[DemocracyNet.eu-list] Call for Papers: Workshop "Democratic Resilience Meets Democratic Backsliding" | 23 – 24 March 2026

[Mahmoud Farag]

*Call for Papers*
*
*International Workshop *"Democratic Resilience Meets Democratic 
Backsliding: Recent Advances, New Directions"*

Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany (23 – 24 March 2026)

*Organizers: *Mahmoud Farag (TU Darmstadt) and Luca Tomini (ULB Brussels)

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).

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).

*Core Questions*

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:

•    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?
•    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?
•    How does resisting the challenges facing democracy shape the 
political system’s capacity to withstand future challenges and crises?
•    Are democracies that bounce back to democracy (after breakdown) 
more or less resilient to future challenges?
•    How to measure the degree of democratic resilience for mixed-record 
political systems that successfully contain some challenges but not others?
•    Is it possible to forecast future democratic resilience by looking 
at or learning from the past?

*Relevant Papers

*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:

•    Papers using quantitative and qualitative methods to address the 
core questions examined by the workshop.
•    Papers examining the questions from inter- or intra-regional 
perspectives.
•    Papers that offer important insights using less studied or deviant 
cases.
•    Papers linking the domestic and international dimensions in 
studying democratic resilience.
•    Papers accounting for contextual differences among the variety of 
cases.
•    Papers that look at the historical legacies of the preventive and 
curative dimensions of democratic resilience.
•    Papers offering theoretical contributions on conceptualizing 
democratic resilience.

*Funding*

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).

*Submission of Abstracts*

Please send your paper abstracts (250 words max) along with a short bio 
to: mahmoud.farag at tu-darmstadt.de.*

Deadline for submissions: 14 December 2025*. Notifications on acceptance 
will be circulated a week later.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Dr. Mahmoud Farag 
(TU Darmstadt) at: mahmoud.farag at tu-darmstadt.de.

We look forward to meeting you in Darmstadt!

-- 
Dr. Mahmoud Farag

Postdoctoral Researcher
Institute of Political Science
TU Darmstadt
Residenzschloss 1 (S3|12)
64283 Darmstadt, Germany
www.mahmoudfarag.com
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