These are the best of times and the worst of times for democracy across the world, including Europe. While democracy seemed to peak in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, it is now in retreat, and under special threat since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2014 and 2022. This retreat makes the topic of democratic resilience important. This chapter examines the concept of democratic resilience while seeking a definition and outlining some of the preconditions for democracy to initiate and then persist. Its argument is that democracy is more than just a set of political institutions but also includes cultural values. But even more so, resilience requires a totality of conditions extending not just to the political sphere, but encompassing many facets that range across economics, civil society, and other arenas of politics.