Abraham Lincoln famously said that democracy is of the people, by the people and for the people; Winston Churchill said that the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter...
Read MoreBBC Radio 4 interviews Johan Keane about optional preferential voting system in Australia Australia is the only major democracy that uses Alternative Vote system (AV). Can the UK learn anything from Down Under? Correspondent Nick Bryant reports from Sydney on how...
Read MoreA new word is needed to describe these events of recent months. They should be called ‘refolutions’, radical refusals of the old choice between reform and revolution – remarkably sensitive to the grave dangers and high costs of using violent...
Read MoreThe ivory tower has been destroyed – metaphorically speaking. Alan Levine/flickr Foundation Essay – Universities are still often known as ivory towers, other-worldly spaces of solitude where privileged elites known as academics seek refuge from the harsh realities of the...
Read MoreJohn Keane asks David Held to look back over events and reconsider his reactions to a dissimulator. Was this an error of theory or of practice? Hasn’t the LSE Libya affair done damage to the scholarly credibility of research programmes...
Read MoreThe Egyptian revolution came not from the intellectual elite or opposition parties, but via Facebook and the Twitterverse, from the young men and women of Egypt fed up with autocratic, geriatric rule. Nor are they interested in a theocracy. Does...
Read MoreThere is no Khomeini and more than that I would say that there's been a learning process in the region; that revolutions can devour their own children. There is an awareness that the main strategy is to set up checks...
Read MoreA lecture co-presented with the Sydney Democracy Initiative (SDI) and the School of Social and Political Sciences (SSPS) at the University of Sydney. Listen to Audio By Professor Wolfgang Merkel...
Read MoreAnother version of this lecture was presented at the 2010 Journalism Education Association of Australia Conference, University of Technology, Sydney, 25th November, 2010. Read the text here. Listen to Audio ...
Read MoreAn interview about 'The Life and Death of Democracy' with 2UE's Cliver Robertson in Sydney To view more interviews and apperances for the launch of the Australian book tour please click here. ...
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