Funded through a Discovery Project (DP210102436) (AU$511,000), the Project Team includes:

• Selen A. Ercan

• Jordan McSwiney

• Peter Balint

• John S. Dryzek

Partner Investigators:

• Jensen Sass

• Andrea Felicetti

• Emily Beausoleil

• Ian O’Flynn

Project Description

The project aims to explain responses to extremist attacks intended to sow division, and why some democracies prove fragile, succumbing to polarisation or exclusion of key groups, while others prove resilient by sustaining integrative, tolerant discourse. The project develops new knowledge through an innovative synthesis of cultural sociology and deliberative democracy to analyse nine cases of responses in the public realm to attacks. Expected outcomes include a new account of the democratic public sphere, and identification of how meaningful, civil communication whose health is vital to democracy, especially in a multicultural society, can be maintained. Benefits include identification of measures to counter extremist political disruption.