Federal Theories and Practices Dynamics of Federalism and Democracy in South and Southeast Asia

Vishnu Kumari Tandon is a Governance and Citizen Engagement Consultant at the World Bank. Her research focuses on federalism and participatory governance, and she is the author of Nepal’s Federalism and the Pursuit of Deliberative Democracy (2025). She has over a decade of policy and research experience internationally.

Laure Gillot-Assayag is an associate researcher at EHESS (France) and Democratic Vistas postdoctoral scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities (Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Germany). A specialist in political theory and intellectual history, she studies compromise in democracy and conducted research on federalism at McGill and UC Berkeley.

Christine Forster is a Professor in the Law and Justice Faculty, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Christine’s research includes federalism and advancing gender equality, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, gender-based violence and sex discrimination. She has published widely in these areas.