A social contract is a political-theoretical concept which describes the (fictive) basic agreement between the members of a polity on the principles of this polity. There is a long legacy of various definitions of a social contract in political theory. There is also a long historical legacy of practiced social contracts, in countries inside and outside the European union. To grasp the impact of the social contract between individuals and groups as well as between the demos and the state across societies, it is crucial to understand the concept in plural and analyse how definitions and practises shape also the scope, implications, and resilience of social contracts in the face of societal transformations. This requires a high-level of context sensitivity and ability to shift between local, regional, national, and transnational settings. Based on the analyses of the limitations of, and challenges to the social contracts in political theorising and practices, CO3 aims at developing and promoting a more democratic, more inclusive and more open model of social contracts, which manifest political and social resilience in the face of major societal challenges, crises, and anti-democratic tendencies. Drawing from 8 empirical case studies in EU member states, and in 3 non-member states, CO3 researchers safeguards and mechanisms for resilient social contracts overtime. While the theoretical ambition of the CO3 project is to analyse how the contemporary theories of the social contract contribute to our understanding of the social contracts in the current crises-driven European political environment, the empirical ambition is to investigate contradictions and tensions between practices, narratives and lived experiences in social contracts across EUrope through concrete cases. As a result, CO3 generates evidence-based knowledge on the safeguards and mechanisms for promoting resilient social contracts, which support citizen involvement and democracy across EUrope.

Across Europe there is a rise of political movements that claim to challenge liberal elites and speak for the 'ordinary person' - movements that can be loosely categorised as 'populist'. Many of these movements have undesirable tendencies. The Populism and Civic Engagement project (PACE), with others, aims to combat the negative tendencies of populist movements, to build upon the lessons of positive examples (such as Reykjavik), and hence play a part in constructing a firmer democratic and institutional foundation for the citizens of Europe. PACE will analyse, in detail, the type, growth and consequences of such movements in terms of their particular characteristics and context. From this, it will analyse the causes of these movements and their specific challenges to liberal democracy a possibilistic analysis to complement survey/statistical approaches. In particular, it will focus on transitions in these movements (especially changes in leadership) as well as how they relate to other kinds of movements and the liberal reaction. PACE will propose responses to these challenges, developing risk-analyses for each kind of response, each kind of movement and the type of transition. For this, it will employ the agent-based simulation of political processes and attitudes to allow for thorough risk analyses to be made. Throughout the project, it will engage with citizens and policy actors, especially groups under-represented in public affairs, face-face and via new forms of democratic participation appropriate to our digital age to help guide the project and to comment on its outputs. It will develop new tools, based on machine-learning algorithms for identifying and tracking populist narratives and to aid online consultation. It will result in specific interventions aimed at: the public, politicians, activists and educators. It will look further into the future, developing new visions concerning how we could respond to populism and it will warn about longer-term trends.