Welcome to Episode 10 in this special bonus series of Real Democracy Now! a podcast about Deliberation, Culture and Context.

This bonus series has been made in collaboration with the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. In this series, I’ve spoken with most of the presenters at the Centre’s conference on Deliberation, Culture and Context, which was held in early December 2017. This conference brought together scholars from around the world to examine the different forms, meanings, and significance associated with deliberation in various cultures and contexts. A copy of the conference program is available here.

This Conference was supported by John’s ARC Laureate Fellowship entitled “Deliberative Worlds: Democracy, Justice and a Changing Earth System.”

In this episode, I’m speaking with Professor John Dryzek about his ARC Laureate Fellowship, his reflections on the Conference generally, how we might establish global deliberative processes and directions for future research in this area.

In reflecting on the conference John made a number of interesting points about deliberation, culture and context:

• deliberation is a universal capacity – anyone anywhere can do it
• however, deliberation is manifested differently in different cultures and contexts
• context and culture should not be conflated
• culture involves processes of meaning-making to which deliberation can contribute
• there are ethical issues associated with critiquing other cultures.

Despite the range of cultures and contexts in which deliberation occurs John believes that ‘we can’t simply wait’ until we understand these different approaches before we develop global deliberative processes or we could be waiting forever.

John identifies two broad research agendas:

1. consider research questions from a non-western perspective
2. undertake empirical research looking at how deliberative processes can feed into global governance.

The next episode of the podcast will be back to Season 3 looking at Elections, Electoral Systems and Alternatives. In episode 5 of Season 3, I’ll be talking with Professor Pippa Norris about electoral integrity.

Check out this episode!