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Former PhD student < Back Pierrick Chalaye Former PhD student About Pierrick Chalaye's work focuses on global and comparative environmental politics, cross-cultural approaches to decision-making and participatory and deliberative democratic theories and practices. H is now a research associate with the Centre.

< Back The newDemocracy Foundation: How might institutional collaboration be cultivated? Lyn Carson, newDemocracy Foundation Tue 20 March 2018 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract The newDemocracy Foundation (nDF) has ten years of experience with the practice of mini publics. The energy for change, employing deliberative methods, is clearly increasing. As a research foundation, nDF occasionally commissions external research as well as performing critical analysis and critical reflection in-house. nDF’s latest focus has been on critical thinking and unconscious biases amongst randomly-selected participants—specifically, how to enhance critical capacities of participants and to improve awareness of unexamined biases within both participants and experts. Carson will provide descriptions of current and potential projects (local and global) and discuss gaps in knowledge and potentially-fruitful future research. About the speaker Lyn Carson is a former professor in applied politics at the University of Sydney Business School, currently an honorary professor with the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, adjunct professor with the University of Western Sydney, and associate of the Centre for Deliberative Democracy & Global Governance at the University of Canberra. ‘Carson’ also currently serves as newDemocracy’s research director. She has written handbooks on community engagement and many articles and book chapters on public participation, including a book, with Brian Martin, Random Selection in Politics (1999) and co-edited The Australian Citizens’ Parliament & The Future of Deliberative Democracy (2013). Previous Next

< Back Kimmo Gronlund Associate About Kimmo Grönlund is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Social Science Research Institute at Åbo Akademi University. He is also Director of The Future of Democracy – a Center of Excellence in public opinion research.

< Back Co-producing deliberative space: Reflections from city level water forum initiatives in India and Nepal Hemant R Ojha, University of Canberra Tue 17 November 2020 11:00am - 12:00pm Virtual seminar Seminar recording is available on our YouTube channel . Abstract There is now an increasing level of endorsement of the deliberative approach to governance, bolstered by evidence of benefits in legitimacy, inclusion, social learning, and even the quality of governance outcomes. In the Global South, however, entrenched power asymmetries and political cultures that tend to ignore, if not actively suppress, the practice of deliberation in political decision making continue to challenge efforts to improve deliberation in governance. In this paper, I reflect on some recent and ongoing action research initiatives supporting urban water forums in four cities in India and Nepal. Locally engaged research team partnered with academic research groups from Europe and Australia to design and test urban water forums as an experiment to expand deliberative space on issues related to water management, access, and resilience to climate change. The forums were co-organised by local research groups and city level governments, inviting representatives of all major social groups that have an interest in or are concerned with the problems of water in the city. Over a period of five years, these experiments show that locally engaged research practice can stimulate open dialogues, self-reflections (especially among the powerful groups), system-wide collective thinking, and an appreciation of the longer-term environmental risks in city level planning and decision making. However, seeing through the lens of co-production, these gains in deliberation that emerged in the context of transnational research partnership are less likely to effect new modes of co-production in governance, without larger, deeper and system-wide processes of change and transformation. This experience suggests that small-scale innovations in deliberation can meet co-production limit but can still show directionality and confidence in larger and deeper changes in the system. About the speaker Hermant R Ojha is Adjunct Associate Professor at the Center for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance and Senior Policy Advisor at the Institute for Study and Development Worldwide (IFSD) in Sydney. Previous Next

< Back Should democracies permit citizens to select refugees for admission and resettlement? Patti Tamara Lenard, University of Ottawa Tue 7 August 2018 11:00am - 12:00pm Fishbowl Room, Building 24, University of Canberra Abstract One way that states discharge their duties to refugees is by admitting them for resettlement. Of the millions of refugees in places of refuge, only one million are specially designated by the UNHCR for resettlement in third countries. These individuals, identified by the UNCHR as either especially vulnerable, or particularly unlikely to find any alternative permanent solution, are prioritized for admission to third countries for resettlement. Of these, only a small number are actually selected by host countries for resettlement, however; last year, just over 100 000 found permanent homes in third countries. In this article, I take all of this context seriously, to consider the ethics of one particular way of selecting refugees for resettlement, that is, by giving citizens the driver’s seat in selecting refugees for admission to resettlement. I ask, in this article, whether it is morally acceptable to permit citizens of democracies to select specific refugees for resettlement, under the condition that they are willing to support – financially and emotionally – those whom they select. I argue, ultimately, that there are moral goods that derive from permitting citizens to select refugees for admission, but that they do not outweigh the importance of offering scarce resettlement spots to those who are most in need. Therefore, any democratic refugee admission scheme that permits citizens to select refugees must constrain those who can be named for admission to those who are most in need. I conclude with some proposals for how this can be achieved. About the speaker Patti Tamara Lenard is Associate Professor of Ethics in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa. She is the author of Trust, Democracy and Multicultural Challenges (Penn State, 2012). Her work has been published in a range of journals, including Political Studies, Ethics and International Affairs, Review of Politics, and Ethics and Global Politics. Her current research focuses on the moral questions raised by migration across borders in an era of terrorism, especially as it pertains to refugees and irregularly present migrants, trust and social cohesion, and democratic theory more generally. Her most recent work, focused on the moral dilemmas posed by denationalization for terror-related crimes, is newly published in the American Political Science Review (2018). Previous Next

Research Assistant < Back Alessandra Pecci Research Assistant About Alessandra worked as Research Assistant at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the Australian National University from 2009 to 2011.

< 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 John Parkinson Associate and Former PhD Student About John is a Professor of Social and Political Philosophy at Maastricht University and holds the post of Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance.

< Back Neighbourly compensations: Lawyers, parliamentary submissions and coal seam gas Tue 4 February 2020 David Turton, Australian National University 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract Landholder compensation is a critical part of Australia’s coal seam gas sector. One way to explore this is to scrutinise parliamentary submissions prepared by lawyers for government inquiries into coal seam gas-related legislation. Drawing on the lawyer-focussed work of Deborah Martin and colleagues (2010) and the notion of a ‘rural lawscape’ from Lisa Pruitt (2014), this presentation delves into a Queensland parliamentary committee’s inquiry into the then Mineral, Water and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2018. During this inquiry, arguments about the geographical scope of ‘compensatable effects’ for landholders impacted by coal seam gas development were raised by lawyers representing a variety of stakeholders. Their submissions gave voice to notions of distributive justice and the ability of landholders to seek compensation for coal seam gas activities. This presentation highlights the value of examining lawyer perspectives on legislation prior to its enactment, showcasing their role as public policy actors and creators of socio-spatial relations. In arguing about compensation and at what scale it should apply, lawyers attempted to shape the spatial limits of distributive justice. About the speaker Dr David Turton is an Honorary Lecturer with the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University. Prior to commencing his PhD in 2013, David worked for the Commonwealth Department of Veterans’ Affairs, in procurement, research and front-line service delivery roles. Building on his PhD, David’s research is focused on various aspects of Australia’s coal seam gas debate, including the involvement of lawyers and planners in CSG discussions. With undergraduate degrees in History and Law, David has also published on environmental history, public administration and socio-legal research topics. Previous Next

< Back Refugee politics in the Middle East and the Governance of Syria's mass displacement Tamirace Fakhoury, Lebanese American University Tue 21 August 2018 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract Syria’s neighbourhood currently hosts almost 6 million forcibly displaced from Syria. In this context, supranational actors have provided assistance to both refugee and host communities so as to help Syria’s neighbours cope with the refugee quandary. This seminar will review the overarching policy legacies characterizing refugee governance in the Middle East. It will then explore how state actors namely Lebanon and Jordan and key supranational institutional bodies such as the European Union (EU) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) have collaborated but also clashed on the refugee issue, generating ‘governance dilemmas’. The conclusion will show the implications of these dilemmas for the global refugee regime and for the power dynamics in the transregional Mediterranean system. About the speaker Dr. Tamirace Fakhoury is an associate professor in Political Sciences and International Affairs in the Department of Social Sciences, and the associate director of the Institute of Social Justice and Conflict Resolution (ISJCR) . She has furthermore taught at the summer sessions at the University of California in Berkeley between 2012 and 2016. In Fall 2018, Fakhoury will be a visiting fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/ Centre for Global Cooperation Research where she will be carrying out a project on the European Union’s role in the multi-governance of displacement. Her core research and publication areas are: power sharing in divided societies, migration dynamics and governance, Arab states’ coping mechanisms with forced migration, and the role of immigrant communities and diasporas in political transitions. She is member of the core coordination team of the Global Migration Policy Associates in Geneva. Previous Next

< Back Bob Goodin Associate About Bob Goodin has taught Government at the University of Essex, and worked as research professor of Philosophy and Social & Political Theory at Australian National University. He is now jointly Professor of Government at the University of Essex and Distinguished Professor of Social & Political Theory and Philosophy at Australian National University.

< Back Democratic innovations and maxi-publics: Studying the influence of participation possibilities on public perceptions of legitimacy in Finland Maija Jaske, University of Turku Tue 6 March 2018 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract Last decades have witnessed a growing interest in different institutional arrangements that aim to engage citizens directly in the democratic decision-making processes. Citizen juries, citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting and citizens’ initiatives are some examples of these “democratic innovations”. Democratic theorists have recently started to emphasize the role these innovations play in the wider political system. While the potential of deliberation to transform participants is still much valued, the focus has shifted – or at least broadened – to macro-political impacts of deliberation and participation. This presentation zooms into a specific type of macro impacts by asking whether and how the availability of participation possibilities influences maxi-publics. So far, empirical research on democratic innovations has focused on their effects on participating individuals or policy outcomes. It is important, however, that we understand what effects, if any, participatory instruments have on the wider public. Research of procedural fairness suggests that hearing people in decision-making processes contributes to citizens’ evaluations of legitimacy. What all participatory instruments, however, share in common is that tens or hundreds of non-elected citizens represent other citizens – non-participants – in these venues. The emergence of ‘citizen representatives’ raises questions about the legitimacy of participatory instruments and their role in public perceptions of democratic government. Drawing on a study that is part of my Ph.D. dissertation, I distinguish procedural fairness and outcome satisfaction as the main components of perceived legitimacy, and discuss how the availability of participation possibilities could affect these evaluations. The presentation focuses on the case of Finland, and participatory innovations in local government. I analyze survey data from 9022 respondents living in 30 Finnish municipalities that each have a different ‘participatory toolbox’, consisting of instruments such as public hearings, opinion polls, advisory citizen committees, non-binding referendums and deliberative citizen juries. The study combines individual-level survey data on citizens’ attitudes with municipality-level data on municipality characteristics and the state of local democracy, and gives some preliminary empirical findings on the role of participatory instruments for public perceptions of legitimacy in democratic systems. About the speaker Maija Jäske is a Ph.D. Student in Political Science at the University of Turku. She gained her Master’s degree (Political Science) from the University of Turku in 2011, and she was a visiting scholar in the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University in 2014-2015. Her Ph.D. research – supervised by Prof. Maija Setälä – studies the contextual preconditions of participatory instruments, and their consequences for the wider public. In the dissertation, she analyzes large-n data from Finnish local government with statistical methods. She has also conducted research on citizen deliberation experiments and non-binding agenda initiatives, and her articles have appeared in journals such as International Journal of Public Administration and Swiss Journal of Political Research. Her research interests include democratic theory, participatory instruments, procedural fairness and public opinion. Previous Next

< Back Judging technical claims in democratic deliberation: A rhetorical analysis of two Citizens' Initiative Review panels in Oregon John Rountree, University of Houston-Downtown Tue 5 May 2020 11:00am - 12:00pm Virtual seminar Seminar recording is available on our YouTube channel. Abstract Average citizens face difficulty evaluating competing expert claims in the public sphere, and the complexity of policy issues threatens citizens’ autonomy in democratic governance. This study examines how participants in a rigorous deliberative setting judge technical claims. It analyzes audio and transcripts from two intensive mini-public deliberations in the Citizens’ Initiative Review in Oregon. It shows how lay participants in these meetings rhetorically co-construct a standard of verifiability to evaluate expert claims. The study then reflects on what this emergent standard of judgment reveals about the potentials and pitfalls of lay deliberation concerning technical policy issues. About the speaker John Rountree ( rountreej@uhd.edu ) is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Houston-Downtown. He studies democratic deliberation, particularly as it brings together citizens and public officials in the public sphere. His dissertation looks at congressional town hall meetings and the opportunities for deliberative participation in national political life. John received his Ph.D. in Communication from Pennsylvania State University in 2019. Previous Next

< Back Diasporas involved: How Jewish diaspora is involved in constitutional deliberations in Israel Shay Keinan, Australian National University Tue 2 June 2015 11:00am - 12:00pm Fishbowl, Building 24, University of Canberra Abstract Diaspora studies has emerged as a distinct academic field in recent years, focusing on the relationship between dispersed ethnic populations and their countries of origin (“kin-states”). Democratic states face increasing challenges when interacting with these often large and influential groups: How and to what extent can a democracy accommodate the interests of non-citizens who nevertheless maintain a strong connection to the nation kin-state? In this paper I suggest that deliberative democratic theory can be useful in addressing such issues of diaspora involvement. Deliberative processes can enable people in the diaspora to affect the shaping of laws in their kin-states in ways other than voting. One way this can be done is by allowing diaspora representatives to participate in deliberations that take place in Constitutional Courts regarding constitutional matters that are of special relevance to diaspora populations. For concrete examples, I refer to illustrative cases from the Israeli Supreme Court, in which diaspora groups have been involved in deliberations regarding constitutional questions with direct impacts on the Jewish diaspora, their relationship with the state of Israel and the rights of Israel’s minorities. About the speaker Shay Keinan is a PhD candidate at the ANU College of Law, he holds an LLB degree (magna cum laude) from Tel Aviv University and an LLM degree from the University of Hamburg, Bologna University and the University of Manchester. Previous Next

< Back Building international epistemic authority: The case of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Kari De Pryck, University of Geneva Tue 26 February 2019 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which produces regular assessment of the state of the knowledge on climate change, is a controversial object of study. While it has become a model of expertise for some (the IPBES was established following a call for an IPCC for biodiversity), others have been more critical of its work (as illustrated in the debate that followed Climategate and the errors found in its Fourth Assessment Report). In this talk, I discuss the construction of the authority of the IPCC in situations of controversy and its institutionalisation unprecedented among the global environmental assessments. First, I draw on a historical ethnography of the governance of the IPCC to discuss the strategies that allowed the organisation to survive in the context of increased scrutiny. Second, I discuss the role of consensus in the construction of the epistemic authority of the organisation. I conclude with a reflexion on the deliberative and reflective features of the IPCC. About the speaker Kari De Pryck just obtained her PhD from the University of Geneva, Switzerland and Sciences Po Paris, France, under the supervision of Géraldine Pflieger and Bruno Latour. She has a background in International Relations and has been introduced to Science and Technology Studies during her stay at the médialab at Sciences Po Paris (2013-2015). She is currently a teaching assistant at the Global Studies Institute in Geneva where she teaches seminars in the field of international relations and controversy mapping. In her thesis (Expertise under Controversy: the case of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)), she investigated the epistemic and institutional transformation of the organisation in situations of controversy using quali-quantitative methods. She is interested in the politics of expert knowledge in international institutions and environmental science-policy interfaces more generally. Previous Next

< Back UPCOMING: DOES FOOD DEMOCRACY MATTER? LINKING THE DELIBERATIVE QUALITY OF SOY AND COFFEE VALUE CHAINS TO ECOLOGICAL 'FOODPRINTS' The global food system is facing a multiple sustainability crisis. Agri-food value chains are among the main drivers of humanity’s overstepping the planetary boundaries related to climate change, loss of biodiversity (genes, species, and habitats) deforestation, soil erosion, water pollution, and nutrient imbalances. At the same time, key food producers like small- and medium-scale farmers are being driven from their land as a result of expanding extractivist resource use and highly asymmetric market access. Among the root causes of the global food system’s sustainability crisis are the multidimensional and increasingly asymmetric power relations – defined as the uneven capacity to influence goals, processes, and outcomes of governance – between the actors involved. Peasant communities, family farmers, rural workers, women, small-scale traders, artisanal food processors, and resource-poor consumers remain widely excluded from the decision-making processes through which agri-food value chains are governed. Deliberation – citizens’ political conversation and collective decision-making – has been described as a “partial antidote” to unequal power relations and as an important lever for rendering decision-making less power-driven. Democracy research argues that deliberation brings to the fore public goods and society’s ecological interests. However, empirical knowledge supporting these claims in the context of food and agriculture is scarce. This research aims at understanding whether and how deliberation affects ecological outcomes (“foodprints”) of soy and coffee value chains and power asymmetries among their key actors. Specific aims are to (1) determine the deliberative quality of selected agri-food value chains; (2) understand the implications of varying degrees of deliberation for power relations among key actors; (3) assess the selected agri-food value chains’ ecological foodprints; and (4) determine how deliberative quality relates to power asymmetries and ecological foodprints. We take a mixed-methods approach in four interlinked research streams: (1) Deliberative quality, comprising analysis of soy and coffee value chains and their key actors, institutional analysis, and discourse analysis to determine deliberative spaces and deliberative quality, and (2) Power asymmetries, focusing on whether and how the deliberative quality of agri-food value chains affects power asymmetries from key actors’ perspective – with semi-structured interviews, participant observation, focus groups, and document review applied in both streams; (3) Ecological foodprints, comprising life cycle inventories to measure the selected value chains’ resource use intensity, land use, deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste/nutrient management, using semi-structured interviews, participant observation, as well as document and database review; and (4) Integration, applying process tracing to infer causal relationships between deliberative quality, power asymmetries, and ecological foodprints. BIO Dr. Johanna Jacobi is an Assistant Professor for Agroecological Transitions at ETH Zürich. She studied Geography, Biology and Social Anthropology. Her master thesis investigated wastewater-irrigated agrobiodiversity in peri-urban agriculture in Hyderabad, India. For her PhD studies at the University of Bern, she conducted research on the resilience of cocoa farms in Bolivia to climate change. In a post-doctoral project at UC Berkeley, she focused on agroforestry in Bolivia, where she then lived and worked in a transdisciplinary action- research project for several years. Her research focuses on agroecology as a transformative science, a practice and a social movement, and on power relations in food systems with approaches and methods from political ecology. Johanna Jacobi is also a member of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology (SOCLA). Previous Next

Latest News - Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance < Back Tackling far-right extremism: Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Jordan McSwiney, gets among the experts Congratulations to our Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Jordan McSwiney. Jordan has been accepted into the Younger Fellow Visiting Program at the Centre for Research on Extremism (C-REX), located at the University of Oslo. Launched in 2016, C-REX is a cross-disciplinary centre for the study of right-wing extremism, hate crime and political violence. Jordan will join leading scholars in this highly topical subject and will present his work on far-right violent extremism and political parties during his fellowship. Asked what he is most looking forward to during the fellowship, Jordan said that he is keen to learn more about the aftermath of the July 2011 attacks and its impact on Norwegian society. His residency at the centre may also provide insights into the indicators of democratic resilience for other communities around the world and will be a great opportunity to build ties that could strengthen our centre’s own Democratic Resilience Project.

< Back MAPPING DEMOCRATIC INNOVATIONS IN PARTICIPEDIA ABSTRACT This presentation proposes a new analytical approach to classifying democratic innovations based on prototypical radial categorization. The proposed categorization strategy is empirically evaluated on real-world democratic innovations drawn from Participedia, the largest crowdsourcing platform in democratic innovation. Participedia database is analyzed through multiple factor analysis (MFA) and hierarchical clustering on principal components (HCPC). The analysis highlights four clusters that are a subset of two main groups that coincide with the normative categorization of participatory and deliberative democracy. BIO Francesco Veri is a Swiss National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. Previous Next

< Back Owning the Street: The everyday life of property Amelia Thorpe, UNSW Law Tue 18 May 2021 11:15am - 12:15pm Building 24, University of Canberra / Virtual Seminar Seminar recording is available on our YouTube channel. Abstract Drawing on a recently-published monograph, Owning the Street: The Everyday Life of Property (MIT Press, 2020), this paper examines everyday experiences of and feelings about property and belonging in contemporary cities. It is grounded in an empirical study of PARK(ing) Day, an annual event that reclaims street space from cars. A highly recognizable example of DIY urbanism, PARK(ing) Day has attracted considerable media attention, but not close scholarly examination. Focusing on the event's trajectories in San Francisco, Sydney, and Montréal, Owning the Street addresses this gap, making use of extensive fieldwork to explore these tiny, temporary, and yet often transformative urban interventions. PARK(ing) Day is based on a creative interpretation of the property producible by paying a parking meter. Paying a meter, the event's organizers explained, amounts to taking out a lease on the space; while most “lessees” use that property to store a car, the space could be put to other uses—engaging politics (a free health clinic for migrant workers, a same sex wedding, a protest against fossil fuels) and play (a dance floor, giant Jenga, a pocket park). Through this novel rereading of everyday regulation, PARK(ing) Day provides an example of the connection between belief and action—a connection at the heart of the book’s argument. Owning the Street examines ways in which local, personal, and materially grounded understandings about belonging, ownership, and agency intersect with law to shape the city. The analysis offers insights into the ways in which citizens can shape the governance of urban space, particularly in contested environments. About the speaker Amelia Thorpe is Associate Professor in Law at the University of New South Wales. Previous Next

Selen A. Ercan, Jordan McSwiney, John S. Dryzek, and Peter Balint < Back Building Democratic Resilience: Public Sphere Responses to Extremism Investigator(s): Selen A. Ercan, Jordan McSwiney, John S. Dryzek, and Peter Balint Project Description How should the public sphere institutions and actors respond to the threats posed by the violent extremism? Drawing on the theory and practice of deliberative democracy, this project seeks to develop a framework for assessing and improving the public sphere responses to violent extremism in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. It seeks to explain how ‘democratic resilience’ differs from and supplements ‘community resilience’, which is the current resilience framework used by the NSW Government. The project will provide practical recommendations for public servants, policy makers and the journalists working to develop strategies for tackling violent extremism. While the primary focus of the project is NSW Government CVE practice, the project takes a broader approach and engages with both national and international practice in tackling violent extremism. The project is funded by the NSW Government, Premier and Cabinet, Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Program 2022. Project Outputs Ercan, S. A., McSwiney, J., Balint, P., and Dryzek, J. S. (2022). Building Democratic Resilience: Public Sphere Responses to Violent Extremism . Technical Report for Department of Premier and Cabinet, NSW, Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Program. Public Engagement Ercan, S.A, McSwiney, J., and Balint, P. (2022) Learning Democratic Resilience. Preliminary Findings and Recommendations , NSW Government, Department of Premier and Cabinet, Connected Communities, 23 March (virtual). Ercan, S.A. (2022) Deliberative Democracy: Theory and Practice, NSW Government, Department of Premier and Cabinet, Connected Communities, 19 May (virtual). Ercan, S.A., McSwiney, J., Balint, P., and Dryzek, J. (2022) Learning Democratic Resilience , NSW Government Stakeholders, Department of Premier and Cabinet, Connected Communities, 8 June (virtual). Balint, P., McSwiney, J. and Ercan, S.A. (2022) Learning Democratic Resilience , Resilient Democracy for Resilient Communities, Charles Sturt University, Sydney, 23 August. Ercan, S.A., McSwiney, J., Balint, P. (2022) Contemporary Threats to the Public Sphere , Panel at the Australian Political Studies Association General Conference, Australian National University, Canberra, 26-28 September. McSwiney, J., Ercan, S.A. and Balint, P. (2022) Report Launch and Panel Discussion: Building Democratic Resilience , Freilich Project for the Study of Bigotry , Australian National University, Canberra, 13 October. Recording available here . McSwiney, J. (2022) Future Flux , Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Canberra, 17 October. McSwiney, J. (2022) Democratic Resilience: Public Sphere Responses to Violent Extremism , Threat Briefing Webinar #14 , Charles Sturt University, 27 October (virtual). McSwiney, J., Ercan, S.A, Balint, P., and Dryzek, J. (2022) Building Democratic Resilience: How the Public Sphere Responses to Violent Extremism . AVERT Research Symposium , Deakin University, Melbourne, 21-22 November. Ercan, S.A. and McSwiney, J. (2023) Building Democratic Resilience, Connected Communities—Strengthening Social Cohesion and Democratic Resilience , NSW Government, Department of Premier and Cabinet, Sydney, 16 March (virtual).