Contesting Autocratisation
Actors and Institutions of Democratic Resistance in a Global Perspective
Published on 1. December 2025
238 pages
978-1-040-80880-1 (ISBN)
Description
While authoritarianism continues to gain ground globally, this book offers a global and nuanced perspective into how, when, and where autocratisation may be contested and sometimes reversed. Drawing on rich case studies from across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Southeastern Europe, the chapters in this book map the actors and institutions of resistance, ranging from political parties and bureaucrats to social movements and transnational alliances. Rather than offering a binary view of success or failure of opposition and resistance, this book adopts a dynamic, process-driven approach, considering the conditions under which resistance emerges, adapts, and persists even in shrinking civic and political spaces.
Whether through informal bureaucratic defiance, legal mobilisation, elite rivalries, transnational alliances, strategic litigation, or protest coalitions, these strategies reveal the agency of opposition actors navigating complex and often hostile terrains. These diverse experiences force us to rethink resistance as an ongoing, collective effort rather than a single moment of reversal.
This volume spans multiple disciplines, including political science, sociology, international relations, and legal studies, making it essential reading for students, scholars, and policymakers to understand how resistance emerges, evolves, and endures in the face of authoritarian resurgence.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.
Whether through informal bureaucratic defiance, legal mobilisation, elite rivalries, transnational alliances, strategic litigation, or protest coalitions, these strategies reveal the agency of opposition actors navigating complex and often hostile terrains. These diverse experiences force us to rethink resistance as an ongoing, collective effort rather than a single moment of reversal.
This volume spans multiple disciplines, including political science, sociology, international relations, and legal studies, making it essential reading for students, scholars, and policymakers to understand how resistance emerges, evolves, and endures in the face of authoritarian resurgence.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
File size
4,54 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-040-80880-1 (9781040808801)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Bilge Yabanci | Karabekir Akkoyunlu | Kerem OEktem
Contesting Autocratisation
Actors and Institutions of Democratic Resistance in a Global Perspective
Book
approx. 12/2025
1st Edition
Routledge
€207.60
Not yet published
Persons
Bilge Yabanci is a Faculty member at the University of Deusto's Faculty of Social and Human Sciences in Bilbao, Spain, where she also holds the positions of Ikerbasque Research Fellow and Ramon y Cajal Fellow. She is the author of Civil Society and Autocratisation: Co-optation, Repression, and Contestation in Turkey (Edinburgh University Press, 2025). Her research has been featured in academic journals, including Government and Opposition, Democratization, Journal of Civil Society, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Politics, Religion & Ideology, and Ethnopolitics, among others.
Karabekir Akkoyunlu is Research Associate at the Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS University of London, and Visiting Professor at the Department of Political Science, Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). His research focuses on democratisation, autocratisation and militarisation in the Global South, with a particular interest in Turkey, Iran and Brazil. His recent publications include Guardianship and Democracy in Iran and Turkey: Tutelary Consolidation, Popular Contestation (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) and 'Blood Gambit: how autocratizing populists fuel ethnic conflict to reverse election setbacks - evidence from Turkey and Israel' (Democratization, 2024, with Yusuf Sarfati).
Kerem OEktem is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at Ca' Foscari University of Venice and a Senior Research Associate at the Orient-Institut Istanbul. His research focuses on the politics and international relations of Turkey, with particular emphasis on diaspora, minority, and citizenship policies. He co-edited the volume Turkish Jews and their Diasporas: Entanglements and Separations (Palgrave Macmillan,
2022) with Ipek Yosmaoglu (Northwestern University). Currently, he is working on two interconnected research projects: one explores the role of cultural policies in reshaping Turkish citizenship discourses, while the other examines the exercise of these discourses in the context of neo-imperial power projections in the Balkans. Kerem OEktem also serves as Chair of the Consortium for European Studies on Turkey (CEST) and sits on the editorial boards of several leading journals in the field of Turkish Studies.
Karabekir Akkoyunlu is Research Associate at the Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS University of London, and Visiting Professor at the Department of Political Science, Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). His research focuses on democratisation, autocratisation and militarisation in the Global South, with a particular interest in Turkey, Iran and Brazil. His recent publications include Guardianship and Democracy in Iran and Turkey: Tutelary Consolidation, Popular Contestation (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) and 'Blood Gambit: how autocratizing populists fuel ethnic conflict to reverse election setbacks - evidence from Turkey and Israel' (Democratization, 2024, with Yusuf Sarfati).
Kerem OEktem is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at Ca' Foscari University of Venice and a Senior Research Associate at the Orient-Institut Istanbul. His research focuses on the politics and international relations of Turkey, with particular emphasis on diaspora, minority, and citizenship policies. He co-edited the volume Turkish Jews and their Diasporas: Entanglements and Separations (Palgrave Macmillan,
2022) with Ipek Yosmaoglu (Northwestern University). Currently, he is working on two interconnected research projects: one explores the role of cultural policies in reshaping Turkish citizenship discourses, while the other examines the exercise of these discourses in the context of neo-imperial power projections in the Balkans. Kerem OEktem also serves as Chair of the Consortium for European Studies on Turkey (CEST) and sits on the editorial boards of several leading journals in the field of Turkish Studies.
Content
Introduction: Contesting autocratisation: actors and institutions of democratic resistance in a global perspective 1. Paperwork as statecraft: documents, politics, and bureaucratic agency in street-level organisations 2. Legalised resistance to autocratisation in common law Africa 3. The limits of autocratisation in Indonesia: power dispersal and elite competition in a compromised democracy 4. Resistance under confinement: resilience of protests and their limits in authoritarian Turkey 5. Protests for change: mass protests against competitive authoritarian regimes in the Western Balkans 6. Safeguarding democracy from the outside in: transnational democratic networks against autocratisation in contemporary Brazil 7. Formal yet ineffective opposition coordination under competitive authoritarianism: Nation Alliance in Turkey 8. The role of the opposition in autocratisation: the case of Turkey 9. What role do social accountability actors play in resisting media capture in sub-Saharan Africa? Evidence from Ghana 10. Social movements against Hindutva: analysing their impact on the Indian state's support for cow protection vigilantism
