Democratic backsliding in the EU poses questions about how to understand and how to remedy it. This paper explains this phenomenon as a search for a specific social contract between the illiberal forces and the societies they seek to govern. Potential and actual responses by European institutions to this very challenge, with the particular emphasis on the ground-breaking potential of infringement procedures for supporting the division of powers in the Member States, are discussed next.

Our 2020 Annual Conference was scheduled to be held at the University of Wrocław in Poland on July 9-11, 2020.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ICON·S Executive Committee has decided to postpone our 2020 Conference to 2021. Our next Annual Conference will take place from July 8-10, 2021, in Wrocław, Poland.
Procedural details regarding the organization of the 2021 Conference will follow in the months ahead.
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