Trojan Horse Discourse: The Language of Constitutional Erosion in Europe

Democratic erosion rarely announces itself as an attack on democracy. More often, it advances through the language of constitutionalism, rights, security, equality, and popular sovereignty. This volume introduces the concept of Trojan horse discourse to explain how familiar democratic and legal categories can be reinterpreted to legitimize measures that weaken the very norms they appear to uphold.

Bringing together discourse analysis and legal scholarship, the contributors examine how such reinterpretations travel across political debate, legislation, administration, and litigation. Through cases from across Europe—including Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands—the volume traces different trajectories of constitutional erosion, from entrenched illiberal governance to contested and unsuccessful norm-eroding initiatives.

The volume offers a scalar framework for identifying its discursive and institutional mechanisms. It demonstrates how legal analysis provides the normative reference points needed to assess constitutional change, while discourse analysis reveals how that change is made to appear necessary, reasonable, and democratic. The result is an interdisciplinary account of how constitutional erosion becomes thinkable—and how it may be resisted, corrected, or reversed.