 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||||
 |
 |
 |
|
||
 |
|
||||
 |
 |
 |
|
||
 |
|
||||
 |
|
||||
 |
|
||||
 |
|
||||
 |
|
||||
 |
|
||||
 |
|
||||
Critics, Sceptics and Enemies of Democracy
Co-sponsored by the Faculty of Arts
9.30 am to 6 pm Friday 12 October 2007
Chaired by Professor John Keane
(Westminster University/University of Sydney)Room S227
Main Quadrangle
University of Sydney
SydneyFull programme of the Sydney Democracy Forum
Among the many complex trends within contemporary democracies is a new development with very old roots: a creeping disillusionment with democracy itself. The sources of this disaffection are not entirely clear, or uncontroversial. Yet doubts about democracy are evidently surfacing within a global context of militarism, new methods of state surveillance, mounting ecological problems, religious tensions and the infringement of basic human rights. The disillusionment with democracy also stems from the dysfunctions of representative democracy itself. Journalists, scholars, politicians and others have noted such trends as the increasing disaffection with political parties and electoral politics, the merger of communication media with formal politics, and the visible growth of new strata of poor citizens who are consistently outvoted by more privileged and powerful majorities. And especially since 2001, coolness towards democracy, considered as a norm, a set of institutions and as a way of life, has been reinforced by the failure to promote democracy by means of war, and by the reassertion of state authority, often using questionable legal and police methods.
These disparate trends serve as the backdrop to this exploratory international workshop on the sceptics and opponents of democracy. Its aim is to document and to assess the plausibility and chances of political success of the key claims made by the contemporary critics, sceptics and outright enemies of democracy. The workshop pushes beyond discredited ‘end of history’ perspectives to ask: who are these new critics, sceptics and enemies of democracy? And how potentially effective is their reticence about democracy – a reticence that has no single identifiable voice, but instead spans a wide political spectrum, ranging from critics of neo-liberal globalisation, liberals and neo-Marxists to human rights activists, disparate strands of conservatism and neo-traditionalist and religious groups?
In raising these questions, the focus of discussions will be interdisciplinary and global, in the sense that participants from several different disciplines will draw examples from various contexts – from Italy and Germany, Australia and the United States, Russia and China - in which systematic doubts about democracy are being expressed. Some attention will be paid to the history of previous attacks on the language and institutions of democracy from, say, Plato to Heidegger. The focus, however, will be on current-day trends. The workshop will for instance explore the resurgence of nationalist politics and the respectable body of ‘demo-sceptic’ literature that claims that civil strife, ethnic conflict, xenophobia, and even genocide are produced by attempts to democratise multi-ethnic societies. Consideration will be given to green claims about the deficiencies of democracy, and to the impact of the American-led ‘war on terror’ on new ways of handling relationships between governors and governed. The literature on ‘democratic peace’, ‘democracy push-back’ and the new ‘jurisprudence of pre-emption and prevention’ (Dershowitz) will receive some attention. So will the claims that democracy is only one value among others, and that actually existing representative democracies are prone to the dangers of ‘illiberal democracy’.
The workshop will naturally pay attention to the ways in which democracy as a political form makes itself permanently vulnerable to public criticism because its mechanisms encourage the ‘de-naturing’ of power and the interrogation of their own weaknesses. Finally, and by no means of least importance, consideration will be given to a paradox of our times: that following the global victory of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century struggles for the universal franchise, the principal threats to the legitimacy and functioning of democracy may well turn out to be actors dressed in the language of democracy.Hosted by the School of Philosophical Inquiry (SOPHI) at the University of Sydney, and by the Sydney Democracy Forum, the workshop will be held in the Professorial Board Room, at the historic Main Quadrangle of The University of Sydney. Participants will assemble from 9.30 am, and the first session will commence promptly at 10 am. Lunch and afternoon tea will be provided, and the workshop will conclude with a dinner for all invited workshop contributors.
Among those who will contribute to the workshop are Rick Benitez (Sydney), Gloria Davies (Melbourne); Robyn Eckersley (Melbourne); Graeme Gill (Sydney), Paul Ginsborg (Florence), Christopher Hobson (Canberra); Duncan Ivison (Sydney); John Keane (London/Berlin); Claus Offe (Berlin); and David Pritchard (Sydney).
PUBLIC LECTURE
The principal themes of the workshop will be introduced on the evening before by the chair of the workshop, John Keane, in a public lecture, ‘The Twenty-First Century Enemies of Democracy’, which will be taking place at 6.30 pm in the Footbridge Theatre, Parramatta Road, University of Sydney. This public lecture will be followed by a public reception and book-signing session.
9.30 am
REGISTRATION
9.45 am
Welcome by Professor Duncan Ivison (University of Sydney) and Professor Graeme Gill (University of Sydney)
9.55 am
Associate Professor Rick Benitez (University of Sydney) ‘Athenian Critics of Dēmokratia’
10.15 am
QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION
10.45 am
MORNING TEA
11.10 am
Professor Claus Offe (Humboldt University Berlin) ‘Some Thoughts on Political Disaffection’
11.30 am
QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION
12 noon
Dr Robyn Eckersley (University of Melbourne) ‘Environmentalists: Friends or Enemies of Democracy?’
12.20 pm
QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION
1 pm
LUNCH
2 pm
Christopher Hobson (Australian National University) ‘Sorry Comforters of the Democratic Peace’
2.20 pm
QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION
2.50 pm
Graeme Gill (University of Sydney) ‘The Collapse of Communism and Democracy Lost in Russia?’
3.10 pm
QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION
3.40 pm
AFTERNOON TEA
4 pm
Dr Gloria Davies (Monash University) ‘What Happens to Democracy When It Becomes Minzhu?’
4.20 pm
QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION
4.50 pm
Professor Paul Ginsborg (University of Florence) ‘Undermining Democracy: The Case of Silvio Berlusconi’ (video presentation)
5.10 pm
QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION
5.50 pm
Vote of Thanks by David Pritchard (University of Sydney)
7.30 pm
DINNER
John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Westminster
and at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin. In 1989 he founded the Centre for the Study of Democracy. He has held the prestigious Karl Deutsch Professorship in Berlin and served as a Fellow of the influential London-based think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). He was recently awarded a Major Research Fellowship by the the Leverhulme Trust.
Homepage: HEREGraeme Gill is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
He has been a visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and the Moscow State University. His major research interests centre upon communist regimes and the theoretical basis underlying these regimes. His most recent research is on political change in the former Soviet and East European regions.
Homepage: HEREDuncan Ivison is Head of the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney.
He has been Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow, and Visiting Fellow in Ethics and Public Affairs, at the Center for Human Values, Princeton University (2002-3), as well as Visiting Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre at the ANU (1997). Professor Ivison works in three main areas: political theory, the history of political thought and ethics.
Homepage: HERERick Benitez teaches School
of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the University of Sydney. He has been a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1998). He was President of the Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics (1997-2004) and is currently President of the Australasian Society for Ancient Philosophy.
Homepage: HEREClaus Offe is
Professor of Political Science at the Humboldt University Berlin. Among his research interests are: political sociology, social policy, democratic theory, transformation studies. Recent English language book publications: Varieties of Transition, Modernity and The State. East and West.
Homepage: HERERobyn Eckersley has specialised in environmental politics and
political theory since 1986, having worked previously as a public lawyer (mainly in the field of constitutional law) before joining the department of Political Science of the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include global politics, environmental politics and political theory (particularly theories of justice and democracy).
Homepage: HEREChristopher Hobson is a PhD candidate in the Department of International
Relations at the Australian National University, Canberra. His thesis addresses the issue of how 'democracy' has changed in relation to what it means to be a legitimate state. He has been a visitor at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen (September 2006) and the Department of International Politics, The University of Wales, Aberystwyth (September 2006 - March 2007).
Homepage: HEREGloria Davies is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese in the School of Asian Languages and Studies at Monash University. Her research has been concerned with Chinese cultural and intellectual activities in the modern era. She has a particular interest in the role contemporary Western critical theory has played in the reshaping of Chinese Studies both in the West and in the Chinese-speaking world and is currently writing up her research findings on this topic.
Homepage: HEREPaul Ginsborg is Professor of Contemporary
European History at the University of Florence and was formerly Reader in European Politics at Cambridge. He is co-founder of the protest movement Laboratorio per la democrazia. He has become vigorously involved in Italian civic affairs, especially in reaction to Silvio Berlusconi, and his critical biography of Berlusconi reached the top of the Italian non-fiction bestseller charts.
David Pritchard is
Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Classics & Ancient History (University of Sydney). He is an ancient historian whose research interests include the Olympic Games, Greek sport and education, cultural and political participation in the Athenian democracy, the culture of war in ancient Greece and the relationship between war and democracy in the ancient and modern worlds.
Homepage: HERE
