Call for Papers for a Special Collection in the journal Global Perspectives

Guest editors: Stas Gorelik and Henrike Rudolph

 

 

The Politics of (Dis)Engagement: Exploring Citizens’ Passivity and Activation in Non-Democratic Contexts

 

In the dominant political science literature, democracies are commonly understood to depend on high levels of citizen engagement. In contrast, authoritarian and, to some extent, hybrid regimes are typically depicted as seeking to intimidate citizens into a state of passive apathy. Recent research, however, challenges this dichotomy by highlighting the role of state-mobilized movements as a form of “ruling by other means” (Ekiert, Perry, and Yan 2020). Despite growing interest in the mobilizational dimension of authoritarian rule, its counterpart—passivity—remains underexplored. This special collection aims to map the diverse forms of political passivity, ranging from behavioral and cognitive disengagement to phenomena such as “hapathy” and resignation. Our goal is to understand how authoritarian governments interpret and respond to various manifestations of passivity: when is it seen as stabilizing, and when is it perceived as subversive or threatening to regime legitimacy? Moreover, the collection investigates how mobilizational states, such as China, and more personalist autocracies like Russia or Venezuela, attempt to counteract passivity without provoking uncontrolled collective action. Through what organizational, symbolic, and communicative means do regimes construct the appearance of an “active” citizenry? How and why are these performances of activity communicated to both mass publics and elite audiences? Finally, we consider how citizens themselves develop repertoires of passivity, as exemplified by China’s “lying flat” movement and similar strategies of disengagement elsewhere.

We seek to explore these and other questions related to political passivity by bringing together case studies on various world regions and different types of authoritarian and hybrid regimes. We invite contributions that address topics such as:

• Causes, forms, and consequences of political passivity under non-democratic rule.
• Use of mass mobilization and citizen-activation tactics in authoritarian and hybrid regimes: causes, organizational forms, and effects on public opinion.
• Political passivity and the role of gender, class, education, etc.
• Political passivity and mass mobilization in times of war and peace.
• Historical legacies in current forms of passivity and mobilizational tactics.
• State discourses on passivity and ideological claims.

 

Journal: Global Perspectives (Special Collection), University of California Press

 

Please submit an abstract of up to 300 words as well as a title and a short personal biography (about 150 words) by December 31, 2025.