A diverse and dynamic body of scholarship is currently engaged in rigorous debate on the subject of democracy under conditions of global uncertainty, democratic backsliding, authoritarian resilience, and profound geopolitical transformations. Whilst a significant corpus of academic literature has identified and dissected key drivers and manifestations of democratic crises from the perspective of established democracies, comparatively little attention has been devoted to how non-democratic settings contribute to rethinking the meaning, practices, and future of democracy itself.
Notwithstanding the hybridities and the multiple democracies to which we are exposed, democracy and authoritarianism have been still mostly defined as two antithetical poles on the regimes spectrum.
The purpose of this panel is to shift the analytical lens by exploring how experiences from the South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region challenge, enrich, and reframe dominant understandings of the democracy-authoritarianism divide. Rather than treating the absence or the deterioration of liberal democratic institutions as a mere deficit, the panel invites papers which examine the forms and meanings of the word 鈥渄emocracy鈥 in non-democratic contexts. Indeed, authoritarian leaders persist in employing democratic vocabulary to define their rule and policies. Hence the following questions: Why is democratic lexicon employed in non-democratic context? And what for?
The panel welcomes comparative, interdisciplinary, and theoretically informed contributions that address, among others, the following themes:
鈼 Democratic theory beyond liberal institutional frameworks;
鈼 Authoritarian resilience and regime adaptation;
鈼 Social movements, participation, and contentious politics in non-democratic regimes;
鈼 Governance, state capacity, and public policy under authoritarian or hybrid regimes;
鈼 The conceptualisation of democracy as a lexicon and a set of rhetorical figures;
鈼 Comparative perspectives in the SWANA region and beyond;
鈼 Methodological challenges in studying democracy from non-democratic contexts.
We encourage contributions that bridge empirical research and theoretical reflection, challenge Eurocentric assumptions about democratization, and explore how political dynamics in the SWANA region can contribute to broader debates on democratic resilience, governance, and political transformation. Comparative analyses across countries, regions, or historical periods are especially welcome, as are studies adopting qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, or interpretive approaches.
By situating the SWANA region at the core of debates on democracy, this panel aims to foster a richer understanding of contemporary political transformation and to stimulate dialogue across comparative politics, political theory, international relations, and public policy.
