Year: 2017

Podcasts, Season 2 Representative democracy

2.4 Non-Western democracy with Benjamin Isakhan and Zelalem Sirna

April 18, 2017 By No Comments

Welcome to episode 4 of Season 2 of Real Democracy Now! A podcast. Today’s episode is about non-Western democracy. I’d like to thank David Schecter for bringing this area of democratic thinking and practice to my attention and for introducing me to my two guests: Associate Professor Benjamin Isakhan and PhD scholar Zelalem Sirna from Ethiopia. Both guests highlight the Eurocentric nature of much of the discourse on democracy and introduce us to some non-western examples of democratic practice.

Benjamin Isakhan is Associate Professor of Politics and Policy Studies and Founding Director of POLIS, a research network for Politics and International Relations in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization at Deakin University, Australia. He is also Adjunct Senior Research Associate, in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa and an Associate of the Sydney Democracy Network at the University of Sydney, Australia. Ben is the author of Democracy in Iraq: History, Politics, Discourse (Routledge, 2012 HB, 2016 PB) and the editor of 6 books including The Secret History of Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011 HB, 2012 PB – translated into Japanese 2012, and Arabic 2014), and The Edinburgh Companion to the History of Democracy: From Pre-History to Future Possibilities (Edinburgh University Press & Oxford University Press, 2012 HB, 2015 PB). He is a leading expert and regular commentator on Middle Eastern Politics, Democracy and Democratization across the Middle East, and Heritage Destruction in the Middle East.

Zelalem Sirna is a PhD scholar at the University of Coimbra in Portugal in the programme of Democracy in 21sy Century. He earned his LL.B degree in law from the Haramaya University Ethiopia and his MPhil in Indigenous Studies from University of Tromso, Norway. For his Masters, he undertook a comparative study of Gadaa, the traditional system of governance in Ethiopia and liberal democracy. For his Ph, he is looking at deliberative democracy, deliberative systems and the Gadaa system. As a sociology-legal researcher, is main works are focused on normative pluralism and the challenges it poses in 21st century.

The next episode will consider what my guests think is the one change they would like to see in our system of democracy. I ask all of my guests the same two questions:

1. what for you is the essence of a real democracy and
2. if you could change one thing about our current system of democracy what would it be.

I’d love to hear your answers to these two questions and include your perspectives in future episodes. You can send your perspectives to me by email to essence@realdemocracynow.com.au or via Twitter or Facebook.

Podcasts, Season 2 Representative democracy

2.3 Evaluating representative democracy with Professors Morlino & Merkel & Assistant Professor Pemstein

April 9, 2017 By No Comments

Thank you for joining me in the third episode of Season 2 of Real Democracy Now! A podcast. Season 2 is looking at representative democracy and today I am talking with three academics who take different approaches to evaluating representative democracy. These three approaches are by no means the only ones, in fact, there are many indexes and evaluation frameworks in existence. Which is why Dan Pemstein with his colleagues Stephen Meserve and James Melton created the United Democracy Scores to integrate a number of these into one measure.

First up, I speak to Professor Leonardo Morlino who is a professor of political science and director of the Research Center on Democracies and Democratizations at LUISS, Rome. Prof. Morlino is a leading specialist in comparative politics with expertise on Southern Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece), Eastern Europe, and the phenomenon of democratization. He is the author of several books and more than 200 journal essays and book chapters published in English, French, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Chinese, Mongolian, and Japanese. In 2015 -16 he has been conducting research on how the economic crisis affected South European democracies and on the economic and fiscal choices of democracies in the same area within an EU Horizon 2020 grant.
Professor Morlino talks to us about the analytical tool he has developed to allow comparison of democracies.

Next, I talk with Professor Wolfgang Merkel who is the Director of the Research Unit: Democracy and Democratization at the WZB Social Science Research Centre Berlin, as well as heading up the Centre for Global Constitutionalism and a number of other projects. He has written widely on democracy, democratisation, social democracy and democracy & capitalism to name but a few in academic and non-academic publications. Professor Merkel is a co-project leader of the Democracy Barometer. This project developed an instrument to assess the quality of democracy in 30 established democracies and is the focus of my discussion with Professor Merkel today.

Finally, I spoke with Daniel Pemstein. Dan is an assistant professor of political science at North Dakota State University. He is a methodologist who specialises in measurement and builds statistical tools to answer substantive questions in comparative legislative studies and political economy. He is involved in a number of statistical projects, including two I’ll be talking to him about today: the Varieties of Democracy Project and the Unified Democracy Scores.

Thanks for joining me today. We’ll be hearing from Professors Morlino and Merkel again later in Season 2 when we look at the challenges facing democracy and the relationship between democracy and capitalism. Next week’s episode covers a topic mentioned today, that is ‘non-Western democracy’. I’ll be speaking to Associate Professor Benjamin Isakhan about democracy in the Middle East and Zelalem Sirna about Ethiopian democracy. I hope you’ll join me then.

Podcasts, Season 2 Representative democracy

2.2 From direct to representative democracy with Dr Roslyn Fuller and Professor Nadia Urbinati

April 3, 2017 By No Comments

In today’s episode, I’m talking with Dr Roslyn Fuller and Professor Nadia Urbinati.

Dr Roslyn Fuller (dipl. jur./erstes Staatsexamen, Goettingen; PhD, Trinity College Dublin) is a Canadian-Irish academic and columnist, specializing in public international law, and the impact of technological innovation on democracy. Her latest book Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost Its Purpose explores the flaws of representative democracy and how they could be addressed through the application of ancient Athenian principles of demokratia (people power). Her work has appeared, among others, in OpenDemocracy, The Nation, The Toronto Star, Salon and The Irish Times, as well as in many scholarly journals. She is currently a Research Associate at Waterford Institute of Technology and founding member of the Solonian Democracy Institute.

Like Professor Cartledge in episode 1 Roslyn is interested in what we can learn from the democracy of ancient Athens and like him, she sees technology as providing a way to scale up direct democracy.

Nadia Urbinati is a Professor of Political Theory and Hellenic Studies at Columbia University. She is a political theorist who specializes in modern and contemporary political thought and the democratic and anti-democratic traditions.  Nadia has written extensively on democracy including two books: Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy, Democracy Disfigured , and Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government. 

Nadia takes us through a potted history of representative democracy and explains four key elements of representative democracy and why they are crucial for an operating representative democracy:
  1. Sovereignty of people expressed in electoral appointment of their representatives
  2. Free mandate for representatives
  3. Electoral mechanisms to ensure responsiveness by representatives
  4. Universal franchise.
Nadia identifies the dual authorities of citizens – our vote and our judgement – which while distinct and different are equally important.
If you would like to hear more from Roslyn and Nadia visit my YouTube channel where I have included videos of other presentations and interviews by these guests.
In next week’s episode, we will hear about a couple of the many different approaches to evaluating representative democracy: the Varieties of Democracy project, the Democracy Barometer, the Unified Democracy Scores and the work done by the Research Centre on Democracies and Democratizations in Rome. I hope you’ll join me then.

Check out this episode!

Podcasts, Season 2 Representative democracy

2.1 Democracy in ancient Greece with Prof Paul Cartledge

March 20, 2017 By No Comments

Welcome back to Real Democracy Now! a podcast.This is episode one of Season Two. Season Two is about representative democracy

Season Two is about representative democracy: its origins, components, how it can be evaluated, different approaches to democracy, the democratic deficit and the relationship between democracy and capitalism.

In Episode 1 of Season 2, I’m talking to Professor Paul Cartledge. Professor Cartledge was the inaugural A G Levants Professor of Greek Culture

Professor Cartledge was the inaugural A G Levants Professor of Greek Culture in the University of Cambridge and President of Clare College, Cambridge. Between 2006 – 2010 he was Hellenic Parliament Global Distinguished Professor in History and Theory of Democracy at New York University. Over the course of his career, he has written and edited numerous books on the ancient Greek world, most recently Democracy: a Life. He has served as historical consultant for the BBC television series The Greeks, and for four Channel 4 documentaries, including The Spartans.

If you would like to hear more from Professor Cartledge I’ve added some videos to the Real Democracy Now! YouTube Channel.

Some other material you may find interesting:

How student activism informed Paul Cartledge’s new history of democracy

Ancient Greeks would not recognise our democracy

G1000 in Cambridge

In the next episode, I’ll be talking with Professor Nadia Urbinati and Roslyn Fuller about the history of democracy and design. I hope you’ll join me then.

Check out this episode!

Podcasts, Season 1 Deliberative mini-publics

1.19 Deliberative mini-publics – some critiques

February 13, 2017 By No Comments

In this episode I speak to three academics who each take a critical perspective on the operation of deliberative mini-publics. Each of them takes issue with a different aspect of the impact or influence that the recommendations coming from deliberative mini-publics have on public policy.

For Associate Professor Genevieve Fuji Johnson the failure of the democratic innovations she studied (which includes deliberative mini-publics and deliberative polling) was that they didn’t have any real impact on policy and decision-making.
 
Professor Cristina Lafont takes basically the opposite view. For her deliberative mini-publics should not have any impact on policy decisions, rather they should be used to support the broader engagement of citizens.
 
Associate Professor Caroline Lee’s critique is that many democratic innovations, including deliberative mini-publics, appear to allow for influence or impact but the issues they are asked to consider are often heavily circumscribed, and deliberative mini-publics are explicitly denied the opportunity to address the challenges underlying the difficult issues they are faced with.

And Roslyn Fuller provides another perspective suggesting that citizens may change how they approach decision-making within a deliberative mini-public depending on whether they believe their recommendations will be implemented or not.

This is the final episode of Season 1 looking at deliberative mini-publics. If you haven’t already listened to episodes 1 – 18 I’d suggest you go back and listen to them all, starting with Professor Carson explaining what deliberative mini-publics are in episode 1.1.

Season 2 will look at the history of democracy, the dominant model of representative democracy, as well as what is working and what isn’t.

Season 2 will commence in mid-March. I hope you’ll join me then.
Check out this episode!

Podcasts, Season 1 Deliberative mini-publics

1.18 Evaluating deliberative mini-publics

January 31, 2017 By No Comments

In today’s episode, I speak with Professor Graham Smith and Professor Brigitte Geißel about the evaluation frameworks they have each developed to assess the value of democratic innovations.

I ask each of them how their frameworks apply to deliberative mini-publics and they provide quite different assessments of the value and effectiveness of deliberative mini-publics as democratic innovations.

Professor Smith’s framework identifies four democratic goods:

  1. inclusiveness
  2. popular control
  3. considered judgement and
  4. transparency.

Professor Geißel’s analytical framework comprises five criteria:

  1. inclusive participation
  2. meaningful participation
  3. legitimacy
  4. effectiveness and
  5. citizen enlightenment.

As you can see, there are some similarities between these frameworks. However, the conclusions each person draws about the value and effectiveness of deliberative mini-publics is quite different.

In next week’s episode (the final one for Season 1) I talk to three other academics who take a critical perspective on the operation of deliberative mini-publics:

  • Professor Cristina La Font from Northwestern University in the US,
  • Associate Professor Caroline Lee from Lafayette College in the US and
  • Associate Professor Genevieve Fuji Johnson from Simon Fraser University in Canada.

I hope you’ll join me then.

Check out this episode!

Podcasts, Season 1 Deliberative mini-publics

1.17 Participants in deliberative mini-publics

January 23, 2017 By No Comments

In today’s episode I speak with four everyday people who have been participants in deliberative mini-publics in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Each person has their own unique take on being a randomly selected participant in a deliberative mini-public, but they all agree they would recommend being part of a deliberative mini-public to family and friends.

First up is Ben McPeek who was a member of the Residents’ Reference Panel for the Davenport Community Rail Overpass project in 2015. This Reference Panel was commissioned by Metrolinx and designed and facilitated by MASS LBP.  I spoke to Peter MacLeod from MASS LBP about their work on episode 6 of the podcast.

Next, I spoke with Lewis Adams who was a juror on the Infrastructure Victoria Citizens’ Jury in 2015. Infrastructure Victoria was developing a thirty-year infrastructure plan for the State of Victoria in Australia and ran a multi-faceted engagement program which included two concurrent citizens’ juries: one in the capital – Melbourne and the other in Shepparton in regional Victoria. Lewis was a juror on the regional Citizens’ Jury. The Infrastructure Victoria Citizens’ Jury process was designed by the newDemocracy Foundation and involved a range of facilitators (including some of the people who I spoke to on episode 11 of the podcast) under Nation Partners who were responsible for delivering the overall engagement process.

I also spoke with Caroline Victor who was a juror on the Cats and Dogs Citizens’ Jury in South Australia in late 2014. This citizens’ jury was established by the Dog and Cat Management Board to advise on measures to reduce the number of unwanted dogs and cats. This process was facilitated by DemocracyCo, whose co-founder Emily Jenke I spoke to on episode 10 of the podcast). Recruitment for this citizens’ jury was undertaken by the newDemocracy Foundation. I was working for newDemocracy Foundation at that time and managed the recruitment for this citizens’ jury. The Dogs and Cats Citizens’ Jury won the IAP2 Australasian Core Values Award in the environmental category in 2016.

And finally, I talked with Andy Holdup who was a member of the Citizens’ Assembly South in Southhampton in the UK in 2015. Unlike the other three processes covered in today’s episode, which were all commissioned by government agencies to get input into decisions they were making, the two Citizens’ Assemblies run in Sheffield (Citizens’ Assembly North) and Southhampton (Citizens’ Assembly South) were commissioned by the Electoral Reform Society with a number of academics interested in democratic reform as a project to demonstrate the value of engaging with everyday citizens on key governance issues, in this case the devolution agenda. In episode 8 I spoke with Professor Graham Smith one of the academics involved in the Democracy Matters project about these assemblies and in particular about the experimental aspect of the process where Citizens’ Assembly South included local politicians as well as citizens. And in episode 10 I spoke to Titus Alexander the lead facilitator for these Assemblies. The Democracy Matters process won the UK Political Studies Association Annual Award for Democratic Innovation in 2016.
There are only two more episodes to come for Season 1. Next week I’ll be talking to Professors Graham Smith and Brigette Gießel about how they evaluate democratic innovations, including deliberative mini-publics and the following week I’ll be talking to a number of critics of deliberative mini-publics to get a different perspective on these democratic innovations. I hope you’ll join me for the final two episodes of Season 1 of Real Democracy Now! a podcast.


Check out this episode!

Podcasts, Season 1 Deliberative mini-publics

1.16 Deliberative Polling with Professor Fishkin

January 16, 2017 By No Comments

Professor Fishkin developed the idea of deliberative polling in 1998 since then deliberative polls have been held in over 24 countries and once in 22 languages simultaneously. Professor Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy.

Deliberative polls have been designed to provide the conditions under which people can think about an issue and decision-makers can see how those people’s views change as a result of this process. The conditions Professor Fishkin identifies as optimal include:

  • carefully vetted and balanced briefing materials
  • randomly allocating participants to independently moderated small groups
  • groups work together to identify the questions they want to be answered
  • experts from different sides of an issue provide answers to those questions
  • repeat the previous three steps multiple times.

A confidential survey is administered before and after the face-to-face meeting with the same questions in both plus some evaluation questions in the post-process survey. Generally, participants’ policy positions will change significantly as a result of being exposed to information and having their questions answered. Professor Fishkin and others’ research suggests that people become more ‘public spirited,’ making decisions based on the needs of the community rather than themselves. Fishkin sees deliberative polling as providing what Mills called ‘schools of public spirit.’

Professor Fishkin provides many examples of deliberative polls and their outcomes. One involved eight deliberative polls across Texas on energy futures which lead to Texas moving from the last place in 1996 to first place in 2007 in the US for the use of wind power.

In next week’s episode, I will be talking to four everyday people who were randomly selected to participate in deliberative mini-publics in the UK, Canada, and Australia. I hope you’ll join me then.

Check out this episode!

Podcasts, Season 1 Deliberative mini-publics

1.15 The G1000 in the Netherlands

January 9, 2017 By No Comments

The G1000 model has expanded beyond its home in Belgium and has been particularly popular in the Netherlands. In today’s episode I speak with one of the founders of the G1000 in the Netherlands, Harm van Deijk. Harm has a background in facilitation and used these skills together with the underlying principles of the G1000 to develop a model which has been used in numerous local government areas across the Netherlands as well as being adapted for regional and industry issues.

Harm explains how the G1000 was introduced in the Netherlands as well as providing a detailed description of how 1000 people are able to identify key issues and discuss these in detail in one day. Like the G1000 in Belgium, which we heard about in last week’s episode, in the Netherlands the G1000 is focused on agenda setting. Harm gives an example of how a politician, who doesn’t see much value in the G1000, promotes a new idea for his local area, not realising that it came from an earlier G1000 process.

In next week’s episode (Ep1.16) I’ll be talking with Professor James Fishkin the creator of Deliberative Polling about what this is, how it works and where it has been used. I hope you’ll join me then.

To listen to every episode when it is released please subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher.

Check out this episode!

Podcasts, Season 1 Deliberative mini-publics

1.14 The G1000 in Belgium

January 2, 2017 By No Comments

The G1000 arose in Belgium out of frustration with the inability of the political parties in Belgium to form a government. The G1000 began in 2011 and had three broad phases:

  1. public agenda setting,
  2. the Citizens’ Summit and
  3. the Citizens’ Panel.

Unlike many of the other deliberative mini-publics we’ve heard about in earlier podcast episodes the G1000 was explicitly about agenda setting by citizens rather than providing advice to elected representatives on a topic those representatives have chosen. Continue reading

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