Asian democracy might be facing the ultimate storm. Illiberalism has resurged and authoritarianism is on the rise. Covid-19 has made things worse, as leaders used the pandemic to bolster their autocratic reign in the cloak of securing public health. Some Asian countries, like India, face problems from within, while others face China. However, both refrained from condemning Russia too harshly for its Ukrainian invasion.In this episode of ERCAS’s Democracy Promotion after Afghanistan series, Christophe Jaffrelot, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for International Studies and Research at Sciences Po, and Daniela Stockmann, Professor of Digital Governance at the Hertie School, discussed the future of democracy in Asia. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Professor of Democracy Studies at the Hertie School, moderated the conversation.
Watch the recording on YouTube.
Panelists
Jaffrelot Christophe Christophe Jaffrelot is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for International Studies and Research (CERI) at Sciences Po in Paris, to which he served both as director and deputy director. He is also a nonresident scholar in the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and furthermore teaches at the King’s India Institute since 2012. He has been visiting Professor at Columbia University, Princeton University, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University and Montreal University. His research focuses on theories of nationalism and democracy, mobilization of the lower castes and Dalits (ex-untouchables) in India, the Hindu nationalist movement, and ethnic conflicts in Pakistan. Jaffrelot has authored several books on these topics, including Religion, Caste, and Politics in India. In 2014, he received the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism for his commentary/interpretative writing. Jaffrelot holds a Ph.D. in political science from Sciences Po.
Daniela Stockmann is Professor of Digital Governance at the Hertie School. Her current research focuses on the challenge of how to tackle harmful content spreading via social media platforms, comparing policy approaches in the United States, China, and Europe. Her most recent project, funded by a Starting Grant of the European Research Council, explores the impact of the technological design of social media platforms on user behaviour regarding politics in China. She holds degrees from the University of Rochester, the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and a PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2007). Before joining the Hertie School faculty, she was Associate Professor of Political Science at Leiden University. Her book Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China (Cambridge University Press, 2013) received the 2015 Goldsmith Book Prize awarded by the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy. Beyond her academic work, she has served as advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands and to German President Steinmeier during his 2018 visit to China.
This event is part of the ERCAS series Democracy Promotion after Afghanistan.
