This panel invites papers that examine how Asian democratic experiences complicate, revise, or expand dominant frameworks for understanding democratic uncertainty, erosion, resilience, and renewal. While much of the comparative literature on democracy has focused on backsliding, autocratisation, institutional weakening, populist mobilisation, disinformation, polarisation, and the decline of liberal norms, these concepts do not always capture the varied ways democracy is understood, practised, contested, and defended across Asian societies.
Instead of treating Asian democracies as cases to be measured against pre-existing models, this panel asks what can be learned by thinking about democracy from Asia. It welcomes papers on elections and parties, populism, political dynasties, civil society and social movements, courts and constitutional crises, local politics, authoritarian legacies, digital politics, and everyday democratic practices. The panel is especially interested in contributions that rethink concepts such as uncertainty, erosion, resilience, representation, and democratic imagination through the lens of grounded Asian political experiences.
With comparative, historical, interpretive, and theoretically oriented papers in mind, the panel aims to contribute to a more plural understanding of democracy in a changing global order. It asks not only how democracy is placed under strain, but also how it is reworked, sustained, and eventually reimagined across different Asian contexts.
Possible paper themes:
1. Meanings, Trajectories, and Futures of Democracy: How democracy is understood, contested, and reimagined across Asian contexts.
2. Institutions, Power, and Democratic Contestation: How elections, parties, courts, executives, and other institutions shape democratic uncertainty.
3. Everyday Democracy, Publics, and New Sites of Politics: How democracy is experienced and negotiated through communities, movements, media, digital spaces, and everyday political life.
