The notion of the Anglosphere — the cluster of English-speaking democracies linked by language, legal traditions, institutional family resemblances, security cooperation and dense societal ties — has returned to political and scholarly debate just as many of its core members confront the strains highlighted by this Congress theme. The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and, in varying degrees, Ireland and other English-speaking polities combine long-standing democratic credentials with growing uncertainty: polarisation, populist surges, contested constitutional settlements, strained welfare and public-service bargains, and disputes over migration, indigeneity and national identity. At the same time, their collective weight in a shifting global system is being recalibrated — through alliances such as Five Eyes and AUKUS, through post-Brexit reorientation, through relations with the European Union, China and the Global South, and through the worldwide circulation of Anglophone political ideas, media and digital platforms.
This open panel invites theoretically and empirically diverse papers that treat the Anglosphere not as a fixed civilisational bloc, but as a useful, contested analytical space in which to rethink democratic governance. Contributions may focus on single countries, paired or multi-country comparisons, transnational networks, or the global projection of Anglosphere models. We welcome work on institutional design (Westminster and presidential variants, federalism, courts, electoral systems); party systems and political behaviour; democratic quality, trust and backsliding; populism and polarisation; public policy and the welfare state; migration, multiculturalism and indigenous politics; political communication, social media and AI; foreign and security policy; economic and regulatory governance; colonial and postcolonial legacies; and the intellectual history of liberal and conservative traditions in the English-speaking world.
The panel is deliberately broad. Papers may affirm, criticise or dissolve the category of the Anglosphere; they may be qualitative or quantitative, historical or contemporary, normative or explanatory. What unites them is an interest in how English-speaking democracies govern themselves — and how they shape, and are shaped by — an uncertain international order. By bringing these strands together, the panel aims to connect specialist Anglosphere research with the Congress agenda of rethinking local, national and global democratic governance in the twenty-first century.
