The book, edited by our Senior Research Fellow Wolfgang Merkel and Anna Luhrmann sets the stage by developing a new concept of democratic resilience as the ability of a democratic system, its institutions, political actors, and citizens to prevent or react to external and internal challenges, stresses, and assaults.

The book posits three potential reactions of democratic regimes: to withstand without changes, to adapt through internal changes, and to recover without losing the democratic character of its regime and its constitutive core institutions, organizations, and processes. The more democracies are resilient on all four levels of the political system (political community, institutions, actors, citizens) the less vulnerable they turn out to be in the present and future.

The introduction of the volume was written by Wolfgang Merkel and Anna Luhrmann, while our Research Affiliates Murat Somer and Jennifer McCoy co-authored the chapter “Pernicious Polarization, Autocratization and Opposition Strategies” with Russell Lake. Our OSUN Post-doctoral Fellow Carlos Melendez also co-authored a chapter with Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, entitled “Negative Partisanship Towards the Populist Radical Right and Democratic Resilience in Western Europe.”

Learn more about the book here.