It is often said that democracy is in retreat around the world, and there is no shortage of data to make that case: electoral quality has been on the decline for years across the globe, while polls are increasingly followed by protests, legal challenges, and violence. But a global trend can obscure significant national variation, and a focus on past trajectories can blind us to the reality of sudden, seemingly unexpected changes in a country’s politics.
We can take the case of South Asia, where years of democratic stagnation in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka were met with uprisings where the public demanded major reforms, resulting in the ousting of long-serving Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the former and a decisive victory for a leftist party in the latter in 2024. What’s more, sharp changes in national trajectories such as these attest to the value of the adage that past performance does not guarantee future results, and that understanding the development of inherently complex systems requires us to add to our methodological toolbox.
It is this challenge that has led International IDEA to adopt foresight and futures methodologies, a set of practices that in an “organized, systematic way of looking beyond the expected to engage with uncertainty and complexity.” Our aim is to ask questions like: what could democracy in South Asia look like in 2040? What can government reformers do to reverse the trend of slow decline? How should civil society activists and citizens engage with each other to revitalize civic life? Which global or regional forces are likely to constrain democratic expansion and where are the spaces for action? What can be done to ensure that we will be able to say in 15 years that South Asia is more democratic than it is today?
For answers, International IDEA and the Centre for Policy Alternatives brought together a multidisciplinary group of experts from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka for a forum held in Colombo. The outcome of these discussions was published in a recent report, “Imagining Democratic Futures.” The purpose of using foresight is to help us navigate between these various extremes, to find the most desirable long-term outcomes, and to help us better understand what can be done today to move towards the best while avoiding the worst.
We then used four scenario archetypes to imagine how collective responses to major trends shaping South Asia today – from climate change and migration to big tech and artificial intelligence – could lead to radically different outcomes for the region. Here we will examine only two of those scenarios, in order to present them in the requisite level of detail: a “collapse” into quarrelling, oppressive, and environmentally degraded states, and a “transformation” into vibrant, inclusive democracies capable of coping with climate-related and geopolitical challenges.
Embracing Positive and Negative Outlooks
In the “transformation” scenario, democratic innovation thrives through deliberative democracy focused on citizen well-being and environmental health. The region evolves into a “solarpunk society” where equality and sustainability take precedence over capitalist values and help prevent ecological collapse. The former values are reflected in deliberative processes and forms of political organization, such as citizen assemblies, juries, and panels, which now enable decision-making that is both effective and enjoys wide public legitimacy.
In this scenario, the road to transformation began in 2026, when rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the West fueled reverse migration of South Asian youth. Governments took advantage of this trend by providing returning young people with financial resources and promoting opportunities for social advancement. Youth-led ethical tech start-ups and expanded civic space enhanced grassroots governance while governments cultivated integrated urban-rural spaces known as “civillages.” By 2040, a handful of South Asian civillages are listed as the world’s top liveable cities in the Global Liveability Index, sparking global discussions around inclusive and ecologically centered models of development anchored in bottom-up approaches to government.
By contrast, a “decline” scenario depicts one in which today’s challenges are unmet and a breakdown in democratic and social structures has taken place. A failure to find a broad-based local response to climate change means many low-lying coastal regions are now either underwater, or with soil too salinized to support agriculture. Inhospitable conditions have emptied the countryside and government make-work schemes constitute a significant proportion of all employment, resulting in entrenched corruption and patrimonialism. Electoral participation is up significantly from the 2020s, but voting is seen more as a means of securing the political patronage of those who rule than an expression of the will of the people.
The process of getting to this state was facilitated by a steady shrinking of space for civil society, the transformation of local tech hubs into surveillance capitalist enterprises, and geopolitical pressures that undermined regional cooperation and fueled official suspicions of ethnic and religious minorities. However, such a scenario is not apocalyptic: even futuristic surveillance states are not all-powerful, and the end of this scenario envisions new, more localized forms of collective self-government springing up between the cracks.
The “transformation” scenario, although not a utopia, may offer the most desirable future for many – despite the other scenarios containing valuable lessons. For example: South Asia is not driving climate change but will suffer from it. How can its democratic institutions be reformed or engineered to best mitigate its harms and move the region towards an equitable green transition? Does doing so require a reimagining of the very understanding of democracy?
Is it better to revitalize civic life by building new institutions, such as politically empowered people’s assemblies, or to focus on revamping those that are already in place? How can the understanding of elections as critical infrastructure gain greater currency? What forms of multidisciplinary international engagement can be developed to protect elections in a time of climate uncertainty?
These are some of the issues we take up in our recent report, and we look forward to others engaging with foresight work as well. By envisioning and evaluating potential futures, governments and institutions across the region can enhance their strategic planning, resulting in more informed decision-making that fosters resilience and effectively addresses unforeseen challenges.
Parts of this article are derived from International IDEA’s report “Imagining Democratic: South Asia Foresight Report 2025,” published in February 2025.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the institutional position of International IDEA, its Board of Advisers or its Council of Member States.