Discursive Regimes of Democratic Decline: Religio-Ethnonationalism and the Production of Authoritarian Power (Conflict, Culture, Communication)

This edited collection brings together esteemed international scholars to examine how religio-ethnonationalist power is produced, normalized, and resisted through discourse.Rather than treating democratic decline as a purely institutional or electoral phenomenon, the book foregrounds communicative processes through which exclusionary identities, historical narratives, moral claims, and affective appeals are mobilized to legitimate authoritarian power.As the first book in communication studies to systematically theorize religio-ethnonationalism as a central analytic framework, Democratic Decline advances understanding of how religion, nationalism, and media power intersect in struggles over democracy.Contributors from Ghana, Great Britain, India, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, North Macedonia, and the U.S. analyze how discourse functions simultaneously as a mechanism of domination and a site of contestation, shaping memory, identity, citizenship, and political belonging through processes of d