Democratic Crisis Revisited

'Democratic crisis revisited' illuminates and reconceptualises the multiple facets of the contemporary crises of democracy in Europe and beyond. It combines context-specific case studies from examples all over Europe, and especially from Eastern Europe, with a theoretical reconceptualisation of democracy. Democracy is conceived of as an ongoing practice of open-ended democratic procedures. Crisis in this view plays a constitutive role for democracy that can disintegrate but also recreate it. Democracy is thus a dialectical struggle between practices of politicisation and depoliticisation, i.e. it produces contingency and processes that decrease it. This understanding of the crisis as constitutive for democracy may open new avenues for democratisation rather than deal it a death blow.