GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

A philosophic, sociological, legal, economic, historical and political reflection is needed on the foundations of liberal democratic governance in order to establish a viable conception of liberal democracy for the future.

Proposals are expected to address some of the following points:

• To examine the internal and external challenges to liberal democracy and the discourses, social structures and institutions that underpin them.
• To illustrate how such discourses depict social and political subjects as well as the structure of modern societies and institutions.

Proposals may want to relate these to the impacts of major political and economic challenges of the past decades.

Proposals should analyse how institutional and political mechanisms built into European liberal democracies have functioned as limits and as a response to illiberal developments (e.g. checks and balances, enforcement of the rule of law). They should also examine how these mechanisms have evolved in recent years as a response to new threats. Research may provide theoretically rigorous and normatively informed reflections on how political liberalism can be actualised in order to take on the discourses that challenge liberal democracy. Proposals should show the corresponding implications for the institutions of democratic governance.

Long-term trends in the functioning of key elements of European liberal democracies and their public legitimacy should be analysed and compared.