ABSTRACT The coronavirus pandemic, which first impacted European societies in early 2020, has created a twofold crisis by combining a health threat with economic turmoil. While the crisis has affected all European societies very significantly, its impact varies across countries, social groups, and societal domains. In an effort to provide a first overview of the effect of the coronavirus crisis, in this editorial we discuss contributions of 58 papers published as part of this special issue. These early research papers illustrate the varied impact of the pandemic on various areas of social life. The first group of studies in this special issue analyzes the effect of the pandemic on social inequalities with respect to gender, ethnic otherness, education, and work. A second stream of research focuses on the psychological consequences of the pandemic, especially with respect to wellbeing and resilience. Thirdly, the crisis is discussed on a societal level, in regard to welfare states, social policies, and approaches to crisis governance. In a fourth line of inquiry, several studies have analyzed the impact of the pandemic on social solidarity and cohesion. A fifth strand of research is devoted to examining the role of culture and lifestyles. This review ends with a discussion of areas for future research trajectories.

ABSTRACT A sequel to an analysis of citizens' predispositions for democracy (Part I), this study focuses on larger units, shared ideologies. European ideologies were explored by secondary data analysis of European Values Study (EVS) wave 4, years 2008–2010, 44 countries, 73 questionnaire items, N = 63,281 respondents. The nature of the ideologies is inviting to cluster analysis approach as they tend to be described in terms of ‘patterned clusters’ and likened to an urban cacophony. We applied cluster analysis to reveal prevalent ideological patterns (pro- and antidemocratic tendencies) within the noise of attitudes, values, and behavioral tendencies of European voters and nonvoters. This time our unit was not an individual citizen but a more general unit, ‘an averaged electoral case’. Each major party and also ‘no party’, ‘other party’, and ‘DK/NA’ categories for each country were represented by an abstracted (non)voter with average opinions (using all 73 variables), producing N = 302 averaged electoral tendencies. These were subjected to hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis. Resulting clusters partitioned Europe into three political regions: active democracy (the north-west; 41% of Europeans, 64.5% democratic), moderate democracy (southern and postcommunist Europe; 48% of Europeans, 21.7% democratic), passive democracy (south-east: Turkey, Romania, Albania, Northern Cyprus; 11% of Europeans, 9.6% democratic). This study thus provided a complementary perspective to the study from Part I (which manifested trans-nationally shared political mentalities of European citizens): European public ideologies manifested regional divides and confirmed the lack of internationally shared public sphere.

ABSTRACT The article focuses on citizens’ predispositions for democracy and discusses the concepts of democratic mentality, demos, and demoi. Democratic mentality was operationalized by attitudes, values, and behavioral tendencies which promote civility and civic political culture. Theoretical analysis is followed by an empirical assessment of diverse intranational and international mentalities: prodemocratic, antidemocratic, and nondemocratic tendencies. Constellations of attitudes were explored by secondary data analysis of European Values Study (EVS wave 4, 2008–2010 period, 44 countries, 73 questionnaire items). Individual citizens ( N = 63,281) were classified by k-means cluster analysis into: (1) ‘secular democrats’, (2) ‘religious democrats’, (3) ‘nondemocratic skeptics’, (4) ‘antidemocratic intolerant economically deprived traditionalists’, and (5) ‘antidemocratic religious radicals’. All mentalities occurred in each country; countries differed by the incidence of democratic (1 + 2), nondemocratic (3), and antidemocratic (4 + 5) mentalities. Democratic mentality was prevalent in the Northwest (especially in Scandinavia) and among elites; its average incidence in Europe was 40.9%. The results manifested trans-nationally shared political mentalities of European citizens, indicated that democrats were significantly present in every country, and confirmed presence of a robust demos in the North-Western Europe. International democratic mentality (trans-national demos) can be viewed as a possible source of democratic peace ( Pax democratica ). Civility was an important component of democratic mentality. It was demonstrated that democracy can function without prevalent active political participation but it is hard to conceive democracy without widespread civility. Whenever democracy is being exported or restored, the process must primarily focus on civility and not be limited to mere cultivation of political culture.