisis of democracy” diagnosis, it is important to unpack not only the normative presumptions one has in relation to what democracy is and should be, but also the recent transformations in the way politics is understood and practiced in contemporary societies.

This paper serves to explore the concept of the European Muslims, the facts and challenges, from the perspective of a European Muslim. I aim to highlight some of the deep-routed issues that European Muslims have faced historically and continue to experience today. I consider the causes and rationale behind the current situation and look beyond to suggest ways in which this may evolve. Four contributory factors have led to the deepening multidimensional identity crisis of Western society – globalisation, immigration, the emergence of a new kind of citizen and social and terrorist violence. These have lead to the creation of physiological and emotional tensions, doubts and fears in both Muslims and people of other faiths. Similar questioning is also evident within Muslim-majority countries. I propose suggestions for how improvements might be achieved, for better coherency and understanding to enable us to evolve from this feeling of fear and doubt towards self-confidence and mutual trust through a long-term dialectical approach. I highlight the importance of long-term education to overcome the lack of knowledge of one another and the associated confusion that exists today. Official institutions and politicians also have an important role to play in the development of civic awareness and a common goal to consider a vision for more meaningful communication. There is a need to create and build upon sound foundations of respect for both the values of individuals and those of religious communities throughout Europe; a need to invite an in-depth, deliberate analysis of relevant dialogue between one another. Critical reflection and analysis of the fundamentals of all faiths are essential to help us to recognise the role of the spirituality and its importance to the individual, and for us to recognise the benefits and richness that the embracement of the plurality of our faiths can provide. I argue that effective public dissemination of accurate information is also necessary, looking at the influence of the media and the need for journalists to consider making more responsible, positive contributions – to be bold and to challenge but to be prepared to ask appropriate questions and distribute findings responsibly. This will in turn seek to encourage individual choice and responsibility of the ordinary citizen – enabling and encouraging us to listen to our neighbours, to take time to better understand one another wholly, without judgement and preconceptions and to identify how we can best cooperate – each of us actively participating and positively contributing towards our more all-inclusive societies.

This article looks closely at the “crisis of representative democracy,” noting that this crisis is evident across the main variables of interest to political scientists (voting, party membership, trust in politicians, and interest in mainstream politics). The argument here is that the crisis is located not only in short term or contingent factors such as financial crisis, the decadence of the current generation of politicians or the emergence of New Public Management—which often appear as the villains of the piece. It is also located in long term and structural factors linked to the types of social and political interaction associated with “first modernity.” With the displacement of this temporality under post-Fordist, reflexive or “second” modernity, we are witnessing a different set of dynamics shape the terrain of politics. Globalization, individualization, and the proliferation of communicative platforms is taking us away from “vertical” interactions in which representative politics is typical, toward more distributed, flatter, or “horizontal” modes of sociality, working, and organizing—leaving us in a “post-representative” political moment.

The article, written from a post-financial crisis vantage point, applies Katzenstein's democratic corporatist model to the case of Iceland, and asks if it overlooks an essential message from theory, namely that small states need an external protector in order to survive, economically and politically. The article claims that the model convincingly made the case for how small states can buffer from within but fails to grasp their need for external shelter to cope with risk. In a financialised world economy, small states need economic and political shelter in order to prevent risk from spiralling out of control and they need support in order to clean up after a crisis.

This conversation with Nancy Fraser explores her work on the crises of capitalism, democracy, and participation. Fraser has argued that much scholarship in political science and democratic theory on these issues is hampered by “politicism”—an inclination to view the political in separation from other social spheres, which fails to appreciate the structural nature of contemporary crises. Fraser argues that the political arena is important because it is here that collective regulatory powers are exercised, however it needs to be situated within a broader understanding of the social totality to understand how it is affected by crisis dynamics in other spheres and how it might contribute to attenuating, or resolving, these. Our conversation begins by exploring these arguments in relation to Fraser's recent work on the critique of capitalism, and then traces how this relates to her work on the public sphere, participatory parity, and utopian thought.