Democracy is one of the founding values of the European Union (EU) and a guiding principle in its external relations. In the course of the Eastern enlargement, the Union emerged as one of the major democracy promoters. However, the assaults on democratic institutions in some EU member states have undermined the assumption about the positive impact of EU membership on democratic consolidation and sparked a lively discussion whether the Union can safeguard democracy.

Uncivil Liberalism studies how ideas of liberty from the colonized South claimed universality in the North. Recovering the political thought of Dadabhai Naoroji, India's pre-eminent liberal, this book focusses on the Grand Old Man’s pre-occupation with social interdependence and civil peace in an age of growing cultural diversity and economic inequality. It shows how Naoroji used political economy to critique British liberalism's incapacity for civil peace by linking periods of communal rioting in colonial Bombay with the Parsi minority's economic decline.

Professor Uday Singh Mehta is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at The City University of New York. A renowned political theorist, his publications include The Anxiety of Freedom: Imagination and Individuality in the Political Thought of John Locke (Cornell University Press, 1992) and Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2000). Liberalism and Empire was awarded the J. David Greenstone Book Award in 2002 from the American Political Science Association for the best book in Political Theory.