Digital Disruption and Generational Power Shift: A Comparative Study of Zen Z Political Movements and Democratic Transformation in South Asia

Abstract

South Asia region is facing a significant change in terms of political participation owing to technological advancement in the digital era, decline in institutional trust and rising digitally savvy Generation Z political activists. Digital spaces form the most frequent venues for political communication, collective actions and legitimation in the context of hybrid democracies. Current studies regarding digital activism, youth participation, and democratic transformation have been somewhat separate from one another. The existing research fails to give a comprehensive understanding of the ways through which youth mobilization and algorithmic activism transforms the political power relations and democratic legitimacy in South Asian hybrid regimes. The present studies form a comparative theoretical framework in order to examine the process of how digital disruption results in the change in generational power and institution in South Asia. The study seeks to provide an explanation for digitally mediated political change that goes beyond the traditional focus on protest activism. This paper offers Digital Generational Disruption Theory (DGDT) that integrates network society theory, digital contentious politics, generational political sociology and platform governance studies. Methodologically, the study employs abductive theory-building and comparative conceptual synthesis grounded in critical realist ontology and constructivist epistemology. Analytical interpretation is derived from peer-reviewed interdisciplinary literature and comparative South Asian political dynamics. The findings suggest that Zen Z movements function as continuous networked political systems operating through algorithmically mediated mobilization. These developments have created legitimacy volatility, institutional stress and hybrid, adaptive democratic forms across Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. This book offers an innovative theoretical framework linking digital infrastructures to youth identity to processes of democratic change and policy prescriptions to adaptive governance, institutional reform and youth inclusion in a digital democratic framework in weak states.