Antonin Lacelle-Webster
Jean-Paul Gagnon’s ambitious project expands our democratic imaginaries. While inspiring, Antonin Lacelle-Webster argues that making sense of democracy requires more than a lexicon. Resisting the prevailing sense of disrepair in today’s democratic politics asks us to pay more attention to democracy's appropriation, design, and normative value Read more
Salah Ben Hammou
Researchers of authoritarian politics and civil-military relations have long examined military rule. However, our understanding of civilian participation in military regimes remains limited and requires greater analytical attention, argues Salah Ben Hammou. Amid last year’s coup resurgence, researchers must move to appreciate the subtle but salient differences among military dictatorships Read more
Hager Ali
The study of regime types, Hager Ali argues, is imbalanced. Theories and concepts of democracy have received attention for decades. But amid the resurgence of autocracies, scholars of authoritarianism still do not have the luxury of nuanced typologies to dissect the broad spectrum of non-democratic regimes Read more
Leonardo Fiorespino
Leonardo Fiorespino finds Jean-Paul Gagnon’s proposed lexicon of democracy wanting in its base assumptions around knowledge and arbitrariness. Moreover, he wonders, can we really trust 'democracy's words'? Read more
Pablo Ouziel
Today, democratic imaginaries are diluted while parochial understandings of democracy are presented as universal. Such a state of affairs, argues Pablo Ouziel, calls for a deeply diverse speaking-with multilogue amongst democratic traditions Read more
Viktor Orri Valgarðsson
Viktor Valgarðsson argues that words are not enough to understand the concept of democracy. 'Democracy' denotes an important ideal that we must not sacrifice on a mountain of words. Read more
Friedel Marquardt
Jean-Paul Gagnon’s endeavour has great potential for bringing unknown or ignored definitions to the fore. However, Friedel Marquardt argues, we hinder understanding and cut its empowering potential short if the communities these definitions are about do not get a chance to speak about their democracies Read more
Rongxin Li
Unlike Western nations, China is reintroducing restrictions to counter the latest wave of Covid-19. Rongxin Li explains China's pandemic policy and its apparent acceptance by the Chinese people in the context of authoritarian resilience Read more
