In 2025, democracy occupies a state of superposition—at once vibrant and eroding, plural and polarized, legal and lawless. Panel 7 exposed this paradox with precision: democracy is not a fixed ideal but a shifting terrain, where power is contested through law, ritual, narrative, and strategy. Whether it survives or collapses depends on how it is interpreted, performed, and defended. The Schrödinger’s box is cracked open, but its contents are not predetermined. As Robert Person warned, authoritarian actors exploit democratic vulnerabilities; as Max Steuer and Justin Attard showed, those vulnerabilities also reveal possibilities for renewal. We are not neutral observers—we are agents within the experiment. Democracy’s future hinges on our will to intervene.
Reported by ECPS Staff
Panel 7 of the ECPS Conference 2025, held at the University of Oxford’s St Cross College, convened under the theme “‘The People’ in Schrödinger’s Box: Democracy Alive and Dead.” As part of the broader conference titled “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches (July 1–3, 2025), this panel examined the paradoxical condition of democracy in our time—simultaneously enduring and unraveling, vibrant and hollow.
Skillfully co-chaired by Dr. Ming-Sung Kuo (Reader in Law, University of Warwick School of Law) and Dr. Bruno Godefroy (Associate Professor in Law and German, University of Tours, France), the session set out to interrogate how democratic systems today oscillate between vitality and decay, depending on how they are enacted, contested, or undermined. The Schrödinger’s box metaphor provided a conceptual anchor for discussions that unfolded across disciplines, cases, and levels of analysis—from legal theory to ethnographic inquiry to geopolitical grand strategy.
Dr. Max Steuer (Comenius University) opened the session with his presentation “The Matrix of ‘Legal Populism’: Democracy and (Reducing) Domination.” Dr. Steuer introduced a four-quadrant typology for understanding how populism interacts with conceptions of law—either as neutral instruments or aspirational forces—and illustrated its application through empirical material from Slovakia. His matrix illuminated how law may serve either as a shield for pluralism or a tool for authoritarian entrenchment, depending on who wields it and for what purpose.
Next, Justin Attard (University of Malta) presented “Lived Democracy in Small Island States: Sociopolitical Dynamics of Governance, Power, and Participation in Malta and Singapore.” Attard shifted the focus from institutional architecture to embodied democratic practice. In small island states where political proximity is inescapable, democratic participation becomes highly visible, affective, and often entangled in informal networks. Through the metaphor of democracy in superposition, Attard argued that democracy in such settings only becomes real when performed—through gestures, rituals, resistance, or silence.
Finally, Professor Robert Person (United States Military Academy) delivered a geopolitically urgent paper titled “Russia’s War on Democracy.” Positioning democracy itself as a target of Russian grand strategy, Professor Person detailed how asymmetric tactics—from disinformation and cyberwarfare to the cultivation of populist movements—form a central part of the Kremlin’s effort to weaken democratic resilience globally. His presentation reframed the defense of democracy as a strategic imperative in an increasingly contested international order.
Collectively, Panel 7 brought together three distinct yet converging perspectives on democracy’s condition in 2025. Whether examined through the legal system, the intimacy of everyday political life, or the ambitions of autocratic powers, democracy appeared both resilient and vulnerable—very much alive and under threat. As the co-chairs emphasized in their concluding reflections, this session not only invited critical observation but also urged active engagement with the layered realities of democratic life in an age of disruption.
