This open access handbook offers a comprehensive analysis of dissensus over liberal democracy in Europe. While centred on the experience of dissensus surrounding Liberal Democracy at the EU and Member State levels, it also explores wider conceptual and policy questions raised by the current challenges facing democratic regimes worldwide.

The Handbook was co-edited by Ramona Coman – Centre d’Étude de la Vie Politique (CEVIPOL), Institut d’études européennes (IEE), Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium; Claudia Bădulescu – Maynooth University, Kildare, Ireland; Thomas Christiansen –  Department of Political Sciences, Luiss University, Roma, Italy; and Marta Simoncini – Department of Political Sciences, Luiss University, Rome, Italy (more details on the co-editors HERE)

The handbook’s cover depicts the Temple of Concordia in Agrigento (Sicily), one of the best-preserved Greek temples of the ancient world. Across centuries, different communities invested it with new significance. Concordia survived because it was repeatedly repurposed and reinterpreted, acquiring new meanings and functions while preserving its physical structure. The broken statue in the foreground is a modern artwork: Fallen Icarus by Igor Mitoraj. Born in Germany to Polish parents, educated in Poland, and active mainly in France and Italy, Mitoraj himself embodied a European trajectory. The sculpture pays homage to the Greek myth of Icarus, who used wings made of feathers and wax to escape imprisonment but, disregarding his father’s warnings, flew too close to the sun and fell to his death when the wax melted.

Taken together, these two elements reflect the core insight of the concept of dissensus over liberal democracy. While the temple symbolises endurance and adaptation, the statue offers a modern representation of aspiration, contestation, vulnerability, and fall. In Europe in 2026, liberal democracy is neither a settled consensus nor a political order simply collapsing under pressure. Like the Temple of Concordia, it is continually reinterpreted and invested with competing meanings. Like Icarus, it remains vulnerable to fragility, failure and decline. The tension between endurance and vulnerability, continuity and transformation, captures the central idea of this volume: liberal democracy is shaped by conflicts over the meaning of its principles, institutions, and values. Whether mild, severe, disruptive, or destructive, dissensus is the condition through which the future of liberal democracy is shaped, without presuming whether these conflicts will lead to erosion, replacement, reform or preservation.

It offers over 50 chapters (full table of content HERE), authored by a group of international experts associated with the RED-SPINEL project and beyond (full list of contributors HERE). Across its 57 chapters, the handbook moves beyond accounts that focus solely on democratic backsliding, as it seeks to conceptualise ‘dissensus’ as a structural conflict over the ideal, meaning and practice of liberal democracy, unfolding across EU institutions, member states, and key policy domains. In so doing, the handbook examines:

·       What forms does dissensus over liberal democracy take within the European Union?

·       How have EU institutions responded over recent decades to increasing challenges to its core values?

·       How does dissensus reshape the EU’s internal policies?

·       What are the implications for the EU’s capacity to act beyond its borders?

·       And how do external state and non-state actors influence dissensus within the EU and its neighbourhood?

All chapters are readily available as the handbook is entirely OPEN ACCESS. The 57 chapters are organised in X parts: (1) Theoretical reflections, (2) EU Institutions, Decision-Making and Modes of Governance, (3) EU Internal Policies, (4) EU External Policies, (5) EU Member States, and (6) External Influences.

Endorsements

“This Palgrave Handbook makes an important contribution to debates on the future of liberal democracy. Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives and rich empirical analyses, it shows how liberal principles and practices are contested, reworked, and sometimes undermined across institutions, policies, and borders.” 

–Tanja Börzel, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany  

“This Palgrave Handbook provides invaluable insights into the most significant challenge to liberal democracy today, the dissensus from outside as well as from within Europe that has led to the disruption, destabilization, and in certain instances even destruction of democratic institutions and politics along with liberal norms and values.”

–Vivien A. Schmidt, Boston University, USA, and the European University Institute, Italy  

“The publication of this excellent book could not be more timely, at a moment when the contestation of liberal democracy in the European Union, both from within and from outside has reached its peak.” 

–Gábor Halmai, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Hungary, and European University Institute (EUI), Italy