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< 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

Former PhD student < Back John Parkinson 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.

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

< Back Beyond sustainability as usual: Democratising sustainable development for the Anthropocene Jonathan Pickering, University of Canberra Tue 21 November 2017 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract The emergence of the Anthropocene – a new epoch in which humanity exerts a pervasive influence over the Earth system – calls for new conceptions of sustainability that are open to democratic contestation while being grounded in emerging scientific understanding of global environmental risks, including climate change and biodiversity loss. Yet discourses of sustainability are often co-opted by actors whose interests lie in upholding patterns of production and consumption that are neither environmentally nor socially sustainable. This paper (which forms part of a book project co-authored with John Dryzek on The Politics of the Anthropocene) sets out a new framework for understanding sustainability, then applies the framework to analyse the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015. Efforts to craft the SDGs involved a range of consultations whose scope was unprecedented in the UN’s history. We discuss the deliberative strengths and shortcomings of the consultation and negotiation process, and the extent to which the process and the goals themselves offer meaningful responses to global environmental risks. This paper is co-authored with John Dryzek. 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 Peter Bridgewater Adjunct About Peter Bridgewater is an expert in environmental science and management. His expertise spans conservation and biodiversity, natural resource management , ecology, wildlife and habitat management, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander environmental knowledge. His expertise in public and environmental policy has been sought in internationally.

< Back 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

Postdoctoral Research Fellow < Back Hayley Stevenson Postdoctoral Research Fellow About Hayley Stevenson's principal research interests include: global environmental politics and climate change, global civil society, legitimacy in international relations, and deliberative global governance. She is a Reader in Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield.

Research Fellow < Back Hedda Ransan-Cooper Research Fellow About Hedda Ransan-Cooper's research interests include the human dimensions of global environmental change, the theory and practice of sustainable development and the intersections between human mobility and climate change.

Ricardo F. Mendonça, Camilo Aggio, Viktor Chagas, Selen Ercan, Viviane Freitas, Filipe Motta, Rayza Sarmento, Francisco Tavares < Back Deliberative democracy in the face of democratic crisis: Contributions, dilemmas and the ways forward Investigator(s): Ricardo F. Mendonça, Camilo Aggio, Viktor Chagas, Selen Ercan, Viviane Freitas, Filipe Motta, Rayza Sarmento, Francisco Tavares Funded by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development ($15,800 via University of Minas Gerais) Project Description The project seeks to specify the challenges contemporary democracies face and advance the ways deliberative perspective can help address these challenges. Selen Ercan teams up once again with our associate Ricardo F. Mendonça to investigate the context of democratic crisis from a perspective of deliberative democracy.

< Back NATIVE TITLE AS A DELIBERATIVE SPACE FOR INDIGENOUS SELF-DETERMINATION About this event In 1992, the High Court of Australia delivered its historic Mabo v Queensland (No 2) decision, declaring Australian law could now recognise the pre-colonial rights (‘native title’) of Indigenous people to their traditional lands under their own laws. However, under Australian settler-colonial law, native title is constructed as a domestic property right and not as a set of political, cultural or sovereign rights’. Consequently, Indigenous peoples claims to self-determination has attained a prominent place in contemporary political and public debates on Indigenous-state relations in Australia. With Australia continuing to reject Indigenous self-determination, Aboriginal people must engage pragmatically and innovatively with state policies and institutions. In this presentation McCaul discusses examples of democratic innovation within Australia’s native title system as practiced by Aboriginal people focusing on comprehensive settlement agreements between Indigenous groups and the state; participatory governance in relation to the environmental management of Indigenous lands; and efforts to re-build Indigenous nationhood and traditional institutions of governance. McCaul argues native title has created space for public deliberation on self-determination and efforts to decolonise relations, governance, and policymaking between Indigenous polities and the settler colonial state. Justin McCaul is a descendent of the Mbarbarum Traditional Owners of far north Queensland. He joined ANU College of Law as an Associate Lecturer/PhD Candidate in February 2019. He has many years of experience working in native title and Indigenous policy in Australia for several non-government organisations including Oxfam Australia. He also worked in Cambodia on rural development and biodiversity conservation projects with Indigenous groups in northeast Cambodia. Before joining ANU he worked at the National Native Title Council researching the challenges Indigenous organisations face utilising their native title rights. His PhD uses deliberative democracy theory to discuss how Indigenous groups use their native title rights to assert self-determination claims and engage in public policy. Seminar series convenors Hans Asenbaum and Sahana Sehgal . Please register via Eventbrite . Previous Next

Selen A. Ercan, Jensen Sass, John Dryzek and Peter Balint < Back Democratic Resilience: The Public Sphere and Extremist Attacks Investigator(s): Selen A. Ercan, Jensen Sass, John Dryzek and Peter Balint Funded through a Discovery Project ( DP210102436 ) (AU$511,000), the Project Team includes: Selen A. Ercan Jordan McSwiney Peter Balint John S. Dryzek Partner Investigators: Jensen Sass Andrea Felicetti Emily Beausoleil Ian O’Flynn Project Description The project aims to explain responses to extremist attacks intended to sow division, and why some democracies prove fragile, succumbing to polarisation or exclusion of key groups, while others prove resilient by sustaining integrative, tolerant discourse. The project develops new knowledge through an innovative synthesis of cultural sociology and deliberative democracy to analyse nine cases of responses in the public realm to attacks. Expected outcomes include a new account of the democratic public sphere, and identification of how meaningful, civil communication whose health is vital to democracy, especially in a multicultural society, can be maintained. Benefits include identification of measures to counter extremist political disruption.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow < Back Jensen Sass Postdoctoral Research Fellow About Jensen works at the intersection of normative political theory and the empirical study of corporations, technology, and the public sphere. He is also interested in corporate power and democratic politics, in particular the regulation of new technologies that promise to transform previously settled norms and institutions.

< Back Anonymity and democracy: Absence as presence in the public sphere Hans Asenbaum, University of Westminster Tue 28 February 2017 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract While anonymity is central to liberal democracies, it has so far not been conceptually grounded in democratic theory and is often simply equated to privacy. To overcome this omission, a complex understanding of anonymity in the context of communicative democracy is developed. Anonymity is investigated in the literature on different modes of political participation: voting, campaign funding, textual discussions, and masked protesting. Through the observation of anonymity in these various participatory modes, anonymity is defined as highly context dependent identity performance based on the negation of certain aspects of the public coherent persona. The core of anonymity is thus constituted by two contradictory elements: identity creation through identity negation. This core contradiction results in three sets of both democratic and anti-democratic freedoms afforded by anonymity: (1) inclusion and exclusion, (2) subversion and submission, (3) honesty and deception. Contrary to its common interpretation, anonymity does not connote privacy, which constitutes a space separates from the public sphere. The three sets of contradictory freedoms of anonymity are all freedoms of expression and thus inherently communicative. Anonymity is thus situated at the interface between privacy and publicity; it enables absence as presence in the public sphere. About the speaker Hans Asenbaum started his PhD and teaching as external lecturer at the University of Vienna. Since 2013 he is involved in online teaching at the University of Hagen (Germany). Today he pursues his PhD project about the role of social identities and the potential of anonymity for democratic innovations on the internet at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster with the Politics and International Relations Studentship. 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 Beyond expression: Realising public deliberation in an era of communicative plenty Selen Ercan, University of Canberra Tue 1 December 2015 11:00am - 12:00pm Fishbowl, Building 24, University of Canberra Abstract The paper develops the idea of ‘communicative plenty’ to describe the ever increasing proliferation of site of political communication (both online and offline) that emerge around controversial policy issues. We consider the implications of communicative plenty for realizing democracy understood in deliberative terms, as a reflective and non-coercive communication process. We identify various promises and pitfalls of communicative plenty, and discuss the conditions under which it might contribute not only to broadening, but also deepening of public conversations. To this end, we propose moving beyond expression and voice to focus on often ignored aspects of public communication, including reflection and listening. We argue that if accompanied by sufficient moments of reflection and listening, communicative plenty can offer a viable context for the realization of public deliberation at a systems level. We discuss the implications of this proposal for institutional design. About the speaker Dr Selen Ercan is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra. Her bio and current research projects can be viewed here . Previous Next

Selen A. Ercan, Ricardo F. Mendonca, Umut Ozguc < 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.

Research Assistant < Back Juliana Rocha Research Assistant About Juliana Rocha first joined the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance in 2013 as a research assistant working with Simon Niemeyer on his Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project, with John Dryzek on his ARC Laureate Fellowship Project, and with Selen Ercan on an ARC Project.

< Back Bridging the democratic divide? The European Citizens' Initiative, demoi and inclusion in the EU Lucy Hatton, University of Warwick Tue 12 May 2015 12:00 – 1:00 pm Fishbowl, Building 24, University of Canberra Abstract The European Citizens’ Initiative has been put forward by the EU as part of the answer to its ongoing crisis of democratic legitimacy, but it is yet to be determined to what extent the ECI is able to live up to these expectations. Critical to an answer to this question will be achieving a certain level of inclusivity, which is closely linked to the question of the demos. By applying recent developments from the democratic theory literature, specifically those related to demoi and representation, this article addresses the extent to which the ECI has the potential to impact on the inclusivity of EU policy making. In responding to three questions of inclusivity (who is included, is any individual or group excluded, and are included individuals granted an equal voice?) with regard to the ECI rules and practical functioning, and by drawing on the case of the Right2Water campaign, it is possible to see that there is reason for both optimism and doubt. Importantly, the ECI may have consequences for inclusivity unanticipated by the EU institutions, not least as a means by which CSO representatives can bring multiple demoi into existence, and as a channel through which these demoi can act in pursuit of their interests? About the speaker Lucy Hatton is a final year PhD student at the University of Warwick, UK, and a visiting scholar at Griffith University, Brisbane. Her doctoral thesis asks what impact the European Citizens' Initiative can have on the democratic legitimacy of the EU and draws on questions of citizenship, epistemic democracy, participation and democratic innovation. Previous Next

Prof. Selen A Ercan, Prof. Nicole Curato, Dr Hans Asenbaum, Dr Jordan McSwiney, and Dr Lucy Parry < Back Deliberative Democracy Toolkit (NSW) Investigator(s): Prof. Selen A Ercan, Prof. Nicole Curato, Dr Hans Asenbaum, Dr Jordan McSwiney, and Dr Lucy Parry Our Centre continues to work with the Premier’s Department, New South Wales Government. Currently, we are working to develop a deliberative democracy toolkit to help inform the design, improvement, and evaluation of deliberative process in NSW. The project team includes Prof. Selen A Ercan, Prof. Nicole Curato, Dr Hans Asenbaum, Dr Jordan McSwiney, and Dr Lucy Parry. For more information, contact Jordan McSwiney at jordan.mcswiney@canberra.edu.au

Bora Kanra, John Dryzek, Selen A. Ercan, Alessandra Pecci < Back Communication Across Difference In A Democracy: Australian Muslims And The Mainstream Investigator(s): Bora Kanra, John Dryzek, Selen A. Ercan, Alessandra Pecci Funded through a Discovery Project ($269,000), the Project Team includes: Bora Kanra, Chief Investigator John Dryzek, Chief Investigator Selen A. Ercan, Research Assistant Alessandra Pecci, Research Assistant Project Description Australian Muslims have been at the centre of media attention particularly since September the 11th. Even though they comprise no more than 1,5 per cent of the total population, the debate on the compatibility of Islamic and Western values has been very prominent. To date, this debate has focused little attention on the attitudes of Australian Muslims and how they perceive themselves in relation to Western values. This gap, often filled by negative stereotypes, has a wide range of implications in the area of contemporary governance and public policy. This research project studies the relationship between Islamic communities in Australia and the wider society in the context of ideas about cultural difference and democracy. The degree to which Australian Muslims develop a sense of belonging and social responsibility towards mainstream society is directly linked to the level of their inclusion as well as participation in Australia's multicultural scheme. This project aims to contribute to the possibilities to foster a more productive social and political relationship between Australian Muslims and the mainstream. The empirical substance consists of interviews with both Muslims and non-Muslims, with a view to mapping and analysing discourses about difference and democracy in Australia. The knowledge generated can then be deployed to identify exactly how communication across difference can be promoted in this kind of case. The research is informed by a theoretical perspective that highlights the role of social learning in deliberation in a diverse and democratic society. The project studies both ordinary citizens and opinion leaders in Islamic and non-Islamic communities. Project Outputs Kanra, Bora. (2016) Islam, democracy and dialogue in Turkey: deliberating in divided societies . Routledge. Dryzek, J. S., & Kanra, B. (2014). Muslims and the Mainstream in Australia: Polarisation or Engagement? Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies , 40(8), 1236-1253. Dryzek, J. S., & Kanra, B. (2014). Australian Muslims’ orientations to secular society: Empirical exploration of theoretical classifications. Journal of Sociology , 50(2), 182-198. Kanra, B. (2012). Binary deliberation: The role of social learning in divided societies. Journal of Public Deliberation , 8(1), Kanra, B. and Ercan, S.A. (2012) Negotiating difference in a Muslim society: A longitudinal study of Islamic and secular discourses in the Turkish public sphere. Digest of Middle East Studies , 21(1): 69-88.