Remembering the many Václav Havels
During my first encounter with him, in Prague in 1984, when everything seemed hopeless, I was struck by the man’s hedgehog resilience. Here was a rarity: an unusual figure, intense but witty, a clear-headed thinker and a wonderful writer, a courageous individual blessed with a razor-sharp sense of irony; a chain-smoking man of letters whose [...]
Tunisian hope and Greek despair: A week in the life of democracy
It has been a tumultuous week in the life and times of democracy in the Mediterranean. Seven days punctuated by joyous hope and its ugly opposite, sullen despair. The promising news came from Tunisia, hopeful homeland of the Arab uprisings against dictatorship, where a well-organised free and clean election served as a moment of breathtaking [...]
The Hidden Media Powers that Undermine Democracy
When recently ploughing through Tony Blair’s autobiography, I hit a rare rock of truth. On the last night of the second millennium, when the government’s extravaganza spectacles were faring badly, Blair recalls with special horror his discovery that a pack of top journalists invited to attend the midnight Millennium Dome celebrations had been left stranded [...]
Greed and Democracy
When making sense of the weird things happening in the northern hemisphere one trend should not escape our notice: a deepening crisis caused by bankers’ greed is beginning to rip the guts out of democracy. Here’s what the textbooks say: in the countries of continental Europe, Britain and the United States, democracy is a special [...]
Murdoch, mediacracy and the opportunity for a new transparency
Schadenfreude is the tough-sounding word that wins my vote for describing accurately how millions of people around the world are feeling about Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. For those who were long resigned to accepting its arbitrary influence, or who loved or loathed its products and style, something unprecedented is now happening under the noses of [...]
John Keane interviews Senator Bob Brown, leader of the Australian Greens
Professor John Keane is in conversation with Senator Bob Brown, leader of the Australian Greens. This conversation is not meant to be a traditional political interview. It is a discussion between a leading academic and a senior elected representative about developments in Australian, and international, public life. It touches on a wide range of themes [...]
Democracy in the Age of Google, Facebook and WikiLeaks
In the beginning there was the grand spectacle of a worldwide satellite television broadcast, featuring Maria Callas, Pablo Picasso and the Beatles. Then came fax machines, photocopiers, video recorders and personal computers. Now there are electronic books, scanners and smart phones converted into satellite navigators and musical instruments; cloud computing, interactive video technology and speak-to-tweets, [...]
The Future of Representative Democracy
The Future of Representative Democracy presents an integrated collection of contributions on the subject of representation, representative democracy and its future. Guided by the last major investigation of the subject by Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, over four decades ago, the volume addresses vital gaps in the relevant literature and stresses the importance of the past for the [...]
Farewell to Social Democracy?
Mention the two words social democracy and most people today think of business-friendly governments, welfare states in far-off Scandinavia and champagne socialists sporting pink shirts.
Democracy in the 21st Century: Global Questions
In 1945, following several decades that saw most experiments in democratisation fail, there were only a dozen democracies left on the face of the earth. Since then, despite many ups and downs, democracy has bounced back from near oblivion to become a planetary phenomenon for the first time in its history (Diamond, 2008; Dunn, 2005; [...]
