The following remarks on love and politics were first delivered at a welcome symposium for all first-year humanities and social science students in the Great Hall, the University of Sydney, 27th February 2014: Good morning and a warm welcome to the...
Read MorePublic rally in support of Edward Snowden, Garden Road, Hong Kong, June 2013 flickr/See-ming Lee Along with contributions by Ulrich Beck, Julia Kristeva and others, the following short statement was published in Politiken, the largest-circulation daily newspaper in Denmark: With a political noose...
Read MoreWith talk of democracy in crisis plentiful, especially in Europe, a smart assessment of how well democracies have fared during past crises is badly needed. This is what David Runciman’s The Confidence Trap offers – with decidedly mixed results. Runciman...
Read MoreThe future shape of Thailand is up for grabs, and if democracy survives, it won't resemble the 'Washminster' system that the West is used to, writes John Keane. [caption id="attachment_7792" align="alignnone" width="700"] Anti-government protesters march in Bangkok on January 17, 2014....
Read MoreWhen visiting Tokyo last week for the launch of the Japanese edition of The Life and Death of Democracy, it was pure coincidence, or sweet and sour serendipity, that the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe steamrolled through parliament a controversial...
Read MoreVibrant democracies need sharp-angled and unceremonious characters like Lou Reed who can rail against imperiousness and conformity, writes John Keane. [caption id="attachment_9170" align="alignnone" width="741"] PHOTO: Lou Reed embodied detached cool and passionate anger. (Tracey Nearmy: AAP)[/caption] It's said often that democracy requires...
Read MoreBy Giovanni Navarria, University of Sydney and John Keane While Australians face the possibility of the first-ever Senate by-election, as well as stormy sittings of a new parliament wrangling over the pro and cons of scrapping a carbon tax, 16,000 kilometres away,...
Read MoreIt’s difficult from afar to grasp the depressing scale and depth of European disintegration, so let me try from close range to convey something of what’s going on by using a simple method: extracting snippets of randomly-chosen local political news...
Read MorePerhaps the only bright democratic light in this dark crisis surrounding Syria is the unexpected growth of a cross-border, large-scale and ultimately global denunciation of the follies and horror of war, writes John Keane. Does democracy have anything to do with...
Read More‘No bourgeois, no democracy’ is the racy formulation penned half a century ago by the American historian Barrington Moore Jr. It’s a well-known political maxim, one that’s often used in support of the view that to be middle class is...
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