Chairs
Xavier Philippe xavier.philippe@univ-paris1.fr
Iurii Barabash yu.g.barabash@nlu.edu.ua

F. Fukuyama’s prophecy about the final victory of democracy after the overthrow of the communist regime in the countries of the Warsaw Bloc and the final collapse of the Soviet Union has not been justified and is criticized, including in these countries, which for the past two centuries, have been considered an outpost of democracy.

It seemed that after World War II, democracy, together with human rights and the rule of law, was firmly entrenched as an “invariable clause” not only at the level of national constitutions, but also in the most important international documents. What is only the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights on the protection of such an unshakable conventional principle as “effective political democracy”. Democracy has become so established as a global trend of state- building and an obligatory attribute of the constitutional order that countries that professed completely opposite regimes did not disdain to use this term in the name (for example, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea).

The final realization that democracy can be on the verge of survival came after a number of leaders in democratic countries came to power in a democratic way, who began to impose illiberal tendencies in their countries (D. Trump, R.D. Erdogan, V. Orban, J. Kaczynski, B. Ivanishvili). What is B. Netanyahu’s offensive against the independence of the Supreme Court as an impartial guarantor of the constitutional order. All this was intensified by Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine launched in 2022, which became a real test of the democratic world’s strength.

Nowadays, attacks against liberal democracies are not even hidden and discourses around and about democracy try to reshape and even transform the nature of democracy. Various qualifications are used to rename democracy under another type of regime using words such as illiberal, civilization constitutional State… These challenges evidence two main points. Firstly, despite criticisms, the word ‘democracy’ remains used even by those who reject the idea of democracy based on Human Rights, the rule of law and free & fair elections. This shows that the word democracy in itself remains used even by those who reject its basic pillars. Secondly, there is a growing attempt from those who reject constitutional democracy to set up new models where the will of the people and the rule of law is replaced by other notions. The debate between nation-state v. civilization state is one of them.

Thus, the following issues are on the agenda today:

1. What transformations must the doctrine of “militant democracy” undergo in order for democracy itself to survive in the current conditions of the dominance of extreme populism?

2. Can the constitutional principle of a democratic republic continue to be a “talisman” against the coming to power of authoritarian leaders? 3.Constitutional (Supreme) Courts: Guarantors of Democracy or Silent Observers of Plebiscitarian-Authoritarian Transformations?

3. How can civil society institutions use constitutional tools to prevent the “illiberalization” of democratic regimes?

4. Direct Democracy vs. Representative Democracy: A New Round of Conf rontation between the Direct “Mandate of Trust” and Institutional Stability in the XXI Century.

5. Financial crisis and “covid” restrictions as triggers for the strengthening of populist tendencies in the democratic world.

7. Permanently renewed ‘state of emergency‘ to prevent democratic institutions to play their roles: can constitutional and non-constitutional emergency powers undermine the core concept of democracy?

8. Using elections to undermine democratic values: can the interference of third states in national elections be regarded as a threat to democracy and free and fair elections.

9. Protecting constitutional democratic values: should populist leaders who deliberately attacked democracy be barred from running again for elections?