Category Archives: Political theory

From Trump to eternity: The fate of the political arts in the modern world

Posted on October 16, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

Published in and edited form in The Conversation. Martin Wolf has a crisp face-to-camera opinion piece in which he points out that populism in government hasn’t lined up neatly against relative success in keeping populations safe from COVID. Thus in … Continue reading →

Posted in Democracy, Political theory, Politics - international, Politics - national, Sortition and citizens’ juries | 11 Comments

Orwell that ends well: Can evaluation save us from ourselves?

Posted on September 1, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

When I first saw the Productivity Commission’s Draft Indigenous Evaluation Strategy, my heart sank. I’d had had several quite extensive meetings with Romlie Mokak, the Indigenous Commissioner at the PC who struck me as a person of great intelligence, straightforwardness … Continue reading →

Posted in Cultural Critique, Economics and public policy, Ethics, History, Innovation, Political theory, Politics - national, Politics - Northern Territory, regulation | 11 Comments

How change has changed: changemaking then and now

Posted on August 17, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

Below is a piece I published on the NESTA website in early 2016 which they took down in a web revamp. It’s still available on archive.org, but I thought I’d also publish it here for the record. There’s a fascinating … Continue reading →

Posted in Cultural Critique, Democracy, Economics and public policy, History, Philosophy, Political theory, Politics - international, Politics - national | 5 Comments

The competition delusion: the presentation

Posted on August 4, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

Early this year I published an essay in the Griffith Review critiquing what I called the competition delusion. I was passing by more common critiques of competition, which for instance argue that competition isn’t necessarily a great idea in numerous … Continue reading →

Posted in Democracy, Economics and public policy, Education, Ethics, History, Philosophy, Political theory, Sortition and citizens’ juries | 8 Comments

The Road to Political Reform Based on Sortition: Guest Post by John Burnheim

Posted on August 4, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

Scrap attempts to reforming politics as a whole. From a practical point of view attempts to do so by legal constitutional change have no possibility of succeeding from a theoretical point of view, it is folly to assume that if … Continue reading →

Posted in Democracy, Philosophy, Political theory, Sortition and citizens’ juries | 1 Comment

What works: getting to the land of ‘how’: Complete essay

Posted on July 6, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

Note, this essay was published in three parts in the Mandarin and is published in consolidated form (complete with its footnotes) here. It is impossible to remember, until one gets in the country … that they care about their experiment … Continue reading →

Posted in Cultural Critique, Economics and public policy, Philosophy, Political theory, Science | 5 Comments

What works: getting to the land of ‘how’: Part Two

Posted on July 2, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

Cross-posted from The Mandarin In this second instalment of his three-part series, economist and forward thinker Nicholas Gruen explains more of why it is so important to understand the ‘how’ of getting things done. From the commanding heights to everyday … Continue reading →

Posted in Cultural Critique, Economics and public policy, Philosophy, Political theory | Leave a comment