The Summer Program intends to cope with one of the challenges constitutionalism and representative institutions are currently facing in Europe and beyond, namely democratic decay and rule of law backsliding. By bringing together an interdisciplinary group of renown international scholars, in particular in the fields of constitutional and EU law and in political science, as well as professionals, the Summer program will try to untangle the following problematic knots: how and why are phenomena of constitutional retrogression taking place now? Which actors, at domestic, European and international level contributed, directly or indirectly, to the rise of ‘illiberal democracies’? What are the basic tenets of constitutional democracies and when do they become “disfigured democracies”? With which legitimacy do these constitutional systems contribute to define the arrangements for parliamentary elections? If and how the rule of law backsliding can be remedied and by whom? With this regard, the timing of the Summer Program is tailored to also intercept the debate emerging at a European level, following the appointment of the new Commission, with a view to analyse the EU institutional agenda dealing with the rule of law problems, and to critically examine the impact of the many national elections taking place in the second half of 2019 and in the first half of 2020 on parliamentary democracy in the broader European context.