Let them speak out: from the social homogeneity to affective democracy

Introduction What does democracy require to survive authoritarian threats? While Hermann Heller prescribed social homogeneity, John Dewey emphasized communicative infrastructure, and contemporary scholarship highlights institutional checks by citizen mobilization, these frameworks struggle to explain how citizens rapidly recognize threats, forge solidarity across differences, and sustain commitment through uncertainty. This study examines democracy’s affective infrastructure as a critical but overlooked dimension of democratic resilience. Methods We analyze 483 speeches from 38 rallies during the critical initial 41 days of South Korea’s 122-day lightstick protests (2024–25), spanning from President Yoon’s December 3, 2024, martial law declaration to his arrest. Our analysis examines how participants expressed democratic commitments and sustained solidarity through protest discourse. Results Protesters employed distinct emotional repertoires, expressive practices, and material-institutional anchors to recognize authoritarian threats, build solidarity across differences, and sustain mobilization pressure on democratic institutions. These affective practices functioned as critical infrastructure linking individual emotional responses to collective democratic action. Discussion This study demonstrates that democracy’s resilience depends not merely on formal institutional design but on cultivating emotional capacities through which citizens feel, speak, and sustain democracy together. Affective infrastructure bridges micro-level emotional experience and macro-level institutional dynamics, offering new insights into democratic resilience against authoritarian challenge.