Václav Havel has died aged 75. A poet and playwright, a political writer, dissident and a politician, Havel was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia, and the first President of the Czech Republic founded in 1993. The Conversation spoke with...
Read MoreJohn Keane was guest of Radio Australia (ABC) on 21 November 2011 to talk with Isabelle Genoux about the global occupation movement. ...
Read More[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="668"] The first free elections borne from the Arab Spring were held in Tunisia. Over 90% of registered adults voted. EPA/Zacarias Garcia[/caption] It has been a tumultuous week in the life and times of democracy in the Mediterranean....
Read MoreMEDIA & DEMOCRACY: On the final day of The Conversation’s series on how the media influences the way our representatives develop policy, John Keane examines how the relationships between politicians, journalists, lobbyists and the PR sector undermine democracy. [caption id="" align="aligncenter"...
Read More[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="668"] Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper empire is reeling under the phone hacking scandal. AAP[/caption] 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...
Read MoreAthens is no longer considered by scholars as the birthplace of democracy but all of a sudden it has become the epicentre of a powerful political earthquake rocking the foundations of every democracy in the Atlantic region. Street fighting has turned...
Read MoreWelcome to “In Conversation”, the first in a series of discussions between leading academics and major public figures in Australian life. Today Politics Professor John Keane is in conversation with Senator Bob Brown, leader of the Australian Greens. John Keane is Professor...
Read MoreOsama bin Laden is dead – assassinated a fortnight ago by bullets sprayed from the guns of special armed forces of the United States. During the wild celebrations that followed, the word “assassination” was never once used by politicians. There were...
Read MoreGreat revolutionary convulsions typically trigger long-lasting reflections on their causes and consequences. The European tradition of political thinking harbours many well-known examples, including Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Harold Laski’s Reflections on the Revolution of Our...
Read MoreDuring the last quarter of the eighteenth century, in various parts of the Atlantic region, the meaning of citizenship was profoundly transformed by the advent of representative democracy. Central to its definition and functioning was the principle that citizens in...
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