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Democracy: Friendship in the company of strangers?

Quinlan Bowman, University of Canberra

Tue 4 July 2017

11:00am - 12:00pm

The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra

Abstract

In this presentation I discuss two potentially constructive functions that the concept and practice of friendship can play in (cross-cultural) dialogues about democracy. First, I describe how appeals to friendship might help to generate greater agreement among democrats regarding the attractiveness of specifically deliberative forms of decision-making. Second, I describe how appeals to friendship might help to move those who do not begin as democrats toward a recognition of the attractiveness of democratic decision-making – indeed, as above, toward a recognition of the attractiveness of specifically deliberative forms of such decision-making. In both cases, the appeal to friendship functions as a species of immanent critique.

About the speaker

Dr Quinlan Bowman joined the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance as a Postdoctoral Fellow in 2016, after completing my PhD in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

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