Political Sociology of Democratic Challenges in Europe and Beyond

In the last decades, political sociology has been confronted with emerging topics like globalization, democratization and its backsliding, populism, climate change and gender issues. It has been an opportunity to expand its scope beyond traditional topics such as political participation and mass parties, social movements, voting behavior, political parties, extremism, bureaucratization and political elites. In a post-Brexit, post-Covid Europe topics related to geopolitics and war are rising. The new geopolitical situation constellation and positioning of regional powers brought back the menace of the war, and including that of a possible nuclear catastrophe, almost 80 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Moreover, illiberal and authoritarian tendencies prosper even in consolidated democracies, such as some EU member states, and the USA. While democracy requires cooperation, negotiation and compromise, societal preferences have shifted towards polarization, immediacy and majoritarianism. New forms of media and the use of AI in providing information to citizens have a growing impact on the capacity of citizens to elaborate reality and translate it into political participation. Forms of misinformation, disinformation, conspirational narratives, and even deliberate interference within specific information environments, are increasingly being identified. Phenomena labelled as 'populism' continue to surf on the waves of simplification and anti-political discourse, both in domestic politics and in supranational ones, concerning epochal changes in migration, demography, climate, and many others. The seemingly traditional rule of law has been relativized by disintermediation in the style of "power to the people" in relation to the over-bureaucratization of international, regional and multilevel governance (EU, NATO, EN etc.) - accused of emotional detachment in favor of the oligarchic interests of the few, namely digital and industrial corporations. All these challenges, old and new, have opened up urgent debates on the tensions experienced by democratic institutions and societies, at national, supranational and transnational levels, while influencing their capacity to adapt to novel scenarios. The proposed section seeks to unpack traditional and emerging topics, in Europe and elsewhere. The section invites panel proposals, structured around political sociology, and open to interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological approaches from neighboring scientific traditions.