*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@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@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