Editorial: Configurations for democratic, economic and policy shifts after popular uprisings in European neighbourhood

While conventional wisdom argues that mass popular uprisings in authoritarian or hybrid regimes usually do not lead to veritable democratization, their aftermath is rarely a clear-cut return to the status quo ante or a decisive move to a new system of government, but rather a longer transitional period that is both politically ambiguous and in flux. Revolutionary moments provoke a range of impacts on institutional, relational, and normative-symbolic dynamics that allow for different outcomes—democratic gains and authoritarian reassembly—to occur simultaneously. Assessing the relationship between mass popular uprising and democratization thus requires taking a more nuanced, longitudinal approach that registers smaller-scale changes on a continuum of democracy-autocracy.