Wednesday 4th April 2012: a funny old day, though my field notes record that it began well. An early morning message arrives from Athens, from Periklis Douvitsas. He’s the editor of the publishing house looking after Why Democracy. It’s shortly to...
Read More“I’m feeling a little delicate”, said Aung San Suu Kyi politely to the mainly foreign press pack, gathered like beginner pupils at her feet. She added, with a gentle smile, that “any tough questions and I shall faint straightaway”. The...
Read MoreDisquiet and disaffection, like a fast-moving swarm of sticky locusts, are spreading through the drought fields of democracy. Look around, beyond the borders in which you’re living. Public disenchantment with politicians and official “politics” is on the rise everywhere, stirred...
Read MorePublished 13 February 2012 | St. James Ethics Centre - IQ2 Oz, ABC Big IDEAS Why should we assume that democracy is the best of all political systems? Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in the Arab world...
Read MoreVoting in Wukan by Jordan Pouille James Madison famously remarked that a popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy. The present government of the People’s Republic of...
Read MoreThe 2012 Annual Symposium of The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) Tuesday, 20 November 2012, Canberra Workshop Description Background: Social science perspectives on Antarctica are limited in scope and quantity. In the fields of political science, international relations, legal studies...
Read MoreBBC World interviews talks to John Keane about Václav Havel, 23 December 2011. ...
Read MoreDuring my first encounter with him, in Prague in 1984, when everything seemed hopeless, I was struck by the man's hedgehog resilience. Here was a rarity: an unusual figure, intense but witty, a clear-headed thinker and a wonderful writer, a...
Read MoreSBS World News Australia presenter Anton Enus talks to John Keane, Professor of politics at University of Sydney, 19 December 2011. ...
Read MoreAn interview about Vaclav Havel with The World Today's Eleanor Hall, ABC Radio, 19 December 2011 Transcript As mourners gather in Prague's Wenceslas Square to pay respect to their late former president, tributes to Vaclav Havel have been pouring in from leaders...
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