Policy Brief No.169: What is Democratic Resilience and How Can We Strengthen It?

Image: frank_peters/Shutterstock.com

This Policy Brief explores the concept of resilience which has risen to become a key concept in science and society. As a scientific concept, resilience is, on the one hand, an analytical category that seeks to grasp empirically "what is" (what resilience potential does a particular democratic system have?) and, on the other hand, postulates normatively "what should be" (how is a desirable resilient democracy to be established?). This Policy Brief wants to transform the simple use of the term “democratic resilience” into an analytical concept which allows us to explore the state of resilience of real existing democracies and to discuss the methods, instruments, and ways to strengthen it in times of multiple challenges