The current challenge for liberal democrats is to walk the tight rope between two types of populism: while the populists in the street claim that truth is manifest to common sense, the silent technocratic offices of government consider that there is no alternative to their vision of social progress. How to deal with these twin challenges? As the first part of its larger liberal democracy project, the NOUS network has organized an academic workshop with papers concentrating on the following questions: How could one develop classical liberalism at the conceptual or institutional level given the twin challenges of populism? Does classical liberalism need to re-think its relationship to democracy? And what are the potential benefits and threats of the digital transformation to democratic governance in the future? After the workshop, the papers will be published as a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal “Constitutional Political Economy”. (2022/2023)