Mark is an Associate Professor in the Department of Policy and Governance at the Crawford School of Public Policy. He joined the ANU in early 2024 from the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, where he had been an Associate Professor of Politics and a former Head of the National School of Arts, overseeing the School of Arts in Victoria. Prior to ACU, Mark was a McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Melbourne from 2011 to 2013. Trained as a political scientist and lawyer, Mark holds degrees from the Australian National University and the University of Queensland, which awarded him his PhD in 2010. He is a former Vice President of the Australian Political Studies Association and continues to serve on its Board of Directors as Deputy Chair.

Mark's main research interests includes democratic theory and governance, local politics and government, and comparative political theory. His books include How Local Governments Govern Culture War Conflicts (Cambridge UP, 2020); Political Meritocracy and Populism (Routledge, 2019); Young People, Citizenship, and Political Participation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017); Democracy Against Itself (Edinburgh UP, 2014); and Theorising Democide (Palgrave, 2013). In addition to this, he has authored numerous articles in leading journals, including Urban Affairs Review, Political Geography, Democratization, Swiss Political Science Review, PS: Political Science and Politics, Australian Journal of Political Science, and Australian Journal of Public Administration.

Together with Benjamin Moffitt, Rachel Busbridge, and Annika Werner, Mark is currently working on an Australian Research Council funded Discovery project, Populism's Heartlands: Place, Identity, and Localism in Populist Politics ($312,265 AUD).

He is co-editor of the Palgrave/Springer Theories, Concepts and Practices of Democracy Book Series and sits on the Muncipal Association of Victoria's FutureGen Advisory Panel.

Key publications

Books
Chou, Mark and Rachel Busbridge, How Local Governments Govern Culture War Conflicts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020)

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, 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)

Chou, Mark, Greek Tragedy and Contemporary Democracy (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012)

Journal Articles

Chou, Mark, Rachel Busbridge, and Serrin Rutledge-Prior, “From the Three Rs to the ‘Culture Wars’?: How Australians Perceive Local Action on Climate Change, Indigenous Reconciliation, and LGBTQIA+ Advocacy,” Urban Affairs Review (forthcoming)

Chou, Mark, Rachel Busbridge, and Benjamin Moffitt, “Far-right Translocalism: Towards a New Research Agenda,” Political Geography (Vol.114, 2024)

Busbridge, Rachel, Mark Chou, and Serrin Rutledge-Prior, “The Three Rs and Beyond: Public Perceptions on the Changing Role of Australian Local Government Today,” Urban Policy and Research (Vol.42, No.2, 2024)

Chou, Mark, “Going Local: Understanding and Avoiding the Dangers of Localism,” Urban Affairs Review (Vol.60, No.2, 2024)

Busbridge, Rachel, Ashlee Cunningham, and Mark Chou, “Enhancing Perceptions of Employability Among First-Year Arts Studies and Implications for Student Belonging,” Higher Education Research and Development (Vol.43, No.4, 2024)

Chou, Mark, Benjamin Moffitt, and Rachel Busbridge, “The Localist Turn in Populism Studies,” Swiss Political Science Review (Vol.28, No.1, 2022)

Busbridge, Rachel and Mark Chou, “Culture Wars and City Politics, Revisited: Local Councils and the Australia Day Controversy,” Urban Affairs Review (Vol.58, No.1, 2022)

Chou, Mark, Lesley Pruitt, and Luke Dean, “Too Young To Run? Young Political Candidates and the 2020 Victorian Local Government Elections,” Australian Journal of Political Science (Vol.56, 4, 2021)

Chou, Mark, “Australian Local Governments and Climate Emergency Declarations: Reviewing Local Government Practice,” Australian Journal of Public Administration (Vol.80, No.3, 2021)

Chou, Mark, "Populism and Localism: A New Research Agenda," Democratization (Vol.27, 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, "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)

Chou, Mark, Jean-Paul Gagnon, and Lesley Pruitt, “Putting Participation on Stage: Examining Participatory Theatre as an Alternative Site for Political Participation,” Policy Studies (Vol.36, No.6, 2015)

Chou, Mark, "Democrats against Democracy," Cultural Politics (Vol.10, 2, 2014)

Chou, Mark, "Democracy's not for me: The Lowy Institute Polls on Gen Y and Democracy," Australian Journal of Political Science (Vol.48, No.4, 2013)

Chou, Mark, "Sowing the Seeds of its Own Destruction: Democracy and Democide in the Weimar Republic and Beyond," Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory (Vol.133, 2012)

Chou, Mark, "Morgenthau, the Tragic: on tragedy and the transition from Scientific Man to Politics Among Nations," Telos: A Quarterly of Critical Thought (Vol.157, 2011)

Chou, Mark, "When Democracies Fail," Political Studies Review (Vol.9, 3, 2011)

Chou, Mark and Roland Bleiker, "Dramatizing War: George Packer and the Democratic Potential of Verbatim Theater," New Political Science (Vol.32, No.4, 2010), Special Issue on Art After Empire: Creating the New Political Economy of a New Democracy

Chou, Mark, "Democracy in an Age of Tragedy: Democracy, Tragedy and Paradox," Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory (Vol.11, No.2, 2010)

Chou, Mark and Roland Bleiker, "The Symbiosis of Democracy and Tragedy: Lost Lessons from Ancient Greece," Millennium: Journal of International Studies (Vol.37, No.3, 2009), Special Issue on Interrogating Democracy in International Relations