Our people

Associate Professor Mark Chou

National School of Arts and Humanities

Areas of expertise: democratic politics; local government; cultural politics.

Email: Mark.Chou@acu.edu.au

Location:  ACU Melbourne Campus

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-5142-2172

Mark is an Associate Professor of Politics in the National School of Arts and Humanities. He joined ACU in early 2013 from the University of Melbourne where he had been a McKenzie Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences. Trained as a political scientist and lawyer, Mark received his BA (Hons) and LLB (Hons) from the Australian National University. His PhD in Political Science and International Relations was awarded by the University of Queensland in 2010. 

Mark is the author of numerous books, including Theorising Democide: Why and How Democracies Fail (Palgrave), Democracy Against Itself: Sustaining an Unsustainable Idea (Edinburgh), Young People, Citizenship and Political Participation: Combatting Civic Deficit? (Rowman & Littlefield), and Political Meritocracy and Populism: Cure or Curse? (Routledge).

His latest book with Rachel Busbridge, How Local Governments Govern Culture War Conflicts, is out with Cambridge UP.

He was co-founder of the international journal, Democratic Theory: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and is current co-editor of Palgrave's Theories, Concepts and Practices of Democracy series. 

Select publications

Books

• Chou, Mark and Rachel Busbridge,How Local Governments Govern Culture War Conflicts(Cambridge University Press).
• Chou, Mark, Benjamin Moffitt, and Octavia Bryant, Political Meritocracy and Populism: Cure or Curse?(Abingdon: Routledge, 2019).
• Chou, Mark, Jean-Paul Gagnon, Catherine Hartung, and Lesley Pruitt, Young People, Citizenship and Political Participation: Combatting Civic Deficit?(London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017).
• Chou, Mark, Democracy Against Itself: Sustaining an Unsustainable Idea(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014).
• Chou, Mark, Theorising Democide: Why and How Democracies Fail (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

 Journal Articles

• Busbridge, Rachel and Mark Chou, "Culture Wars and City Politics, Revisited: Local Councils and the Australia Day Controversy," Urban Affairs Review(forthcoming 2020).
• Chou, Mark, "Australian Local Governments and Climate Emergency Declarations: Reviewing Local Government Practice," Australian Journal of Public Administration(forthcoming 2020).
• Chou, Mark, "Populism and Localism: A New Research Agenda," Democratization(Vol.27, No.6, 2020). 
• Chou, Mark and Rachel Busbridge, "Culture Wars, Local Government, and the Australia Day Controversy: Insights from Urban Politics Research," Urban Policy and Research (Vol.37, No.3, 2019).
• Chou, Mark, "Different Levels of Government, Different Levels of Political Competence?," PS: Political Science and Politics(Vol.52, No.2, 2019).
• Chou, Mark, "Combatting Voter Ignorance: A Vertical Model of Epistocratic Voting," Policy Studies(Vol.38, No.6, 2017).
• Chou, Mark, Chengxin Pan and Avery Poole, "The Threat of Autocracy Diffusion in Consolidated Democracies? The Case of China, Singapore and Australia," Contemporary Politics(Vol.23, No.2, 2017).
• Chou, Mark, "Have the Black Knights Arisen? China's and Russia's Support of Autocratic Regimes," Democratization(Vo.24, No.1, 2017).
• Chou, Mark, Roland Bleiker and Nilanjana Premaratna, "Elections as Theater," PS: Political Science and Politics(Vol.49, No.1, 2016).
• Chou, Mark, "The Rise of China and the Decline of Democracy in Australia?," Australian Journal of International Affairs(Vol.69, No.6, 2015).
• Chou, Mark, "Democracy's Story ...Two Hundred and Fifty Years On," Australian Journal of Political Science(Vol.50, No.2, 2015).
• Chou, Mark. "Projections of China's Normative Soft Power," Australian Journal of International Affairs(Vol.69, No.1, 2015).
• Chou, Mark, "From Crisis to Crisis: Democracy, Crisis and the Occupy Movement," Political Studies Review(Vol.13, No.1, 2015).