What are we inviting below?

Short and standalone research notes, called ‘dispatches from the field’ (they undergo the same peer-review process as a standard research article), of around 3,500 words not including references. We welcome your diagnoses, illuminations, responses, accounts, etc., regarding democracy under challenge - even attack - by the authoritarianisms around you.

To submit your dispatch, please select Research Note when you get to that stage in the ScholarOne portal.

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Within and in confluence with these movements are emboldened waves of misogyny, misinformation, anti-intellectualism, discrimination, reactionism and the adoration of billionaires. These movements have succeeded in undermining media and academies as sites of knowledge-production and accountability.

They have begun undoing hard-fought gains for civil rights. Variously labelled as a time of the oligarchs, of democratic decline (e.g. Krastev, 2018), neofeudalism (Dean 2025), tyranny (Snyder 2017), a third wave of autocratization (Lührmann and Lindberg 2019), or aspirational fascism (Connolly 2017; Sakurai, 2022), this moment has raised doubts about the very future of democracy.

Among the questions this open access and no processing charge, peer reviewed, inquiry in Democratic Theory seeks to address are: 

·      How and why have the concepts of democracy lost their popular appeal? 

·      Which concepts of democracy have gained appeal, why, where and to what end?

·      How and why are the familiar scripts of democratic resistance falling short, in some instances fuelling right wing dynamics and rhetoric, and how might they need to be revised? 

·      What needs to be said right now about democracy? Has ‘the archive’ really failed or is this a case of practices straying too far from the commitments required by various, and long-standing, theories of democracy?

·      What visionary paths are emerging? 

·      In what ways can the existing discourses and practices of democracy serve us in making sense of our quickly shifting context and/or in what ways are they inadequate to the task?

·      What resources for thinking and practice should we draw on at this time?

·      Do we need to go over that which destroys democracy or is this just overkill? In other words, are we confident that our target audience (presumably the Anthropos) knows this already and, at least for some among them, just don’t or can’t care? If so, where does that leave us?

·      Is this a time of across-the-board bad news for democracy or are there more nuanced stories in the mix, of good times and wins, or progress, for different sorts of democratic ideation and/or practice?

* Addressing different questions along these veins is most welcome.

With the goal of grasping how democratic norms, organizations, and institutions are newly under attack – so too their capacities for renewal and transformation – we invite short and original dispatches from the field that detail the dynamics of now (think shorter than usual, thoroughly peer-reviewed, research notes). What do you sense around you? How, why, and who of these developments as they are unfolding in real time are concerning you? 

Authors are encouraged to identify what is unique to their context, or selected view, and what may change in our descriptions of authoritarian, fascist, and anti-democratic or pro-oligarchic politics, as well as our responses to them. 

We are eager to publish dispatches that reflect the diversity and reach of this emerging moment across each continent and major global region, including from scholars who have never submitted to the journal before. 

It is okay if you do not identify as a democratic theorist: that’s long been an exclusionary title. If you think deeply about democracy, irrespective of your methods, habitual literature, or working use of the term, your research insight is welcome among us. We will read your submission.

This call for your dispatches from the field is for Democratic Theory’s first volume with Cambridge University Press, which will be published open access from 2026. 

We warmly solicit contributions to the theme of “democracy in a time of rising authoritarianisms” that are shorter (aim for 3500 words, excluding references) than standard research notes with the aim of illuminating what is happening on the ground now.

Aim for active, bright, sentences, and use examples that you’ve lived – that you are familiar with. Be evidence-led, in the third party vetted scientific way, where you can. Where you can’t, exemplify the very best of bona fide autoethnographic practice. Lean into the most relevant, and very best, of our field’s broad literature.

Dispatches will be read, reviewed, and published online first on a rolling basis. Expect your dispatch to be read by 3 different editors (managing editor at submission, two assigned editors after desk clearance) and likely some editorial tennis prior to double-anonymous peer-review.

Published papers will be collated at the end of the year into Democratic Theory’s fourth issue under the section heading “Dispatches from the Field”. 

We intend to maintain this style of research note, and thematic focus, for the foreseeable future.

Please note that articles in response to what may be published are welcome. Comments of a shorter, and more conversational, nature will be considered for the journal’s substack.

Questions?

Please send your queries to jean-paul.gagnon@canberra.edu.au (managing editor).