Democracy, Media, and Civil Society in Mizoram: An Analytical Study

Lalzuithangi Hringngen; Rosaline Varsangzuali

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i05.87725

Democracy, Media, and Civil Society in Mizoram: An Analytical Study

Author(s)	Prof. Lalzuithangi Hringngen, Dr. Rosaline Varsangzuali
Country	India
Abstract	Scholarship on democratic resilience in the Global South has overwhelmingly privileged national-level analyses, leaving subnational polities—particularly those situated at the geographic and political margins of large federal states—significantly underexamined. This paper addresses that gap by investigating the interplay between media institutions, civil society organizations, and democratic practice in Mizoram, a small state in northeast India that transitioned from armed insurgency to stable electoral democracy following the 1986 Mizo Peace Accord and the attainment of statehood in 1987. Drawing on a qualitative-analytical framework that synthesizes Habermas's (1989) public sphere theory, Putnam's (1993, 2000) social capital approach, Diamond's (1994) functional typology of civil society, and Levitsky and Ziblatt's (2018) institutional guardrails thesis, the paper examines how vernacular print media, emergent digital platforms, and deeply embedded civic associations—most notably the Young Mizo Association, the Mizoram Presbyterian Church Synod, and the Mizoram People's Forum—have collectively shaped democratic consolidation, electoral accountability, and citizen participation in the post-statehood period. Rather than presenting Mizoram as an uncomplicated success story, the paper offers a balanced assessment that identifies three concurrent dynamics: resilience, sustained through dense associational networks, high voter turnout, and peaceful transfers of power; tension, arising from ethnic exclusion of minorities such as the Bru-Reang, social conformism that constrains dissent, and gendered limitations in public participation; and transformation, driven by the rapid shift from print-based to digitally mediated public discourse, which has expanded participatory spaces while simultaneously introducing risks of misinformation and informal surveillance. Situated within the conference track on Information, Media, and Technology, the paper contributes a theoretically grounded, empirically specific case study that illuminates how media ecosystems and civil society infrastructures interact to both sustain and strain democratic governance in ethnically cohesive, post-conflict subnational settings.
Keywords	democratic resilience, civil society, media, public sphere, Mizoram, subnational democracy, social capital, post-conflict governance
Field	Sociology > Politics
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 5, September-October 2026
Published On	2026-09-20
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i05.87725

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Democracy, Media, and Civil Society in Mizoram: An Analytical Study

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