Special issue: The political aesthetics of democratization conflicts

Struggles for democratic change around the world have become highly visible – and highly mediated – events that have moved the site of contestation from the negotiation table to public spaces. As a consequence, these struggles are no longer primarily controlled by political elites but rather by a broad range of participants who have employed new types of communication beyond the spoken word for conveying their demands, including images, sounds, performances and art. This special issue aims to ask ‘questions around beauty, taste, and the formal (most often visual) qualities of texts, media and material objects’ (Aiello and Parry, 2015: 1) in the context of democratization conflicts. We understand democratization conflicts as phases of societal upheaval revolving around demands for – and resistance to – the democratic transformation of a country. Democratization conflicts make visible the friction between the ‘fundamental cultural shift that promotes new values, norms and aspirations’ (Voltmer, 2019: 7) brought about by democratic transitions and the persistence of the world views, or established social and political practices, associated with the previous regime. These conflicts often lead to episodes of violent confrontation between opposing factions or between grassroots movements and security forces, which in turn may escalate into riots, sectarian clashes or even civil war, or may de-escalate and be re-articulated in a non-violent political setting.