ChairsMara Malagodi mara.malagodi@warwick.ac.uk; Ashley Moran ashleymoran@utexas.edu; Wen-Chan Chang wenchenchang@ntu.edu.tw

Countries today face a complex intersection of challenges amid political polarisation, mounting economic and social crises, extreme weather events and pandemics, and growing disaffection with democratic institutions and their ability to address these threats. In many communities, these challenges are exacerbated by social divisions based on race, gender, religion, class, or other identities that have become powerful drivers of political life. These extremes have led to persistent polarisation and political stalemate, discrimination, protests in public spaces and government buildings, mass migration and xenophobia, disinformation campaigns, violence, and even armed conflict.

More troubling still, these extremes and their tragic consequences are no longer exceptional events that occur once in a generation or once in a lifetime. Rather, they have become a constant presence in our daily lives, in the news, and across our digital media environments.

Such political and social dynamics often have both causes and potential remedies rooted in constitutions, given the central role constitutions play in shaping relationships between individuals and institutions. Yet traditional constitutional approaches to governance, social cohesion, and conflict resolution do not always prove adequate in this new age of extremes. As exceptions increasingly become the norm, the application of ordinary rules is often incapable of addressing extreme situations that have become persistent, while exceptional measures risk becoming permanent. At the same time, countries around the world are exploring new pathways and developing innovative constitutional strategies to address the unique and shared challenges they face in this era of extremes. This workshop aims to share and learn from these innovations.

This workshop examines constitutional innovations that seek to build resilient and sustainable constitutional democracies amid the growing extremes confronting these systems. It brings together strategies from diverse regions and contexts to explore questions such as:

• What new constitutional innovations have countries developed to address contemporary extremes, including prolonged states of emergency, excessive concentrations of executive power, deep social divisions, unprecedented migration, extremist backlash against the rights of minorities and women, attacks on core social institutions such as universities, climate change and pandemics, terrorism, rising electoral violence and political conflict, pervasive technology and disinformation, and other forms of extremity?
• How can constitutions sustainably manage these extremes that have become the norm?
• Is there a third way between the application of ordinary rules in conditions of persistent extremity and the permanent application of exceptional measures?
• How can institutional checks and balances, the separation of powers, judicial independence, the rule of law, and governmental accountability continue to function against the backdrop of these extremes?
• How can countries constrain the excessive exercise of political power when social media platforms allow political actors to shape public opinion through limited, misleading, or inaccurate information?
• How can countries foster constructive dialogue on constitutional reform and public policymaking amid social and political polarisation, growing distrust of democratic institutions, and a constant flow of social media content and disinformation capable of reshaping public opinion almost instantaneously?