The Centre for South Asian Democracy investigates the politics and practices of popular democracy in South Asia, a region that is home to one fourth of the world’s population. We aim to understand dynamics that are central to broader debates on democracy on a global scale. This includes the potential of grassroots political formations for rethinking democratic practices from the bottom up; the role of investigative journalism and independent media in articulating critiques of power; and the institutional and cultural factors that enable and sustain a vibrant democracy. It also concerns the rise of populism and strongmen leaders, and of far-right and religious nationalisms, as well as the effects of concentrated media ownership and corporate interference in political processes. And finally, we aim to examine the factors that work to either entrench or unravel autocratic regimes.
The centre works to consolidate and develop the University of Oslo’s research on these topics in the South Asian context. We embrace committed scholarship in a dual sense: committed to scholarly standards and rigour, but also dedicated to producing and communicating scholarship with a socio-political commitment.
