The Politics of Hope in Uncertain Democracies: Nonviolence, Political Agency, and Democratic Transformation

The persistence of political action under conditions of democratic uncertainty raises an important question: what sustains political agency when conventional democratic channels appear increasingly ineffective? Hope, is not merely an expectation of a better future; it can become a political resource through which individuals and movements sustain collective action, imagine alternative futures, and pursue democratic transformation. Across diverse contexts, people continue to protest, organize, build solidarity, and reclaim public spaces despite feeling unheard by political institutions. The objective of the panel is to understand how hope becomes a resource for political agency when conventional avenues of participation have narrowed or shutdown. How do people hold on to hope, and act on it, when elections and institutions no longer seem to respond to them? When does nonviolent action produce meaningful and lasting democratic change, and when does it instead exhaust movements or become absorbed by the systems they seek to transform?
The panel welcomes papers on a wide range of issues connecting hope, nonviolence, political agency, and democratic transformation. These may include youth and student movements, resistance to authoritarian rule, online and diaspora activism, the political claims of marginalized and Indigenous communities, gender and nonviolent activism, digital and diaspora activism, local-turn peacebuilding, art and creative resistance, memory and emotion in post-conflict societies, and everyday forms of citizenship beyond electoral politics. Papers may be theoretical, historical, analytical, or comparative, but should draw on real cases to explore how hope emerges, is sustained, contested, transformed, or lost under different political conditions.
By bringing together cases and perspectives from different regions, the panel seeks to develop a comparative, cross-regional understanding of how hope shapes political agency in uncertain democracies and under what conditions nonviolent action and collective actions can move beyond resistance towards meaningful democratic transformation.