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< Back Francesco Veri Associate About Francesco Veri is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Democracy Studies at the University of Zurich , a Postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Geneva and a Research Associate at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra.

< Back Marina Lindell Associate About Marina Lindell's research has focused on citizen deliberation, opinion formation, minorities, political participation, democratic innovations, inter-temporal choices and long-term decision-making, and the role of personality in deliberation. She is a Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Institute at Åbo Akademi University.

< Back Quinlan Bowman Postdoctoral Research Fellow About Quinlan Bowman is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and the Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore).

< Back Protests and Political Engagement Investigator(s): Selen A. Ercan, Ricardo F. Mendonca, Umut Ozguc Funded, by Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, the Project Team includes Selen A. Ercan, Ricardo F. Mendonca and Umut Ozguc Project Description One particularly important event of the beginning of the 21st century has been undoubtedly the cycle of protests crossing frontiers throughout the globe. From Iceland to Hong Kong, and including Tunisia, Egypt, Spain, Greece, the USA, Turkey and Brazil, the recent protest movements were widely noticed due to their size, their transnational dimension and organizational logic. This project aims to study these protest movements with a particular focus on the way they were organized and carried out in Turkey and Brazil in 2013. By drawing on various streams of contemporary democratic theory, the project will investigate: i) the deliberative capacity of these protests; ii) the interplay between conflict and consensus both in theory and practice ; iii) the role of social media and online engagement in the context of recent protests; iv) the symbolic disputes triggered by these protests and the discursive repertoires mobilized in protest performances; v) the type of collective and ‘connective’ action protests generate and their implications in terms of the constitution of political communities.

< Back A Metastudy of Democratic Deliberation: Updating Theory and Practice Investigator(s): Simon Niemeyer, John S. Dryzek, Nicole Curato, Andrè Bächtiger, Marina Lindell, Mark E. Warren, Hannah Barrowman, Francesco Veri, Nardine Alnemr Funded through a Discovery Project (DP180103014) ($526,411), the Project Team includes: Simon Niemeyer, Chief Investigator John S. Dryzek, Chief Investigator Nicole Curato, Chief Investigator Andrè Bächtiger, Partner Investigator Marina Lindell, Partner Investigator Mark E. Warren, Partner Investigator Hannah Barrowman, Postdoctoral Research Fellow Francesco Veri, Postdoctoral Research Fellow Nardine Alnemr, PhD student Project Description The project combines a meta-study and comparative case study to develop a leading edge understanding of political deliberation by analysing and synthesising results from available studies of deliberation. It aims to reconcile conflicting findings and provide the first comprehensive, theoretically-grounded account of defensible claims about political deliberation. The project will compile the source material and findings in a publicly-available database to facilitate standardisation and enhancement of future research in the field. It will seek to settle important questions that remain among deliberative democrats and, more practically, facilitate avenues for democratic reform in an area where the need for renewal is increasingly pressing.

< Back Jean-Paul Gagnon Faculty Affiliate About Jean-Paul Gagnon is a democratic theorist specializing in democracy's linguistic artifacts and the theory of non-human democracy. He edits the Berghahn (Oxford/New York) journal Democratic Theory and the Palgrave Macmillan book series on The Theories, Concepts, and Practices of Democracy. He is director of the nascent Foundation For the Philosophy of Democracy.

< Back Joachim Blatter Associate About Joachim Blatter has published extensively on cross-border institution building in Europe and North America, on environmental politics and on transformations of governance, citizenship and democracy. He is Professor of Political Science at the University of Lucerne (Switzerland).

< 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

< Back Triaging and the deliberative system in Toronto Nick Vlahos, University of Canberra Tue 8 September 2020 11:00am - 12:00pm Virtual seminar Seminar recording is available on our YouTube Channel Abstract This presentation discusses how the deliberative system in Toronto overlaps with political and bureaucratic processes. Scalar and spatial relations set the foundation for outlining three types of public engagement within Toronto’s deliberative system, i.e. a City of Toronto governance committee, residents’ associations, and neighbourhood planning tables. Public engagement in Toronto is discussed as a series of triaging, whereby public deliberation is geared towards problem-sorting. Where there are cross-organizational alliances and supports in place to try and get ahead of problems, they face the larger structures that favour different or rather competing logics and policies supporting private economic and planning development. Given the limited capacities, resources, mandates, and integration in overlapping political and economic processes, public engagement mechanisms that prioritize triaging can only have limited system-level impacts. About the speaker Nick Vlahos is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra, Australia. 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

Past Seminars The Centre holds weekly seminars on important topics in deliberative democracy with leading scholars from Australia and around the world. Tue 7 June 2022 DECOLONIZING DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY Ricardo Mendonca and Hans Asenbaum / 9.00am-10.00am Zoom (please request link from the seminar convenors) Read More Tue 31 May 2022 DECOLONIZING DELIBERATIVE MINI-PUBLICS Azucena Mora and Nicole Curato / 6.00pm - 7.00pm Zoom (please request link from the seminar convenors) Read More Tue 24 May 2022 CENTRE MEETS CENTRE: PARTICIPEDIA AND CDDGG WITH BONNY IBHAWOH Bonny Ibhawoh / 11.00am-12.00pm Zoom (please request link from the seminar convenors) Read More Tue 17 May 2022 WAIT, WHAT? DECOLONIZING DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY? Genevieve Fuji Johnson / 11.00am-12.00pm Zoom (please request link from the seminar convenors) Read More Tue 10 May 2022 NATIVE TITLE AS A DELIBERATIVE SPACE FOR INDIGENOUS SELF-DETERMINATION Justin McCaul / 11.00am-12.00pm Zoom (please request link from the seminar convenors) Read More Tue 3 May 2022 HOW DO SETTLER-COLONIAL INEQUALITIES SHAPE POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR AND COMMUNICATION IN ANGLO-DEMOCRACIES? Edana Beauvais / 9.00am-10.00am Zoom (please request link from the seminar convenors) Read More Tue 26 April 2022 DECOLONIZING DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY Professor Bobby Banerjee / 8.00pm-11.00pm Zoom (please request link from the seminar convenors) Read More Tue 22 March 2022 DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND DIGITAL PLATFORMS:JOHN GASTIL IN CONVERSATION WITH NARDINE ALNEMR John Gastil and Nardine Alnemr / 11.00am-12.00pm Zoom (please request link from the seminar convenors) Read More Tue 15 March 2022 CENTRE MEETS CENTRE: MARGEM AT UFMG Ricardo Mendonca and team / 11.00am-12.00pm Zoom (please request link from the seminar convenors) Read More Tue 1 March 2022 DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND ISSUE POLARISATION: CITIZENS' DEBATES ON ABORTION, RACIAL QUOTAS AND SAME-SEX MARRIAGE IN BRAZIL FROM 2021-2019 Tariq Choucair / 11.00am-12.00pm Zoom (please request link from the seminar convenors) Read More 1 2 3 ... 16 1 ... 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 ... 16

< Back The far-right challenge to democracy Investigator(s): Jordan McSwiney Project description This project examines the varied manifestations of the far right across political parties, social movements, and online platforms in contemporary democracies. It explores the ways far-right groups organise, mobilise, and spread their supremacist ideas. The project aims to generate insights into the challenges the far-right poses to democracy in Australia and abroad, including violent extremism, the undermining of democratic institutions and processes like elections, and the perpetuation (and normalisation) of racism and white supremacy. Project outputs McSwiney, J. (Forthcoming). Far-right political parties in Australia: Disorganisation and electoral failure . Routledge. McSwiney, J., & Sengul, K. (2023). Humour, ridicule, and the far right: Mainstreaming exclusion through online animation . Television and New Media . E-pub ahead of print. 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. Maher, H., Gunaydin, E., & McSwiney, J. (2022). Western civilizationism and white supremacy: The Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation . Patterns of Prejudice , 55 (4), 309-330. McSwiney, J. (2022). Organising Australian Far-Right Parties: Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and Fraser Anning’s Conservative National Party . Australian Journal of Political Science , 80 (1), 37-52. Public engagement (select list) Why it’s so hard to stop neo-Nazi public hate parade . The Age . 2023, November 12. Jenna Price: How do we stop misinformation spreading online? The Canberra Times . 2022, December 16. 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.

< Back Genome Editing: Formulating an Australian Community Response Investigator(s): John S. Dryzek

< 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

< 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

< Back MEASURING EPISTEMIC DELIBERATION ON POLARIZED ISSUES: THE CASE OF ABORTION PROVISION IN IRELAND David Farrell, University College Dublin Tue 5 March 2019 12:00pm – 1:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract This paper compares the debate quality in the plenary sessions of the Irish citizens’ assembly and an Irish parliamentary committee to assess the epistemic effects of public deliberation on a particularly contentious subject – abortion. The unusual occurrence of a similar process of detailed discussion on the same topic in different institutions at around the same time allows us to make real comparisons between the deliberative capacities of these fora. We suggest that the epistemic effect of deliberation on abortion should facilitate nuanced multi-layered discussion that is both ‘deeper’ in being based on multi-faceted arguments and ‘wider’, in terms of a more accommodative view. We anticipate that these effects should be more pronounced in the more deliberative, less polarised, environment of a citizens’ assembly rather than in the parliamentary committee. The analysis deploys the psychological concept of ‘cognitive complexity’. Examining these epistemic standards allow us to judge whether a given deliberative process produces better or worse outcomes from an epistemic rather than purely procedural point of view. We find that experts tend to talk in more cognitively complex ways and that the members of the citizens’ assembly also demonstrate a deeper cognitively complex grasp of the subject matter. In contrast, advocates and parliamentarians tend towards shallower and more narrow patterns. About the speaker Professor Farrell was appointed to the Chair of Politics at University College Dublin in 2009, having returned to Ireland after two decades working at the University of Manchester (where he was Head of Social Sciences). He is currently Head of Politics and International Relations at UCD. In 2013 he was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He has held visiting positions at the Australian National University, Harvard, Mannheim, and the University of California Irvine. A specialist in the study of representation, elections and parties, he has published 19 books and more than 100 articles and book chapters. His most recent books include: Political Parties and Democratic Linkage (Oxford University Press, 2011; paperback 2013), which was awarded the GESIS Klingemann Prize for the Best Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) Scholarship, A Conservative Revolution? Electoral Change in Twenty-First Century Ireland (Oxford University Press, 2017), The Post-Crisis Irish Voter: Voting Behaviour in the Irish 2016 General Election (Manchester University Press, 2018), and The Oxford Handbook of Irish Politics (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). His current work is focused on constitutional deliberation, and in that capacity he was the research director of the Irish Constitutional Convention (2012-14) and the research leader of the Irish Citizens’ Assembly (2016-18). In November 2018 he retired as (founding) co-editor of Party Politics. He is a member of the executive committee of the European Consortium for Political Research. Previous Next

< Back The consensus project and three levels of deliberation Emmanuel Ani, University of Ghana Tue 5 December 2017 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract The basic argument is that the consensus debate has not been very meaningful until now because deliberation as well as issues for deliberation have not been categorized into different levels to expose the varying challenges of reaching common agreement and the kinds of deliberative approaches entailed in each category. The research attempts this categorization. The objective is to further clarify the debate and outline a few implications for further research regarding the viability of making consensus a stopping rule for deliberation. About the speaker Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani is currently a Senior lecturer at the University of Ghana, Legon. He obtained a National Diploma (ND) and a Higher National Diploma (HND) in Mass Communication with Distinction from the Institute of Journalism, Management and Continuing Education, Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT) Consult, a BA in Philosophy from the University of Ibadan, a B. Phil in Philosophy from the Pontificia Università Urbaniana Roma (Urban Pontifical University, Rome), Italy, an MA and a PhD in Philosophy from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nigeria. Awarded best graduating student at graduate and post-graduate levels, he is a member of the Nigerian Philosophical Association. He was editor of Fact Magazine and is co-founder of Teleads Career Services. Previous Next

< Back Australian participatory and deliberative practitioners - what we're learning Helen Christensen, University of Technology Sydney Tue 10 November 2020 11:00am - 12:00pm Virtual seminar Seminar recording is available on our YouTube channel . Abstract This presentation will present findings from a mixed-method study which investigates Australian participatory and deliberative practitioners. These practitioners, who design, deliver and evaluate democratic processes on behalf of public institutions, are uniquely placed – serving both their publics and the organisations that employ or contract them simultaneously. This research explores the tensions they experience in this role and also provides information about who they are – their backgrounds and experience and the approach they take to the work. The research shows that the practitioner cohort is broad and getting broader – a phenomenon which likely has implications for the quality of democratic practice. About the speaker Helen Christensen is an engagement practitioner, trainer and researcher. She is an Industry Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy and Governance at the University of Technology where she recently completed a PhD exploring the practice and professionalisation of community engagement in Australian local government. Helen is the Principal of The Public Engagement Practice, a consultancy focused on building the capabilities of public organisations to design and deliver engagement themselves and she is also an IAP2 trainer. Previous Next

< Back Julien VryDagh Associate About Julien Vrydagh researches the policy impact of mini-publics in Belgium. He conducts case studies to trace the policy influence of mini-publics, and compares Belgian mini-publics with a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis in order to understand the conditions under which they succeed or not in exerting an influence.

< Back Hannah Barrowman Postdoctoral Research Fellow About Hannah Barrowman's research interests include adaptive governance, political ecology, social-ecological systems, environmental and social change and Southeast Asian politics. Hannah also works as a researcher for the Australian Pacific Climate Partnership.