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< Back The Forum, the System, and the Polity: Three Varieties of Democratic Theory John S. Dryzek 2017 , Political Theory 45 (5): 610-36. Summary Read more Previous Next

Kei Nishiyama < Back Practicing and Visualising Democratic Disagreements in the Classroom Investigator(s): Kei Nishiyama Funded by the Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education ($7,468.92), Project Team includes Kei Nishiyama Project Description The project aims to understand the role of democratic disagreements and deliberation in democratic education. Working with school teachers (National Institute for Technology, Tokyo College) in Japan, Kei will engage in action research by introducing and practicing well-designed deliberative activities in the classroom where students talk and think about controversial ethical, moral, and political questions (e.g. abortion, ethics of human enhancement, animal rights). The project considers the following questions: (1) What is the role of deep political, moral, ethical disagreement in democratic education? (2) When students are deeply divided as a result of deliberation, what sort of activities should be designed for enabling them to engage in "democratic" disagreement (rather than merely political, moral, ethical disagreements)?(3)How can meta-consensus mitigate students' deep disagreements and how can we visualise our meta-consensus?

< Back Democratic transformations in earth system governance Jonathan Pickering, University of Canberra Tue 22 October 2019 The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract Confidence in the ability of democracies to safeguard environmental sustainability has been shaken by failures to address climate change and biodiversity loss, along with a rise in anti-environmental populism across a range of countries. There is substantial (albeit contested) evidence that democracies perform better on environmental issues than non-democratic countries. And a resurgence in environmental activism, particularly among young people, offers renewed hope that democratic practices can coexist with progress towards sustainability. Nevertheless, major questions remain: are democracies capable of governing the rapid, wide-ranging economic and social transformations needed to address mounting risks to the Earth’s life-support systems? And what policy options are available to achieve sustainability transformations in ways that are democratically legitimate? This talk, based on a co-authored article in progress, aims to synthesise existing knowledge on the democratic implications of transformations towards sustainability and to chart new directions for research in this area. By linking ideas of sustainability transformations and democratic transformations together, we show how each can illuminate the other. About the speaker Jonathan Pickering is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance. His research focuses on democracy, reflexivity and justice in global environmental governance, and he is currently working on an Australian Research Council Laureate project on ‘Deliberative Worlds’ led by Professor John Dryzek. His research has been published in a range of journals including Climate Policy , Environmental Politics and Global Environmental Politics . He has co-authored with John Dryzek a book on The Politics of the Anthropocene (Oxford University Press, 2019) and with several colleagues a Cambridge Element on Deliberative Global Governance (2019). Previous Next

< Back Deliberation in schools Pierrick Chalaye, University of Canberra / Kei Nishiyama, University of Canberra / Wendy Russell, Double Arrow Consulting Tue 2 April 2019 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract In 2018, we conducted a pilot Deliberation in Schools project in two ACT public schools (Ainslie Primary School year 5 and Hawker College year 11), partially funded by the International Association for Public Participation Australasia. Working with teachers and school principals, we facilitated a series of deliberative sessions with students. Through the program, we investigated how students deliberate, understand and practice democracy, and what sorts of curriculum design are needed to cultivate democratic competencies. In this presentation, we will show some tentative findings of our pilot, with a specific focus on the role of facilitator in classroom deliberation. While the role of facilitator in deliberative mini-publics has gradually received attention from scholars and practitioners alike, little is known about how to facilitate deliberation in the classroom. In this presentation, we will show how our pilot partially responds to two key questions: "How can a facilitator ensure the epistemic and inclusive quality of deliberation in the classroom?" "How can this deliberative work address power imbalances between facilitators/teachers and students?" Previous Next

Pierrick Chalaye and Kei Nishiyama, together with the Centre’s Associate Wendy Russel < Back Deliberation in Schools Investigator(s): Pierrick Chalaye and Kei Nishiyama, together with the Centre’s Associate Wendy Russel Funded by The International Association for Public Participation, the Project Team includes: Kei Nishiyama Wendy Russell Pierrick Chalaye Project Description This project is a pilot program to introduce deliberation into public schools. Currently, students learn civic communication skills through debating. This may provide skills for the adversarial, win-at-all-cost, antagonistic style of current political debate, but we think our democracy will be strengthened by bringing a different set of skills to young people. The Deliberation in Schools program will build the capacity of school children to listen, reason, think, communicate and collaborate, so that they have the resources to engage productively as citizens in our democracy, both now and in the future. Classroom deliberation enables students to get a clearer understanding of issues in their society and everyday lives, find their own vocabulary to explain the issue at stake, and thereby cultivate their motivation for further engagement in and beyond school. The pilot begins with programs in two public schools in the ACT (a primary school and a secondary college). Each program involves a series of about 5 teaching sessions (approx. 2 hours each) over one term, focusing on topics selected from the Australian Curriculum and skills relating to the General Capabilities. The team will work with teachers to co-design the teaching sessions to fit with the curriculum and the learning needs of the class. It is anticipated that the deliberative approach being piloted will be used by teachers, but will also be delivered in schools by external practitioners/facilitators working with teachers. Based on our experiences and findings from the pilot, we will develop professional development (PD) resources aimed at teachers and engagement practitioners, which will provide guidance and resources to conduct similar programs in other schools and other settings. The first phase pilot and development of the PD resource is supported by the Australasian branch of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2), through their Pitch for Practice program. A second phase of the pilot is planned that will extend the program to additional schools (including a high school), build on insights and outcomes of the first phase, and develop a collaborative research project. We are particularly interested in exploring student agency, the role of teachers, and how the program can help to empower students from marginalised groups. As well as providing skills consistent with curriculum requirements and building student agency and civic engagement, the Deliberation in Schools program will build the capacity of schools to govern and make decisions in a genuinely student-centred, inclusive way. It will also stimulate schools and school students to engage in political debates and decision-making, as students become motivated to write letters to politicians, make submissions, launch initiatives, and participate in community engagement activities. Beyond advocacy, this will help to build deep and enduring commitment and capacity for public participation and public deliberation. Project Outputs Russell, Wendy., Nishiyama, Kei., & Chalaye, Pierrick. (2019a) Deliberation in Ainslie School . Project Report submitted to International Association for Public Participation Australasia. Russell, Wendy., Nishiyama, Kei., & Chalaye, Pierrick. (2019b) Deliberation in Hawker College . Project Report submitted to International Association for Public Participation Australasia. Public Engagement Nishiyama, Kei., Russell, Wendy., Chalaye, Pierrick. (2019). What is the Deliberation in School pilot? What we learn? DeliberateACT (14 Feb). Nishiyama, Kei. (2018). Democratic education in multicultural societies. At Waseda University Department of Education Lifelong Education Course (15 Oct).

< Back Belgium: The rise of institutionalized mini-publics Julien Vrydagh, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and UCLouvain Tue 28 January 2020 11:00am-12pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract In less than a year, Belgium has witnessed a large and sudden rise of institutionalized mini-publics. After the Ostbelgien model, the Regional Parliament of Brussels has institutionalized Citizens’ deliberative commissions, while multiple municipalities of Brussels are launching neighbourhood councils and a political party got elected based on a single promise to organize citizens’ assemblies. Belgium seems to become a leading laboratory of deliberative democracy and citizen participation. This ‘revolution’ is nonetheless surprising, for Belgium was known to be a copy-book example of neo-corporatism, whereby citizens tended to be excluded from political decision-making. How can we explain this increase? Is it a revolution or an incremental change? What do these new institutionalized mini-publics entail? What are their promises and pitfalls? This informative seminar will try to answer these questions by discussing dimension of this rise. First, I present its genesis and background. Examining Belgian mini-publics from 2001 until 2018, it provides both a descriptive analysis of what preceded and a narrative accounting for this expansion. Second, it explains in detail the design and competencies of four specific institutionalized mini-publics : a brief remainder of the Ostbelgien model; the Brussels’ Deliberative Commission (composed by elected representatives and randomly selected citizens); the atypical Citizens’ Assemblies organized by the political party Agora the neighbourhood mini-publics (sometimes combined with participatory budgets), which are mushrooming in Brussels’ municipalities. About the speaker Julien Vrydagh is a PhD student and a teaching assistant at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the UCLouvain. His PhD thesis investigates the conditions under which mini-publics influence public policy in Belgium. His other research interests include the link between the mini- and maxi-public, the integration of mini-publics in collaborative governance, and youth parliaments. Julien Vrydagh also provides the City of Brussels with advices on its randomly selected neighbourhood councils. Previous Next

Faculty Affiliate < Back Jonathan Pickering Faculty Affiliate About Jonathan Pickering's research focuses on democracy and justice in global environmental governance, with an emphasis on climate change and biodiversity. He is an Assistant Professor in the School of Politics, Economics and Society at the University of Canberra, where he teaches International Relations.

Latest News - Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance < Back Dr Sonia Bussu’s visit sparks new collaborations 29 Sept 2023 This month, we were excited to host Dr Sonia Bussu from The Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV), University of Birmingham as a visiting scholar between 17 September to 30 September 2023. Dr Bussu works in the areas of participatory democracy and public policy. Her research aims to bridge divides between different literatures concerned with citizen engagement, social justice, and intersectional inclusion. She studies how participatory deliberative democracy, social movements, the commons, coproduction, community activism, participatory research can all enrich one another. During her visit, Dr Bussu presented a (work in progress) paper co-authored with Katy Rubin titled ‘ Participation as Assemblage’ at a public seminar on Tuesday, 19 September 2023. This paper tests the analytical power and limitations of an assemblage frame by presenting an evaluation of a project she is leading called ‘ Mindset Revolution .’ Her presentation explored the capacity of assemblage theory in helping us study democratic innovations and participatory governance. The following day, Dr Bussu presented her work at a workshop titled ‘ Deliberative systems and deliberative assemblages: Exploring the intersection and future of research agenda ’, alongside Distinguished Professor John Dryzek , Visiting PhD Candidate Lucas Veloso and Dr Hans Asenbaum . This workshop, convened by the Centre’s PhD student Wendy Conway-Lamb , offered an opportunity to discuss and reflect on different analytical lenses used to make sense of democratic innovation, comparing deliberative systems, deliberative ecologies and democratic assemblages. Dr Bussu’s contribution explored participatory governance through an assemblage lens. A crucial aspect of Dr Bussu’s work, as captured by projects she is leading like the Mindset Revolution, is that she starts from people’s lived experiences. She opens spaces for them to build a collective voice to challenge hierarchies of power and expertise embedded in existing medical and policy discourses. Dr Bussu sees her work on assemblage as a useful frame to better understand change and contingency, as it sees democracy as in a constant state of becoming, inviting us to acknowledge distributed agency and socio-material relations that also recognise the role of non-human elements, from technology to physical spaces and material resources. Asked what she enjoyed the most about her research collaboration with the Centre, Dr Bussu explains “I am going back to the UK inspired by the constructive feedback and all the wonderful work being developed by this exciting group of well-established scholars and early career researchers pushing the boundaries of the study and practice of deliberative democracy. I feel even more energised by new collaborations on work focusing on intersectional inclusion and centering and amplifying lived experience.” We are grateful for all the engaging conversations we have had with Dr Bussu during her visit, and we look forward to furthering our collaborations with her in future.

John Dryzek and Robert Goodin < Back The Theory and Practice of Deliberative Democracy Investigator(s): John Dryzek and Robert Goodin Funded through Discovery Project (DP0342795) ($223,547), the Project Team includes: John Dryzek Robert Goodin Christian Hunold Carolyn Hendriks Aviezer Tucker Project Description This project examined the relationship between deliberative innovations, especially citizen forums, and the larger political contexts in which they take place. Particular kinds of institutional innovation work out quite differently in different contexts. A comparative study of consensus conferences on genetically modified foods revealed sharp differences between the roles such forums play in Denmark (where they are integrated into policy making), the United States (where they are advocacy inputs from the margins of policy making), and France (where they are managed from the top down). A broader survey of cases also revealed systematic differences between the relatively 'promethean' position that policy makers are constrained to take, and the more 'precautionary' conclusions reached by reflective publics, causing problems for the deliberative legitimation of risk-related policy via citizen forums. A close look at Germany enabled systematic comparison of the virtues and problems of forums made up of, respectively, partisan stakeholders and non-partisan lay citizens. Another broad survey of cases looked at the variety of ways in which citizen forums, or 'mini-publics', can have an impact in larger political systems. All these empirical results can help inform the development of deliberative democratic theory, as well as the practice of deliberative innovation.

< Back Spaces of hope: Theorizing hope in an imperfect yet open democratic system Antonin Lacelle-Webster, University of British Columbia Tue 27 April 2021 11:00am - 12:00pm Virtual seminar Seminar recording is available on our YouTube channel. Abstract Hope is a complex phenomenon. While it is a common fixture of political life, its meaning remains elusive, and many reject it as simply naïve or disconnected from “reality.” Despite its political salience, democratic theory has yet to engage with hope as a political concept. In this paper, I propose to explore its relation to democracy and democratic innovations through a focus on hope’s spatial and political features. I argue that the spaces that democracy holds open for individuals to act, think, and come together can not only mitigate the anxiety generated by the uncertainty of politics but also nurture hope. More precisely, deliberative spaces provide a setting that substantiates a collective understanding of hope distinct from its individual manifestations. As such, I ground the political problem of hope not in the nature of the hoped-for ends, but in the critical and imaginative process it requires from a collectivity. Drawing from Hannah Arendt’s faculty to make and keep promises, I contend that deliberative minipublics represent one example of a space in which such collective hopes can emerge. I use the French Citizens’ Convention on Climate to illustrate my argument and conclude by briefly discussing the subsequent challenge of sustaining this form of hope. About the speaker Antonin is a PhD candidate in political theory at the University of British Columbia. He is broadly interested in issues related to democratic theory, democratic innovations, the politics of hope and despair, and the political thought of Hannah Arendt. Previous Next

< Back The Crisis of Democracy and the Science of Deliberation Dryzek, J.S., Bächtiger, A. et al 2019 , Science 363: 1144-46. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw2694 Summary Read more Previous Next

< Back Tetsuki Tamura Associate About Tetsuki Tamura's work covers deliberative democracy, the welfare state and basic income, feminism, Marxist state theories, and the relationship between normative political theory and empirical analysis. His current research interests include deliberation in the intimate sphere, conditions and motivations of deliberation, and rethinking the relationship between deliberation and liberal democracy.

< Back Reasoning together: Understanding and measuring the deliberativeness of a situation Simon Niemeyer and Francesco Veri, University of Canberra Tue 4 June 2019 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract Deliberative democracy concerns the collective process of reasoning undistorted by the exercise of power, but can this be captured empirically? Where most emphasis in the field has been on understanding good deliberative procedure, the focus here is on understanding a reasoned ‘outcome’ in a deliberative sense — beyond the problematic measure of preference change as a proxy for deliberativeness. The presentation considers what it means conceptually for individuals to “reason together” in the absence of pathologies or political manipulation and how this might be revealed in observed positions. A middle-level theory is proposed that models intersubjective reasoning in terms of how underlying issue considerations collectively map onto courses for action (preferences). The nature of the relationship indicates the deliberativeness of a situation. To the extent that a group ‘reasons together’ it is possible to observe a shared rationale, even if there is little actual agreement on preferences. This property is empirically tractable, using intersubjective consistency (IC) which can be applied to both small groups and population surveys to assess consistency of agreement on considerations versus agreement on preferences. The approach is illustrated using fourteen deliberative case studies, as well as wider application comparing climate sceptics to non-sceptics. The mechanics of the methodology, as well as implications for deliberative theory at both micro and deliberative systems levels are discussed. About the speakers Simon Niemeyer is an Associate Professor and co-founder of the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance. His research ties together the themes of political behaviour, the public sphere and observations from deliberative minipublics, such as Citizens’ Juries, to develop insights into potential interventions and institutional settings that improve deliberation and governance. Francesco Veri is a Research Associate at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. He is currently working on the Australian Research Council's (ARC) project " A Meta-Study of Democratic Deliberation: Advancing Theory and Practice” led by Simon Niemeyer, Nicole Curato and John Dryzek. Francesco is specialized in the field of configurational comparative methods with an emphasis on fuzzy logic applied to social sciences. His methodological research focuses on concept operationalization and strengthening the quality of parameters of fit in set theoretic methods. Francesco is also member of the Lucerne Cluster for Configurational Methods (LUCCS) which regroup scholars who make major contributions to social science methodology at the crossroads between quantitative and qualitative research. Previous Next

< Back Olivia Mendoza PhD Candidate About Olivia Mendoza is a migrant Filipina PhD candidate at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance in Canberra, Australia, on unceded Ngunnawal land. She studies emotions and deliberation from a critical feminist and decolonial lens. Before moving to Australia, she was an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Department of History and Philosophy, University of the Philippines Baguio. I taught courses on Development Ethics, Moral Philosophy, and Ancient and Medieval Philosophy among others. For her work, she was awarded the One UP Faculty Grant in Philosophy for Outstanding Teaching and Public Service, the UP International Publication Award, and Mateo Tupaz Grant. She is an active member of Women Doing Philosophy (WDP), a global feminist organization that aims to create and claim spaces that promote the scholarly, professional, and personal flourishing of Filipina philosophers. Dissertation Olivia's PhD thesis imagines a structure-oriented account of emancipatory democratic politics that stresses the importance of emotions and their role in relations of domination. It engages with the emotions and inequality literature in feminist and deliberative democratic theory and practice. PhD Supervisors Hans Asenbaum (primary supervisor) Adele Webb (secondary supervisor) John Dryzek (secondary supervisor) Scholarship and Prizes Deliberative Democracy PhD Scholarship (2023-2027), Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra. One UP Faculty Grant Award in Philosophy (Ethics) for Outstanding Teaching and Public Service in the University of the Philippines Baguio, College of Social Sciences, University of the Philippines Baguio (2022-2024). Mateo Tupaz Grant (2019-2022), University of the Philippines Baguio. Research Project: Reviewing Emotion Theories in light of Filipino Emotions. Key Publications Olivia S. Mendoza. 2024. “Emotions and Filipino Resilience” In Llanera, Tracy (ed). Resilience: The Brown Babe’s Burden. Routledge Book Series on the Post- CoViD World: Academics, Politics and Society. Liz Jackson, Nuraan Davids, Winston C. Thompson, Jessica Lussier, Nicholas C. Burbules, Kal Alston, Stephen Chatelier, Krissah Marga B. Taganas, Olivia S. Mendoza, Jason Lin Cong, Addyson Frattura & Anonymous and P. Taylor Webb. 2022. "Feeling like a philosopher of education: A collective response to Jackson’s ‘The smiling philosopher’." Educational Philosophy and Theory , DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2022.2063719. Conference Presentations Olivia S. Mendoza, “Emotional and Hermeneutic Labour: Feminist Philosophy Meets Deliberative Democracy." 11th Swiss Summer School in Democracy Studies and 7th Deliberative Democracy Summer School. University of Zurich, Switzerland. 2025. Olivia S. Mendoza. “Emotional Labour: A Feminist Agenda for Deliberative Democracy." Reimagining Democratic Politics in the Contemporary Symposium. Centre for Democratic Futures, University of Southampton, UK. 2025. Teaching Development Ethics (SDS 271, Master’s Course in Social and Development Studies), 2022 History of the Social Sciences (Soc Sci 100), 2021-2022 Ethics (Philo 171, for Philosophy Students), 2019-2022 Ethics and Moral Reasoning (Ethics 1, General Education Course), 2019-2022 Ancient Philosophy (Philosophy110) and Medieval Philosophy (Philosophy 111), 2014-2022. Public Service Member, Women Doing Philosophy. 2020-present.

< Back John Boswell Associate and Former PhD Student About John Boswell is an Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Southampton. His work looks at issues related to deliberative governance, and has included investigations around democratic deliberation and obesity. His work with the Centre includes a co-authored book with Selen Ercan and Carolyn Hendriks entitled Connected Democracy.

Latest News - Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance < Back Deliberative Democracy and Refugees: Ensuring they have a voice 9 Dec 2022 Our PhD student Mohammad Abdul-Hwas shares his passion to study and research refugee crisis with UC's UnCover . Mohammad's parents’ and grandparents’ lived experiences of the ongoing Palestinian refugee crisis, that has lasted the past 70 years, has created a deep empathy for refugees. Connecting with Syrian refugees in Jordan who have similar lived experience drove Mohammad to research deliberative democracy, with the ambition to improve the experience and agency for people caught in a refugee crisis. Following multiple visits to Jordan – where his extended family is from – between 2012 and 2018, Mohammad’s interest and studies would pivot toward an underlying passion for refugee governance. His visits took place shortly after the Syrian conflict escalated from the Arab Spring protests in 2011 – an event that displaced millions, many of whom have ended up in neighbouring countries. He reached out to universities around Australia, looking to secure his PhD candidature in the space, including UC, and started reaching out to possible supervisors for his project. He succeeded in finding a supervisor ─ Dr Nicole Curato, Professor of Political Sociology within the University’s Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance . “Connecting her areas of expertise – deliberative democracy and paying attention to vulnerable people in disaster contexts – gave me a foundation to approach my PhD project about the Syrian refugee crisis,” Mohammad says.

< Back COMPROMISED DEMOCRACY: CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN THE AGE OF FINANCE CAPITALISM Hendrik Wagenaar, King's College London Tue 12 March 2019 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract Civic enterprises (CEs) contain many innovative features that promise more effective public services, a more equitable society and a richer, more participatory form of democracy. Yet, despite these proven benefits, CEs rarely scale up or are consolidated within larger government structures. I explain this forced localism by arguing that in their organizational and financial set-up CEs and similar citizen initiatives are incompatible with the requirements of finance capitalism. Over the last forty years finance capitalism has imposed an all-encompassing governance and governmentality upon societies worldwide. Finance governance consists of a loosely coupled ensemble of formal laws, state institutions, private banks, giant transnational corporations, hybrid entities such as central banks, rating agencies, transnational organizations and informal professional associations, bound together by the goal of maximising profitability and liquidity and minimising inflation and system risk. This system operates to a large extent informally, away from the public eye, and outside structures of democratic control and accountability, often under the pretext of emergency measures. Finance governmentality consists of a pervasive ideology and ethos of entrepreneurship and market conformity that has permeated all aspects of public and private life, and even lodged itself inside the self-image and aspirations of ordinary citizens. Thus, a feasible citizen-centred alternative to finance capitalism has to present a blueprint of political-economic organization that is as integrated, comprehensive and internally coherent as finance capitalism. My argument is that the Commons constitute such an alternative. I will discuss the nature of commons and show how commons and commoning can potentially create a viable alternative form of political-economic organization at local, regional and national/global levels. About the speaker Hendrik Wagenaar was professor at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield. He is currently senior advisor to the Policy Institute at King’s College London and adjunct professor at the University of Canberra. He publishes in the areas of participatory democracy, interpretive policy analysis, deliberative policy analysis, prostitution policy and practice theory. He is author of Meaning in Action: Interpretation and Dialogue in Policy Analysis (M.E. Sharpe, 2011), and editor of the seminal Deliberative Policy Analysis (Cambridge, 2003, with M. Hajer) In the area of prostitution research he published Designing Prostitution Policy: Intention and Reality in Regulating the Sex Trade (with Helga Amesberger and Sietske Altink, Policy Press, 2017) and Assessing Prostitution Policies in Europe (with S. Jahnsen, Routledge, 2017). Previous Next

< Back Peter Bridgewater Adjunct Professor About Peter Bridgewater is an expert in environmental science and management. His expertise spans conservation and biodiversity, natural resource management , ecology, wildlife and habitat management, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander environmental knowledge. His expertise in public and environmental policy has been sought in internationally.

< Back Designing permanent deliberative democracy: The Ostbelgien Modell in Belgium Min Reuchamps, Catholic University of Louvain Tue 18 June 2019 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract Around the world, deliberative democracy is on the rise and is being implemented in real politics. In Belgium, the G1000, a citizen-led experiment, set deliberative democracy on the political agenda. In this wake, all parliaments of the country have initiated deliberative mini-publics. More recently the Ostbelgien modell was fostered; that is the Parliament of the German-speaking community has enacted a permanent system of deliberative democracy that will start in September 2019: a randomly selected body of 24 citizens will work next to the existing elected parliament made of 25 MPs. These democratic innovations set the pace for a renewal of democratic dynamics in practice. About the speaker Min Reuchamps is Professor of Political Science at the Université catholique de Louvain. He graduated from the Université de Liège and from Boston University. His teaching and research interests are federalism and multi-level governance, democracy and its different dimensions, relations between language(s) and politics and in particular the role of metaphors, as well as participatory and deliberative methods. He has published a dozen books on these topics and his works have appeared in several international journals. He recently co-authored a book on the G1000 experiment ( https://www.crcpress.com/The-Legitimacy-of-Citizen-led-Deliberative-Democracy-The-G1000-in-Belgium/Caluwaerts-Reuchamps/p/book/9781138281943 ) and his forthcoming book is an edited volume on the variation of political metaphors. Previous Next

< Back Deliberating in the Anthropocene: Signs and sources of reflexive governance Jonathan Pickering, University of Canberra Tue 22 September 2015 11:00am - 12:00pm Fishbowl, Building 24, University of Canberra Abstract Many commentators believe that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene—marked by humanity’s pervasive impact on global ecosystems. Resulting patterns of environmental degradation pose major challenges for the planet’s inhabitants as well as for political institutions worldwide. John Dryzek has recently argued that in the Anthropocene institutions need to cultivate “ecosystemic reflexivity”, which involves “listening more effectively to an active Earth system, capacity to reconsider core values such as justice in this light, and ability to seek, receive and respond to early warnings about potential ecological state shifts” (Dryzek 2014). But what would ecosystemic reflexivity look like in practice and how could it could be cultivated? In this paper (co-authored with John Dryzek) we outline a preliminary typology of signs or indicators of ecosystemic reflexivity, and of factors that may enable or constrain reflexivity. Even if institutions may become reflexive through non-deliberative means, we argue—drawing on existing literature on deliberative systems and complex adaptive systems—that deliberative innovations hold considerable potential to promote reflexivity. In order to assess the strength of this argument in practice, we outline a planned case study on reflexivity in international institutions that fund development and environmental protection in low-income countries. About the speaker Jonathan joined the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance in 2015. He is a Postdoctoral Fellow working with Professor John Dryzek on his Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship project, ‘Deliberative Worlds: Democracy, Justice and a Changing Earth System’. He completed his PhD in philosophy at the Australian National University, based in the Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory and graduating in 2014. His thesis explored opportunities for reaching a fair agreement between developing and developed countries in global climate change negotiations. Before joining the University of Canberra he taught climate and environmental policy at the Crawford School of Public Policy at ANU, and has been a Visiting Fellow at the Development Policy Centre at ANU since 2014. Jonathan’s research interests include the ethical and political dimensions of global climate change policy, global environmental governance, development policy and ethics, and global justice. He has a Masters' degree in development studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and undergraduate degrees in arts and law from the University of Sydney. Previously he worked as a policy and program manager with the Australian Government's international development assistance program (AusAID, 2003-09). Previous Next