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< Back Rhetorics of expertise and local knowledge in citizens' juries on wind farm development Sara Drury, Wabash College Tue 7 May 2019 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract Today’s global political environment increasingly faces issues that spark tensions between expertise and local knowledge. Socio-scientific issues draw attention towards this tension, as they require negotiation across and through multiple modes of evidence. Democratic innovations, such as deliberative citizens’ juries, been proposed as a means of managing these tensions and as a way of creating representative, fairer decision making. But there are questions around participatory processes, the utilization of expertise, and deliberative quality. The 2013-2014 “Citizens’ juries on wind farm development in Scotland” offers an opportunity to examine how different types of evidence impact deliberative quality in participatory public deliberation. Using transcripts from the citizens’ juries on wind farm development, this paper analyzes arguments from expertise and arguments from experiences. Through a critical-interpretative research methodology utilizing theories of argumentation, we demonstrate how arguments relating to scientific evidence prominently functioned as de facto reasoning whereas arguments with economic evidence more prominently interacted with local knowledge, experiences, and engagement. The findings offer implications for deliberative design to improve and promote deliberative quality. About the speaker Sara A. Mehltretter Drury, Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Chair of Rhetoric at Wabash College, a liberal arts college in Indiana, U.S.A. She also serves as Director of Wabash Democracy and Public Discourse, an interdisciplinary initiative that partners with communities to hold dialogue and deliberation events. Drury’s research focuses on the intersections of rhetoric and deliberative democracy, with particular attention to argumentation and political judgment. From 2017-2018, she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Previous Next

< Back Representing the disadvantaged? Conceptions of representation in a citizens' jury in Switzerland Alexander Geisler, University of Geneva Tue 18 February 2020 11:00am - 12:00pm Crackenback, NSW Abstract While referendums and initiatives are part and parcel of Swiss direct democracy, democratic innovations based on random selection remain underexplored. One such example are Citizens’ Juries assessing popular votes and informing fellow voters via a summary statement, as in the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR). Fishkin (2018, 2013) has suggested that citizens bring mostly their own interests to the table in larger types of such deliberative gatherings. Challenging this finding, evidence collected from a Swiss pilot CIR in the municipality of Sion involving twenty randomly selected voters’ points to more complex perceptions of whom panelists perceive to represent. The participants reported that they had also represented disadvantaged groups inside and outside their political jurisdiction when discussing an upcoming popular initiative on affordable housing. This suggests that conceptions of representation on part of the panelists in a minipublic and particularly in the CIR may be more complex than previously assumed. Crucially, panelists taking stances of other groups may affect existing shortcomings of inclusion and representation occurring in minipublics of small size. About the speaker Since November 2018, Alexander worked as a PhD candidate at the University of Geneva in the project “A non-populist theory of direct democracy”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation under supervision of Professor Nenad Stojanovic. The project involves conducting two CIR-like mini-public pilots in Switzerland. He earned his Master of Arts in Empirical Political and Social Research (2018) at the University of Stuttgart. After graduation, he worked at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Stuttgart as a research and teaching assistant. During this period, he was involved in two projects: creating a database to track participatory processes in the municipalities of South-West Germany and managing an online network of universities that engage in research on civic participation. His research interests are in the fields of deliberative democracy, political behaviour, the theory and practice of democratic innovations, and social cognition. Previous Next

< Back Operationalizing democratic listening Mary F (Molly) Scudder, Purdue University Tue 5 November 2019 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract In order to capture the epistemic, ethical, or democratic benefits of deliberation, people must listen to one another. In fact, listening is constitutive of the deliberative act. Therefore, finding ways to evaluate listening is essential to the project of deliberative democracy. In this paper, I consider how to measure the act of listening in small-scale face-to-face deliberative encounters. Specifically, I tackle the observational challenge of measuring the act of listening itself, as opposed to listening outcomes. Prior work measures listening by focusing on narrow constructs like aural recall, or by emphasizing the outcomes we hope listening might bring about, such as responsiveness. I show that each of these measures, in isolation, is inadequate and fails to capture the most democratically meaningful aspects of listening. I go on to explain, however, that these measures can be usefully combined into a lexical scale that captures different degrees of, or steps toward democratic listening. I also propose new measures to include within such an index, including the perception of speakers themselves, whether they feel as if others have listened to them. About the speaker Dr. Mary F (Molly) Scudder is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Purdue University. She received her PhD from the University of Virginia. She specializes in democratic theory, especially practices of citizenship and the conditions of meaningfully democratic deliberation in contexts of deep difference. She has published articles in Polity and Political Studies and is currently wrapping up work on a book investigating how citizen listening can move deliberation in the direction of greater democracy. Previous Next

< Back EROSION OF DEMOCRACY AND DEMOCRATIC RESILIENCE ABSTRACT Research on erosion of democracy has blossomed during the last decade. Much less scholarly attention has been devoted to the issue of democratic resilience. But how can we understand democratic resilience? How can we conceptualize it? What role do institutions, actors and structural factors play? I sketch three potential reactions of resilient democratic regimes to erosion of democracy: to withstand without changes, to adapt through internal changes, and to recover without losing the democratic character of its regime and its core institutions, organizations and procedures.. BIO Wolfgang Merkel is Prof. of Political Science at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) and Senior Scholar of the Democracy Institute at Central European University in Budapest. He is i.a. a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and a Prof. em. At Humboldt University of Berlin. Previous Next

Latest News - Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance < Back Our Senior Research Fellow, Dr Hans Asenbaum, has published his new book 'The Politics of Becoming' 21 Sept 2023 A hearty congratulations to Dr Hans Asenbaum from the Centre for his new (open access) publication with Oxford University Press, The Politics of Becoming – Anonymity and Democracy in the Digital Age . The book focuses on practical solutions to the problems of discrimination and identity confinement in political participation. Throughout the book, Dr Asenbaum hopes to facilitate an interdisciplinary exchange between different academic disciplines and different strands of democratic theory. Dr Asenbaum has been intrigued by questions about participatory and radical democracy for a long time. In particular, the role of our identities and how when come together to do politics, we judge each other on our looks. With a desire to understand and question this, Dr Asenbaum developed a curiosity about the role of anonymity in democracy. He purposefully asks, ‘What happens if we can't tell each other's race, gender, sexuality, class, age etc.?’ He began exploring this question at the University of Westminster during his PhD, under the supervision of Professor Graham Smith . The result of this investigation is his new book: ‘The Politics of Becoming’, which provides an in-depth analysis and theorization of anonymity in democratic participation. When asked about the journey to this point, an elated Dr Asenbaum remarked “my thesis builds the foundation for this book, and it has been a 10-year process from initiation to publication. It has been quite a journey, and I could not be happier about the result and the wonderful people I met on the way and who are all part of this project.” Dr Asenbaum’s book strengthens our research in the areas of citizens engagement , identity politics and democratic theory .

< Back Anne Nygaard Jedzini PhD Candidate About Anne Nygaard Jedzini is a PhD researcher on power-sharing at Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at University of Canberra. She is the recipient of the Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative 2021 PhD Scholarship. Anne is the former Vice Mayor and Councillor of the City of Aarhus in Denmark where she held public office from 2014-2018. The City of Aarhus is her Danish hometown and where she is originally from. Anne is currently elected as the Australian Political Studies Association Postgraduate Caucus representative and is a member of the Australian Political Studies Association's Executive Committee. She is also currently appointed as the HDR member on the External Review Panel for the Faculty for Business, Government & Law at University of Canberra. For her PhD, Anne examines how power is shared, exercised and experienced, and to what extent power-sharing has deliberative dimensions in deliberative and participatory processes (democratic innovations) in Australian local governments. More specifically, her PhD examines the democratic, political and institutional conditions for power-sharing through deliberation between councillors and community members in a comparative case study of three Australian local government councils. She is set to complete her PhD by June, 2024. Anne has extensive experience from Danish politics. As Vice Mayor, she served as political member of five committees. Two of these committees were deliberative co-creation task committees with both councillors and relevant members of the public. During her time in public office, Anne focused on how members of the community could have more direct impact on public policymaking. She also focused on how to create the best possible conditions for startups, entrepreneurs and small business owners. Throughout her time in Danish politics, Anne ran multiple political bipartisan campaigns. These campaigns sought to bring different perspectives, lived-experiences and worldviews together over issues such as lack of democratic participation, enablement of young people's voices and gender inequality in local government politics. Much of her research interests stem from her lived-experience with power, democratic innovations and policymaking in Denmark. Anne's research interests include power and power-sharing in institutions/organisations, democratic innovations, deliberative/participatory democracy, political leadership, Australian politics and qualitative research methods. PhD supervisors Nicole Curato (Primary Supervisor) Selen Ercan (Secondary Supervisor) Academic Experience 01.07.2023-present. Job Title: Academic Tutor in Power and Policymaking . Organisation: Griffith School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University, Australia. Responsibility: Academic tutor and marker for a total of thirty undergraduate students in the unit, Power and Policymaking , throughout trimester 2. 01.08.2021-present. Job Title: Academic Tutor in Political Leadership . Organisation: Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra, Australia. Responsibility : Academic tutor and marker for a total of forty undergraduate students in the unit, Political Leadership , throughout semester 2. 01.02.2022-01.12.2022. Job Title: Academic Tutor in Introductions to Politics and Government . Organisation: Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra, Australia. Responsibility: Academic tutor and marker for a total of forty undergraduate students in the unit, Introductions to Politics and Government , throughout semester 1 and 2. 01.08.2021-01.12.2022. Job Title: Academic Tutor in Investigating and Explaining Society . Organisation: Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra, Australia. Responsibility : Academic tutor and marker for a total of sixty undergraduate students in the unit, Investigating and Explaining Society , throughout semester 2. 01.03.2021-01.07.2021. Job Title: Event Manager on Australian Citizens’ Jury on Genome Editing . Organisation: Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra, Australia. Responsibility: Event manage the research project Australian Citizens’ Jury on Genome Editing which was also a three-day event held at the Museum of Australian Democracy from June 17-20, 2021. 01.08.2020-31.12.2020. Job Title: Senior Research Assistant on “Network Analysis of Emissions of Transport and Gas Users in the ACT.” Organisation: Griffith University, Australia. Responsibility: Identify key transport emission stakeholders in the ACT to determine their carbon footprint. Professional Experience 01.02.2019-01.08.2020. Job Title: Sales and Business Development Director. Organisation: Suncil International ApS, Australia. Responsibility: Develop market strategy across Australia through strategic business development. 01.04.2018-01.02.2019. Job Title: Business Developer. Organisation: Suncil International ApS, Denmark. Responsibility: Stakeholder management of customers and business partners in EU and MENA region. Public Office 01.01.2014-01.01.2018. Job Title: Vice Mayor and Councillor: Political member of The Committee of Volunteering and Co-creation Political member of The Committee of Co-Citizenship Political member of The Committee of Finance Political member of The Committee of Children and Young People Political member of The Committee of Gender Equality and Diversity Organisation: Aarhus Municipality, Denmark. Responsibility: Preside over the political governance of the City of Aarhus through evidence-based policy decisions. Non-Peer Reviewed Publications Jedzini, Anne Nygaard. 2023. Politicians must share deliberative power to increase legitimacy. Type of Publication: Blog article published March 16, 2023 in the European Consortium’s Political Science Research blog, The Loop. Journal Articles under Peer Review Jedzini, Anne Nygaard. 2021. How do city council politicians facilitate co-creation? Evidence from Australia and Denmark. Type of Publication: Empirical journal article submitted November 15, 2021 in the Australian Journal of Political Science. Author Statement: I undertook an interpretivist empirical study of in-depth interviews with sixteen Danish and Australian city council politicians. I specifically explored what motivates city council politicians to practice and participate in co-creation processes, what societal stakeholders are included in co-creation processes and what the similarities and differences of co-creation processes are in Danish and Australian local governments in urban and regional areas. I recruited the research participants through my own political networks, transcribed the audio files of the interviews, wrote the interviews up in an analytical table, and did a thematic analysis of the research data against my main and sub-research questions. Academic Conferences 20.06.2022-22.06.2022. Title: Jedzini, Anne Nygaard. 2021. How do city council politicians understand and facilitate co-creation? An explorative study of Australian and Danish local governments. Organisation: Deliberative Democracy and Public Opinion Summer School, Turku, Finland. Details: Deliberative democracy conference with participation of deliberative democracy scholars from across the world. 09.06.2022-11.06.2022. Title: Jedzini, Anne Nygaard. 2021. How do city council politicians understand and facilitate co-creation? An explorative study of Australian and Danish local governments. Organisation: The Transatlantic Dialogue 16, Roskilde, Denmark. Details: Public administration conference with participation of American and European public administration scholars. 16.02.2022-17.02.2022. Title: Jedzini, Anne Nygaard. 2021. How do city council politicians understand and facilitate co-creation? Evidence from Australia and Denmark. Organisation: Australian Political Studies Association, Brisbane, Australia. Details: POP (Political Organisations & Participation) 2022 Workshop for emerging political science scholars in Australia. Presentations 21.02.2023. Title: Jedzini, Anne Nygaard. 2023. Democratic Innovations: From Aarhus to ACT. Organisation: City Renewable Authority, ACT Government and International Association for Public Participation Australasia, Canberra, Australia. Details: ‘Engaging in our city’ IAP2 Local Network breakfast event with participation of three speakers and sixty engagement practitioners from the public, private and civic sector in the ACT. Scholarships and Prizes 09.11.2021. Prize: Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning for the Investigating and Explaining Society unit team. Organisation: University of Canberra Teaching Excellence Awards and Citations, University of Canberra. 23.02.2021. Scholarship: Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative 2021 PhD Scholarship. Organisation: Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra. Academic Administration 01.04.2023-present. Title: Research Student Member. Organisation: External Review Panel for the University of Canberra Faculty for Business, Government & Law, Australia. 01.12.2022-present. Title: Postgraduate Caucus Representative. Organisation: Australian Political Studies Association Executive Committee, Australian Political Studies Association, Australia. 01.03.2022-31.01.2023. Title: Higher Degree by Research Representative. Organisation: Graduate Research Committee, University of Canberra, Australia. 01.09.2020-31.12.2020. Title: Student Advisory Board Member. Organisation: The School of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Australia. 01.01.2020-31.12.2020. Title: Master Student Board Member. Organisation: The Academic Board, La Trobe University, Australia. Political Advisory 26.07.2022-28.07.2022. Title: Political intern for Dr. Helen Haines MP Independent Member for Indi. Organisation: House of Representatives, Parliament of Australia, Australia. 01.08.2021-01.06.2022. Title: Deliberative Democracy Expert. Organisation: Kim for Canberra Party, Australia. 01.08.2016-01.12.2016. Title: Campaign Organiser. Organisation: The Danish Social Liberal Party’s U.S. Election Volunteer Team, Denmark. 01.01.2015-01.12.2016. Title: Political Advocate. Organisation: Danes for Hillary, Denmark. Research Interests Deliberative/participatory democracy Democratic/political institutions Democratic innovations Public administration Public governance Political leadership Australian politics Qualitative research methods

< Back Jordan McSwiney Senior Research Fellow About Jordan McSwiney is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. He completed his PhD at The University of Sydney in 2021. Jordan’s research focuses on the far right, with a particular focus on their communication and organisation. His work has been published in Information, Communication & Society, New Media & Society, and Patterns of Prejudice , among others. He is the author of Far-right political parties in Australia: Disorganisation and electoral failure (Routledge). At the Centre, Jordan is working on the project ‘Democratic Resilience: The Public Sphere and Extremist Attacks’ (Discovery Project, funded by Australian Research Council, 2021-25) Key Publications McSwiney, J. (2024). Far-right political parties in Australia: Disorganisation and electoral failure . Routledge. McSwiney, J., & Sengul, K. (2024). Humour, ridicule, and the far right: Mainstreaming exclusion through online animation . Television and New Media , 25(4), 315-333. Jasser, G., McSwiney, J., Pertwee, E., & Zannettou, S. (2023). ‘ Welcome to #GabFam’: Far-right virtual community on Gab . New Media & Society, 25 (7), 1728–1745. McSwiney, J., Vaughan, M. Heft, A., & Hoffman., M. (2021). Sharing the hate? Memes and transnationality in the far right’s digital visual culture . Information, Communication & Society , 24 (16) 2502-2521. McSwiney, J. (2021). Social networks and digital organisation: Far right parties at the 2019 Australian federal election .  Information, Communication & Society , 24 (10), 1401-1418. A full list of Jordan McSwiney’s publications is available here . Public Engagement Australian efforts on Islamophobia flag despite Christchurch wake-up call . Al Jazeera . 2024, March 15. Recovering the ‘Aryan worldview’: the Western Australian book publisher under scrutiny over far-right texts . The Guardian . 2024, January 15 “It’s just a joke”: why we need to pay attention to far-right humour . RightNow! Blog, Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX). 2024, January 8. Why it’s so hard to stop neo-Nazi public hate parades . The Age . 2023, November 12. Far-right groups targeting young people, inquiry finds . The Age . 2022, August 30. Right-wing parties line up for make-or-break Victorian state election . The New Daily . 2022, 22 June. Dr Jordan McSwiney on One Nation & Western Civilisation . Yeah Nah Pasaran! 2022, 9 June. Labor and the Liberals are waging an election meme war – but what is the point? The Guardian . 2022, May 1. Visiting Appointments 2023 - Visiting Fellow. Centre for Research on Extremism (C-REX), University of Oslo, Norway. 2020 - Research Fellow, Digitalisation and the Transnational Public Sphere, Wizenbaum Institute, Berlin, Germany 2019 - Doctoral Fellow, WZB Berlin, Berlin, Germany

< Back Genevieve Johnson Associate About Genevieve Fuji Johnson studies and teaches democratic theory, feminist political thought, interpretive approaches to policy analysis, and a range of current public policy issues. She is a Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, Canada.

< Back Deliberative ecologies: Viewing deliberative systems as complex systems Jonathan Pickering, University of Canberra Tue 12 June 2018 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract The ‘systemic turn’ in deliberative democratic theory has yielded valuable insights on how individual sites of deliberation – from parliamentary debates to citizens’ juries and community meetings – interact as parts of a broader deliberative system. This body of work invokes selected ideas from transdisciplinary research on systems, such as the notion that a system as a whole may have characteristics that cannot be reduced to those of its parts. However, there is much more in the broader repertoire of systems/complexity theory that could shed light on how deliberative systems operate and how they could be improved. In this paper I identify several features of complex systems that are relevant for understanding deliberative systems, including feedback loops and non-linear dynamics. I then show how two nascent concepts in research on deliberative systems – ‘deliberative ecologies’ (Mansbridge et al 2012) and ‘deliberative networks’ (Knops 2016) – could be elaborated through a complex systems lens. 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

< Back Deliberative Minipublics: Core Design Features Curato, N., Farrell D., Geißel, B., Grönlund, K., Mockler, P., Renwick, A., Rose, J., Setälä, M. and Suiter, J. 2021 , Bristol Policy Press Summary Bringing together ten leading researchers in the field of deliberative democracy, this important book examines the features of a Deliberative Mini-Public (DMP) and considers how DMPs link into democratic systems. It examines the core design features of DMPs and their role in the broader policy process and takes stock of the characteristics that distinguish them from other forms of citizen participation. In doing so, the book offers valuable insights into the contributions that DMPs can make not only to the policy process, but also to the broader agenda of revitalising democracy in contemporary times. Read more Previous Next

Research Intern < Back Nitya Reddy Research Intern About Nitya Reddy examined international best practices in countering violent extremism to inform recommendations for government agencies and civil society organizations involved in countering violent extremism in Australia. She joined the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance in 2022 as a research intern. Nitya is studying a Bachelor’s Degree in Politics and International Relations.

Former PhD student < Back Michael Rollens Former PhD student About Michael completed his dissertation entitled ‘Theory of Analytic Journalism’ in 2014 at the Australian National University. He was supervised by David West with the assistance of John Dryzek and Simon Niemeyer.

Latest News - Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance < Back Deliberative Democracy PhD Scholarship 20 Jan 2023 Location: Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra Scholarship Start: July 2023 Application deadline: 10 April 2023 Scholarship duration: Three and a half years Stipend rate: $1,153.85 per fortnight plus a relocation allowance to move to Canberra. Eligibility: To be eligible for the scholarship, an applicant must: have completed a Bachelor degree with First Class Honours, or be regarded by the University as having an equivalent level of attainment); be enrolled, or seeking to enrol, as a full-time candidate in a PhD at the University; and be an Australian or New Zealand citizen; or an Australian permanent resident; or an international student eligible to study in Australia on an international student visa. Application documents: PhD proposal (up to 3 pages) outlining proposed area of research and its connection to Centre’s work, CV (with academic results), Names and contact details of 2 academic referees, Writing sample (chapter or a paper/essay). Admission application procedure and deadlines: To apply, please send your complete application documents to hans.asenbaum@canberra.edu.au latest by 10 April 2023 (11.59pm AEST) . Successful applicant will be informed latest by 15 April 2023 by the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance. Successful applicant must submit an Expression of Interest and a HDR Admission Application by 30 April 2023 (11.59pm AEST). Please see information on How to Apply . The Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance is a world-leading research institution aiming to transform democracies to become more inclusive, participatory, and sensitive to good reasons. The Deliberative Democracy PhD scholarship is designed for a student to research any topic related to the Centre’s work. Interested applicants should consult the Centre’s website for a sense of the kinds of research undertaken in the Centre, and whether their project might fit: https://www.canberra.edu.au/research/centres/cddgg Potential primary supervisors are Dr Hans Asenbaum , Prof John Dryzek and Prof Simon Niemeyer . The research topic of PhD projects will fall broadly within the field of deliberative democracy. Possible topics include, but are not limited to democratic transformation, environmental politics, global governance, political communication, identity, inclusion, digital politics, democracy in crisis, deliberative reasoning, deliberative systems, democratic innovations, gender, feminist research, social movements, and participatory research methods. Projects in democratic theory and/or using qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods, as well as multidisciplinary projects are welcome. Inquires: Please direct any questions or requests for more information to hans.asenbaum@canberra.edu.au .

< Back Public support for citizens' assemblies selected through sortition: Survey and experimental evidence from 15 countries Jean-Benoit Pilet (Universite libre de Bruxelles) and Damien Bol (King's College London) Tue 16 March 2021 8:00pm-9:00pm Virtual seminar Abstract As representative democracies are increasingly criticized, a new institution is becoming popular in academic circles and real-life politics: asking a group of citizens selected by lot to deliberate and formulate policy recommendations on some contentious issues. Although there is much research on the functioning of such citizens’ assemblies, there are only few about how the population perceives them. We explore the sources of citizens’ attitudes towards this institution using a unique representative survey from 15 European countries. We find that those who are less educated, as well as those with a low sense of political competence and an anti-elite sentiment, are more supportive of it. Support thus comes from the ‘enraged’, rather than the ‘engaged’. Further, we use a survey experiment to show that support for citizens’ assemblies increases when respondents know that their fellow citizens share the same opinion than them on some issues. About the speakers Jean-Benoit Pilet is professor of political science at Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB, Belgium). He is coordinating the project POLITICIZE. Non-elected politics. Cure or Curse for Representative Democracy? (ERC Consolidator Grant). Within this project, he has worked on public support for deliberative and direct democracy, as well as on technocratic attitudes. He has recently published two articles (with Camille Bedock) on public support for sortition in France and in Belgium: Enraged, engaged, or both? A study of the determinants of support for consultative vs. binding mini-publics (Representation, 2020) and Who supports citizens selected by lot to be the main policymakers? A study of French citizens (Government & Opposition, 2020). Damien Bol is an Associate Professor and Director of the Quantitative Political Economy Research Group in King’s College London. His research lies at the intersection of comparative politics, political behavior, and political economy with a focus on elections. He tries to understand people's experience of representative democracy across countries and political systems. Previous Next

< Back Overcoming fundamental moral disagreement Richard Rowland, Australian Catholic University Tue 20 June 2017 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract Fundamental moral disagreements are moral disagreements that do not derive from disagreements about empirical or non-moral facts. For instance, some hold that torture is always in every instance morally wrong even if the consequences of torturing are better than the consequences of not torturing; others hold that sometimes, when the expected consequences of torturing are good enough (and the expected consequences of not-torturing are bad enough), it can be morally permissible to torture. This disagreement about the morality of torture is a fundamental moral disagreement. Firstly, I will briefly explain how if fundamental moral disagreement persisted in idealized conditions this would have both first-order ethical implications and implications for the nature of morality. Secondly, I will explain how all the research in the literature that purports to give us reasons to believe that there would or would not be fundamental moral disagreement in idealized conditions in fact gives us no reason to believe anything about fundamental moral disagreement in idealized conditions. Thirdly, I will sketch how a deliberative poll and Q-study that I will be conducting with Selen Ercan, David Killoren, and Lucy Parry may shed light on the extant of fundamental moral disagreement that would persist in idealized conditions and whether fundamental moral disagreements differ from other moral and political disagreements. About the speaker Richard Rowland is a permanent research fellow in moral philosophy at the Australian Catholic University. He works on ethics and metaethics, specifically on the nature of normativity and value, and on moral disagreement. He has published work in journals including Ethics, Noûs, Philosophical Studies, and Philosophical Quarterly. Previous Next

< Back Negotiating sisterhood in the Pacific region: Feminist alliances across diversity Jane Alver, University of Canberra Tue 1 December 2020 11:00am - 12:00pm Virtual seminar Seminar recording is available on our YouTube channel . Abstract This seminar presentation covers my recently completed PhD research conducted at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, in which I sought to understand how civil society actors in the Pacific can build diverse feminist alliances and a shared voice. I undertook an in-depth exploration of two recent initiatives aimed at forming Pacific feminist regional alliances; The Pacific Feminist Forum and the We Rise Coalition. Drawing on interviews, a focus group, and participant observation, I will present various insights of the research on a ‘negotiated sisterhood’ and explain how it is enacted in the Pacific. This concept helps to capture the dynamic and diverse nature of the feminism and feminist activities in the region and is relevant to scholars in social movement studies, alliance building and gender studies About the speaker Jane Alver is PhD Candidate at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy. Her research focuses on Pacific feminist civil society. Previous Next

< Back SCIENCE FACTIONALISM: HOW GROUP IDENTITY LANGUAGE AFFECTS PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT WITH CONTROVERSIAL SCIENCE ON A POPULAR Q&A DIGITAL PLATFORM IN CHINA ABSTRACT Misinformation and outgroup bias language are two pathologies challenging informed citizenship. This paper examines how identity language is used in misinformation and debunking messages about controversial science on a Chinese popular Q&A platform, and their impact on how the public engage with science. We collected an eight-year time series dataset of public discussion (N=40,101) on one of the most controversial science issues in China (GMO) from a popular digital Q&A platform, Zhihu. We found that both misinformation and debunking messages use a substantial amount of group identity languages about a controversial science issue, which we term as the phenomenon of science factionalism – discussion about science is divided by factions that are formed upon science attitudes. We found that posts that use science factionalism receive more digital votes and comments, even among the science-savvy community in China. Science factionalism has consequences on the quality of public discourse, increasing the use of negative language. We discussed the implications of how science factionalism interacts with the digital attention economy to affect public engagement with science misinformation. BIO Kaiping Chen is an Assistant Professor in Computational Communication at University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Life Sciences Communication. She is also a faculty affiliate of the Robert & Jean Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, the Center for East Asian Studies, and the African Studies Program. Chen’s research employs data science and machine learning methods as well as interviews to examine how digital media and technologies affect politicians' accountability to public well-being and how deliberative designs can improve the quality of public discourse on controversial and emerging technologies and mitigate the spread of misinformation and misperception. Chen received Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University, MPA from Columbia University, and bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Fudan University. Chen’s work has been supported by the US National Science Foundation. Her work was published or accepted in flagship journals across disciplines, including American Political Science Review, Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, Public Opinion Quarterly, Public Understanding of Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), and among other peer-reviewed journals. Previous Next

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< Back Deliberative land use planning Hoi Kong, McGill University Tue 6 May 2014 Fishbowl, Building 24, University of Canberra Abstract Scholars have long argued that land use planning processes do not promote meaningful citizen engagement. The project that I will discuss responds to this concern by creating an innovative design institution: the digitally-mediated community-based urban design studio. The interdisciplinary design studio deploys electronic technology to facilitate deliberative democratic participation in land use planning processes, in a borough of Montreal. A current large scale development project that has the potential to significantly affect the stock of affordable housing in the borough is the studio¹s current object of study. Students in law, urban planning and architecture, under the supervision of professors, will generate computer-modelled proposals. The studio will, on a dedicated website, invite comments about these proposals from the community and the resulting comments will be incorporated in subsequent draft proposals. The final proposal that will result from this iterative process will be brought to the attention of the relevant planning authorities for their comments. Towards the end of the project¹s three-year term, the team-members will consult with borough officials, city planners and local community organizations about whether and how procedures based on the studio¹s work might be incorporated into the official land use planning consultation process. This project is being developed in collaboration with the Cornell e-Regulations Initiative, which has developed online consultations with federal agencies, and in the presentation, I will discuss what mutual lessons have been learned from the two projects¹ experiments with developing technological tools of deliberative citizen engagement. About the speaker Hoi Kong teaches and researches in the areas of Constitutional Law, Comparative Law, Administrative Law, and Municipal Law. From 2002 to 2003, he was law clerk to Justices Marie Deschamps and Claire L¹Heureux-Dubé at the Supreme Court of Canada. From 2003 to 2006, he was an Associate-in-Law at Columbia University, and from 2006 to 2009, he was an Assistant Professor of Law, cross-appointed with the School of Urban and Regional Planning, at Queen¹s University. Hoi Kong joined the Faculty of Law of McGill University in August 2009 and he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada. He was named a Hydro-Québec Scholar in Sustainable Development Law in 2012. 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.