Renegotiating Europe’s Social Contracts: Redesign, Renewal, and Re-foundation in time of transitions

This blog post is based on two yet unpublished deliverables in the CO3-project, with contributions from all consortium teams. The upcoming deliverables are :D3.2 Social and societal non-cohesions (Lead authors: Pinar, Emre, Tucge, Istanbul Bilgi University) & D3.3 Report on transitions and post-colonialism (Editors; Ruzha Smilova Kaloyan VelchevDaniel Smilov, André Caiado, Cristiano Gianolla, Daniela Nascimento, Patrick Sawyer, Rui Carvalho, Vanda Amaro Dias, Petro Baykovskyy, Yuriy Pidlisnyy CLS; CES; UCU).

Europe does not look like a continent in collapse. Elections are held, courts operate, welfare states function somewhat, and the European Union endures. And yet, across the continent, something deeper is shifting. Citizens question what the state owes them, who fully belongs to the political community, and what democracy is ultimately meant to deliver. 

To understand this moment, it is useful to think in terms of social contracts- the historically embedded arrangements that define reciprocity between state and citizens, set boundaries of membership, and anchor political legitimacy. Because what Europe is experiencing today is not a series of isolated crises, but a broader renegotiation of these foundational arrangements. 

Across the continent and its immediate neighborhood, social contracts are being reshaped in at least three distinct ways: redesign, renewal, and re-foundation. 

Redesign: The Illiberal Social Contract 

In some countries, social contracts are not simply eroding. They are being deliberately redesigned. 

Perhaps, Hungary offers the clearest example. After 1989, the dominant consensus combined liberal democracy, market capitalism, and Euro-Atlantic integration. For two decades, this trajectory seemed consolidated. Yet from 2010 onward, the government led by Viktor Orbán began to reconstruct the political order through constitutional changes, media consolidation, electoral reforms, and the weakening of independent institutions. This transformation has often been described as democratic backsliding. But it is more analytically precise to see it as a redesign of the social contract. 

The new arrangement rests on different moral foundations. Redistribution is tied to workfare and family policy. Social support is channeled toward loyal constituencies. National sovereignty and Christian identity are elevated above liberal pluralism. The state presents itself as the protector of a homogeneous people against external interference - whether from Brussels, migrants, or global elites. Democracy remains formally intact, but its normative core shifts from checks and balances to majoritarian authority and identity-based cohesion. 

Türkiye illustrates a related, though historically distinct, trajectory. Long shaped by a strong-state tradition in which military and bureaucratic elites acted as guardians of the republic, Türkiye experienced a significant reform period in the early 2000s, partly driven by the aim to join the European Union. Civil-military relations were recalibrated, minority rights cautiously expanded, and legal reforms adopted. 

Yet this liberalizing moment proved fragile. Over time -and especially after the 2016 coup attempt - executive power was consolidated, a presidential system introduced, and dissent increasingly framed as a security threat. The social contract was reoriented around loyalty, national sovereignty, and stability. As in Hungary, the shift is not toward chaos, but toward a re-emphasis on order, unity, and strong leadership over pluralist contestation. 

These cases demonstrate that transition in Europe no longer carries a single teleological direction. The assumption that political change naturally converges toward liberal democracy has weakened. Competing models of political community and state-citizen reciprocity now coexist within Europe itself. 

Renewal: When Rupture Deepens the Contract 

Not all transitions narrow solidarity or weaken democratic commitments. Some expand and entrench them. 

Portugal’s experience after the Carnation Revolution of 1974 illustrates how rupture can lead to renewal. The overthrow of the Estado Novo dictatorship marked not only a political transformation but a profound reconfiguration of the social contract. Decolonization proceeded rapidly. Hundreds of thousands of returnees from former African colonies were integrated into Portuguese society. The 1976 Constitution embedded social, economic, and political rights at the heart of the new democratic order. 

European integration further consolidated this trajectory. Membership in the European Economic Community provided both an external anchor and a normative horizon. Democratic governance, welfare expansion, and economic modernization were aligned with a broader European project. While inequalities and exclusions did not disappear, the post-1974 settlement expanded the boundaries of inclusion and strengthened the institutional foundations of democracy. 

Portugal’s case reminds us that rupture is not inherently destabilizing. Under certain conditions — broad societal mobilization, institutional embedding of rights, and credible external anchoring — transitions can deepen the social contract rather than fragment it. 

However, the recent rise of far-right in Portugal and the crises related to housing, healthcare and immigration, among others, have been causing tensions. This reminds us that no social progress should be taken for granted and emphasizes the importance of open social contracts that can address new challenges and remain open to renegotiation. 

Re-foundation Under Fire: Ukraine’s War-Driven Social Contract 

If Hungary and Türkiye illustrate redesign from within, and Portugal renewal through revolution, Ukraine represents something even more dramatic: re-foundation under existential threat. 

Following independence in 1991, Ukraine’s post-Soviet trajectory was marked by institutional fragility, corruption, and regional fragmentation. The 2014 Maidan uprising signaled a civic rupture, reasserting popular demands for accountable governance and European orientation. Yet it was Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 that fundamentally accelerated the renegotiation of Ukraine’s social contract. 

War compresses time. Under conditions of existential threat, questions of membership, loyalty, and solidarity become immediate and concrete. In Ukraine, the invasion strengthened civic cohesion across linguistic and regional divides. National identity consolidated not only in ethnic terms, but around shared resistance and democratic aspiration. State capacity expanded under emergency conditions. Voluntary mobilization, civil society coordination, and military defense intertwined with a renewed European orientation. 

Ukraine’s wartime transformation has also strengthened a growing consensus around a civic Ukrainian identity that is no longer shaped by imperial legacies, but rooted in national identity, shared commitments to freedom, dignity, and self-determination. This identity is reinforced by the central role of civil society, which drives demands for transparency, deregulation, subsidiarity, and democratic accountability even amid conflict. At the same time, Ukraine’s experience underscores the indispensable importance of security, resilient institutions, and regular elite rotation as foundations for a durable and future‑oriented social contract. 

Ukraine’s trajectory reveals that social contracts are not shaped only by internal reform or political entrepreneurship. They are also forged in confrontation with imperial aggression. The war has clarified Ukraine’s political direction in ways that decades of incremental reform did not. It has also tested the European Union’s own normative commitments. Enlargement, solidarity, and the defense of sovereignty are no longer abstract principles; they are geopolitical realities. 

In this sense, Ukraine stands as a stress test for European social contracts more broadly. It forces a confrontation with foundational questions: What does solidarity mean in practice? How far does the community of democratic values extend? Can the EU function as a credible anchor in the context of war and external threat? 

Europe Without a Single Horizon 

Across these cases, redesign in Hungary and Türkiye, renewal in Portugal, and re-foundation in Ukraine, a common pattern emerges. Europe is no longer moving toward a single, uncontested horizon of liberal democratic consolidation. The post-1989 assumption that transition naturally culminates in open, pluralist democracy has fractured. Instead, multiple models of political community coexist with majoritarian and identity-driven contracts, rights-based and welfare-expanding settlements, and war-forged civic solidarities. 

For those who value open, democratic, and inclusive social contracts, this shift carries three implications. 

First, openness cannot be assumed as the default endpoint of political development. It must be institutionally anchored and socially embedded. Hungary demonstrates that democratic procedures alone do not safeguard pluralism; the moral core of the contract — how reciprocity and belonging are defined — matters as much as formal rules. Defending open societies therefore requires sustained investment in independent institutions, civic capacity, and norms of mutual restraint. 

Second, inclusion must be politically organized, not merely normatively proclaimed. Portugal’s trajectory shows that rupture can deepen solidarity when rights are constitutionally embedded and tied to credible socio-economic commitments. Openness survives when citizens experience it as materially and socially meaningful — not as abstraction. Social contracts evolve successfully when equality, participation, and welfare are visibly aligned. 

Third, geopolitical contexts now shape democratic resilience in ways that cannot be ignored. Ukraine’s experience underscores that sovereignty, security, and democracy are intertwined. An inclusive social contract requires not only internal pluralism but also protection from external coercion. For the European Union, this means that enlargement, rule-of-law conditionality, and solidarity mechanisms are not technocratic add-ons; they are instruments for sustaining a shared normative horizon.