When making sense of the weird things happening in the northern hemisphere one trend should not escape our notice: a deepening crisis caused by bankers’ greed is beginning to rip the guts out of democracy. Here’s what the textbooks say: in...
Read MoreThis is a lecture delivered by John Keane on May 18, 2011 at University of Melbourne. Read the full text of the talk. In this lecture, John Keane explores these conflicting trends and asks: when judged in terms of the democratic...
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 MoreAbraham 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 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 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 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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