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<b>Call for Papers</b><br>
<div><b><br>
</b>International Workshop <b>"Democratic Resilience Meets
Democratic Backsliding: Recent Advances, New Directions"</b><br>
<br>
</div>
Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany (23 – 24 March 2026)<br>
<br>
<b>Organizers: </b>Mahmoud Farag (TU Darmstadt) and Luca Tomini (ULB
Brussels)<br>
<br>
Democracy is under pressure across the globe. The challenges facing
democracy come from different directions and at different speeds.
From the rise of authoritarian populists to increasing polarization
and from the erosion of citizens’ democratic norms to the declining
appeal of the liberal model of democracy, there is an increasing
doubt whether democracies can remain resilient. There is so much
that has been written on how leaders erode democratic institutions
(Bermeo 2016; Haggard and Kaufman 2021; Wunsch and Blanchard 2023).
There is also a smaller, but growing, literature that aims to
examine how the different actors push back against democratic
backsliding (Tomini et al. 2023; Gamboa 2022; Cleary and Öztürk
2022).<br>
<br>
Democratic resilience has preventive and curative dimensions (Merkel
and Lührmann 2023). Democratic resilience can be preventive by
mitigating the rise of democratic challenges in the first place
(e.g., election of an authoritarian populist) or can be curative by
successfully pacifying those challenges once they happen before
democratic breakdown (e.g., depolarization of society). However,
much less is known about the origins, dynamics and extent of
democratic resilience. Recent research has attempted to
conceptualize democratic resilience (Walz et al. 2025), identify the
complexity of the resilience processes (Riedl et al. 2025) or
measure democratic resilience worldwide (Croissant and Lott 2025).
Studies examining democratic resilience have returned mixed results.
While some scholars argue that democracies only break down under
extreme conditions (Weyland 2024), other studies have shown that
democracies are much more likely to be dismantled after
autocratization onset (Maerz et al. 2024).<br>
<br>
<b>Core Questions</b><br>
<br>
This raises a number of conceptual and empirical questions that the
workshop aims to address. The questions include, but are not limited
to, the following:<br>
<br>
• Does the emergence of fewer challenges (and crises) indicate,
by default, more democratic resilience or does it mean that those
systems have not yet been tested?<br>
• How do the various actors frame (or justify) their efforts in
preempting or responding to democratic challenges, and how does such
framing affect their success or failure?<br>
• How does resisting the challenges facing democracy shape the
political system’s capacity to withstand future challenges and
crises?<br>
• Are democracies that bounce back to democracy (after breakdown)
more or less resilient to future challenges?<br>
• How to measure the degree of democratic resilience for
mixed-record political systems that successfully contain some
challenges but not others?<br>
• Is it possible to forecast future democratic resilience by
looking at or learning from the past?<br>
<br>
<b>Relevant Papers<br>
<br>
</b>Together, we would like to examine those questions at the
workshop. We define democracy more broadly to include both
established and new liberal and electoral democracies. The workshop
will offer a venue for junior and senior scholars to discuss:<br>
<br>
• Papers using quantitative and qualitative methods to address
the core questions examined by the workshop.<br>
• Papers examining the questions from inter- or intra-regional
perspectives.<br>
• Papers that offer important insights using less studied or
deviant cases.<br>
• Papers linking the domestic and international dimensions in
studying democratic resilience.<br>
• Papers accounting for contextual differences among the variety
of cases.<br>
• Papers that look at the historical legacies of the preventive
and curative dimensions of democratic resilience.<br>
• Papers offering theoretical contributions on conceptualizing
democratic resilience.<br>
<br>
<b>Funding</b><br>
<br>
Participation in the workshop is free of charge. Thanks to a
workshop grant by the Körber Foundation in Germany, we can cover
travel expenses and accommodation (up to 400 EUR max per
participant).<br>
<br>
<b>Submission of Abstracts</b><br>
<br>
Please send your paper abstracts (250 words max) along with a short
bio to: <a href="mailto:mahmoud.farag@tu-darmstadt.de"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">mahmoud.farag@tu-darmstadt.de</a>.<b><br>
<br>
Deadline for submissions: 14 December 2025</b>. Notifications on
acceptance will be circulated a week later.<br>
<br>
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Dr. Mahmoud
Farag (TU Darmstadt) at: <a
href="mailto:mahmoud.farag@tu-darmstadt.de"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">mahmoud.farag@tu-darmstadt.de</a>.<br>
<br>
We look forward to meeting you in Darmstadt!<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Dr. Mahmoud Farag
Postdoctoral Researcher
Institute of Political Science
TU Darmstadt
Residenzschloss 1 (S3|12)
64283 Darmstadt, Germany
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.mahmoudfarag.com">www.mahmoudfarag.com</a></pre>
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