News & Resources

By  Szilvia Horváth, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki On April 12, in a landslide victory, the Tisza Party led by Péter Magyar defeated  the illiberal Orbán regime, which had been in power for 16 years. Images of young people celebrating the victory with unbounded joy, just like Magyar himself, made headlines around the world. For the second time since 1990, Hungarians have changed their political system, now after a long, nearly two-decade-long authorita

By Prof. Claudia Wiesner, Dr Jessica Schmidt and Dr. Muriel C. Wenzel. Democracy is widely described as being in crisis. Elections still take place, constitutions remain formally intact, and democratic language is ubiquitous, yet trust is declining, participation is uneven, and political conflict feels harder to resolve. What is far less clear, however, is why democracy appears to be in crisis – or whether it is just changing. The literature does not offer a single answer. In

In December 2025, scholars from across Europe gathered in Fulda for the conference “Social Contracts and Democracy in Times of the Anthropocene – Thinking Beyond Crisis.” The post-conference report is now available. Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives, it captures key debates on how planetary transformations reshape democracy, legitimacy and governance. The report traces emerging discussions on eco-social contracts, adaptive forms of politics, and the future of d

On 18 December in Sofia, Bulgaria, demonstrators gathered to demand exclusively machine-based voting in upcoming National Assembly elections and the resignation of Acting Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov. By Dr. Ruzha Smilova, Program Director at the Centre for Liberal Strategies. The last major protests in Bulgaria were pivotal. They ushered in a prolonged political crisis, with seven early elections failing to produce a stable government. Since the end of 2025, hundreds

At a time when debates on migration are increasingly polarized across Europe, questions about who belongs and on what terms are central to how social contracts are actively renegotiated and evolve. While these debates often unfold in parliaments, other institutional spheres, news studios or on social media platforms (which CO3 studied ahead of the EU elections in 2024), they are also shaped in other spaces where stories are told through arts or cinema. In Portugal, a film sho

Reflections from the Athens Democracy Forum 2025 by Angeliki Vourdaki. The Athens Democracy Forum gathered politicians, journalists, business leaders, and civil society actors in the symbolic heart of democracy. But the discussions reflect many open questions around democracy’s future. Working on new democratic social contracts could emerge as exactly the right intervention at exactly the right level.  Democracy under siege: defend, safeguard, protect The organisers of the At

The second episode of the CO3 Project is fresh out of the oven! This episode focuses on resilience, featuring expert insights from Ruzha Smilova  Program Director (Political Analysis) at the Centre for Liberal Strategies .   According to Smilova, there is a gap in contemportary social contract theories, which leaves little conceptual or normative space for the concept of personal desert. This concept has nothing to do with something sweet you eat at the end of a meal. Inst

Essay by Emre Erdoğan, professor and CO3-associated researcher at İstanbul Bilgi University. On the 29th of October, as Türkiye celebrates the 102nd day of the Republic of Türkiye, it is timelier than ever to reflect on its accomplishments and the significant challenges it faces. Established in 1923 from the remnants of an empire, the Republic was built on a bold promise: a unified nation of citizens, equal under the law, committed to secular modernization, and bound by a sh

The University of Applied Sciences Fulda in Germany is inviting scholars to contribute to the international conference Thinking Beyond Crisis: Social Contracts and Democracy in Times of the Anthropocene , which will take place from December 16 to 18, 2025, at the University of Applied Sciences Fulda, Fulda, Germany. The conference aims to connect two pressing debates in the social sciences and humanities: the crisis of liberal democracy and the challenges of the Anthropocene.

CO3 has launched its very own podcast. The podcast is available on Spotify In this first episode, Dr. Anna Björk , Leading Researcher and...

At CO3, researchers from all over Europe are exploring social contracts — often understood as the foundational agreement between citizens...

By Emilia Palonen, Alexander Alekseev , Kleber Carrilho and Vaibhav Agarwal   The last European Parliament election took place across...

Modern social contract theories are moving beyond the one-shot, idealized frameworks.