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Democracy in Europe: Enlarged But Eroding—A Union in Existential Crisis

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The EU between Federal Union and Flexible Integration

Abstract

This chapter addresses the challenges to liberal democracy in Europe and how a questioned liberal democracy has become a threat to the European Union (EU) and European integration. This chapter reviews the research on democratization and autocratization and explores the democracy status among EU member states. It further discusses how previous decades of democratization provided for EU enlargements and an expanded democratic peace order, but how recent years of democratic decline has become an existential threat to the EU. The chapter concludes with a discussion of what the EU should do if some member states further declines into populism, illiberalism and autocracy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden

    Daniel Silander

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  1. Daniel Silander
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Correspondence to Daniel Silander .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Law, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Antonina Bakardjieva Engelbrekt

  2. Department of Government, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Per Ekman

  3. Department of Government, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Anna Michalski

  4. Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Stockholm, Sweden

    Lars Oxelheim

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Silander, D. (2023). Democracy in Europe: Enlarged But Eroding—A Union in Existential Crisis. In: Engelbrekt, A.B., Ekman, P., Michalski, A., Oxelheim, L. (eds) The EU between Federal Union and Flexible Integration. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22397-6_2

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