Real Democracy Now! a podcast

Welcome to Episode 6 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 bonus series I speak with a number of people who participated in the Centre's conference in early December 2017 which 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 Dryzek's ARC Laureate Fellowship entitled "Deliberative Worlds: Democracy, Justice and a Changing Earth System." In this episode I'm speaking with Professor Stephanie Lawson, Professor of Politics and International Relations at the Macquarie University about her paper 'Consensus Politics and Democracy in the Pacific Islands: A Critique' which she presented on the first day of the conference. In future episodes in this bonus series I'll be speaking to other people who presented at the conference about their papers, as well as some of those who were on the final roundtable, reflecting on the conference overall. I hope you'll join me then.

Welcome to Episode 4 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 speak with a number of people who participated in the Centre's conference in early December 2017 which 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 Dryzek's ARC Laureate Fellowship entitled "Deliberative Worlds: Democracy, Justice and a Changing Earth System." In this episode, I'm speaking with Vijayendra Rao from the World Bank. I spoke with Biju about his paper 'Deliberative Inequality: A Text-As-Data Study of Tamil Nadu's Village Assemblies' which he presented on day two of the conference. In future episodes in this bonus series, I'll be speaking to other people who presented at the conference about their papers, as well as some of those who were on the final roundtable, reflecting on the conference overall. I hope you'll join me then.

This is episode 2 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 here in Australia. In this series I speak with a number of people who participated in the Centre's recent conference which 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 Dryzek's ARC Laureate Fellowship entitled "Deliberative Worlds: Democracy, Justice and a Changing Earth System." In this episode, I'm speaking with Professor Melissa Williams from the University of Toronto. Melissa spoke on day one of the conference about 'Deparochializing Democratic Theory' In future episodes of this bonus series I'll be speaking to other people who presented at the conference about their papers, as well as some of those who were on the final roundtable reflecting on the conference overall. I hope you'll join me then.

Welcome to episode four of season three of Real Democracy Now! a podcast. This episode is also the 43rd episode of the podcast and the first one since the first birthday of the podcast last week. To help celebrate the podcast's birthday I'd appreciate it if you could share either your favourite episode of the podcast or the podcast generally with someone you think would find it interesting. Today's episode is about electoral reform with Dr Alan Renwick, Deputy Director of the Constitution Unit at UCL in London. Alan's expertise lies mainly in the areas of electoral systems, referendums, and other modes of engaging the public in decision-making processes, such as citizens' assemblies. His research is comparative: besides the UK, his recent projects have included all European democracies as well as New Zealand, Japan, and Canada. In addition to numerous journal articles, chapters and reports he is the author of two books about electoral reform: A Citizens' Guide to Electoral Reform and The Politics of Electoral Reform: Changing the Rules of Democracy. Thanks for joining me today. In the next episode I'll be talking with Professor Pippa Norris about electoral integrity. I am currently putting together interviews about electoral systems around the world and so far I've interviewed people about India, South and Southern Africa, Australia, Asia and the South Pacific and New Zealand. I would also like to interview someone about electoral systems in Latin America but have not been successful in finding the right person to do this. If you know someone who you could fill this gap please introduce them to me via email at nivek.thompson@uts.edu.au

Welcome to episode 2 of Season 3 of Real Democracy Now! a podcast. Season 3 is looking at elections, electoral systems, electoral reform and alternatives. In today's episode, I'm talking with Professor Arend Lijphart about his work identifying two main categories of democracies which relate in part to their electoral systems. Arend is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California. His field of specialisation is comparative politics. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, with the two editions of his Patterns of Democracy from 1984 and 2012 being perhaps his most well-known and the subject of our conversation today. I spoke with Professor Lijphart about How he came to devote his life to the detailed empirical analysis of democracy in multiple countries around the world [1.10] The relationship between his empirical work and his theory around patterns of democracy [5.30] The variables he uses to demonstrate that consensual democracies outperform majoritarian democracies [18:35 ] Criticisms that his approach does not apply to developing non-Western democracies [28.10] In the next episode I'll be talking to Professor John Gastil, a Professor in the Department of Communication Arts & Sciences at Penn State College of Liberal Arts, about a workshop he recently co-hosted with Erik Olin Wright, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, titled Legislature by Lot [32.37] I hope you'll join me then.

Welcome to episode 18 in Season 2 of Real Democracy Now! a podcast. This episode is part 4 of the series where my guests share their views in response to the question: If you could change one thing about our system of democracy what would it be? And it is also the last episode in Season 2 about representative democracy. I'll be taking a break to put together Season 3 looking at Elections, voting and alternatives. First up let's hear from Professor Nadia Urbinati's response to this question. Nadia is is a Professor of Political Theory and Hellenic Studies at Columbia University. She is a political theorist who specialises in modern and contemporary political thought and the democratic and anti-democratic traditions. I spoke with Nadia about the development of representative democracy in episode 2 of Season 2. Next is Dr Simon Longstaff is the Executive Director of the Ethics Centre here in Sydney Australia. Simon was my guest in episode 17 of Season 2 talking about the relationship between democracy and ethics. Lewis Adams who was a juror on the Infrastructure Victoria Citizens' Jury in 2015 and a guest on Episode 17 in Season 1. Nancy Thomas is the Director of the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education in the Jonathan M Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts College. My interview with Nancy will be published in a later season of the podcast. Helene Landemore is Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Her research interests encompass democratic theory, theories of justice, Enlightenment thinkers, and the philosophy of social sciences. Jean-Paul Gagnon from the University of Canberra. Jean-Paul is a philosopher of democracy specialising in democratic theory. I spoke with Jean-Paul in Episode 6 in Season 2 about his work identifying the many adjectives associated with democracy. Harm van Dijk is one of the founders of the G1000 in the Netherlands. I spoke with Harm in Episode 15 in Season 1 about the design of the G1000 there. The next person to answer the question is Professor James Fishkin who 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. I spoke with Professor Fishkin about deliberative polling in episode 16 in Season 1. Andy Holdup who was a member of the Citizens' Assembly South in Southhampton in the UK in 2015 and also a guest on episode 17 in Season 1. And finally, we hear from Benjamin Isakhan who 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. I spoke with Ben in episode 4 of Season 2 about non-Western democracy. Thank you for joining me for Season 2 of Real Democracy Now! a podcast, looking at how representative democracy developed and how it operates. I'll be back with Season 3 on Elections, voting and alternatives in September 2017. If you haven't yet subscribed to the podcast, I'd suggest you do that now so that when Season 3 starts you'll automatically have those episodes downloaded onto your podcast app.

Welcome to episode 16 in Season 2 of Real Democracy Now! a podcast. In this episode, I talk to a few of my previous guests about the relationship between representative democracy and capitalism. Some common themes emerge, specifically around the power of capital challenging the power of democratically elected governments and the problem of growing inequality and the erosion of the welfare state and social democracy. My first guest is Professor Wolfgang Merkel who spoke about his paper Is Capitalism compatible with Democracy? Professor Merkel 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. Next, I spoke with Professor Leonardo Morlino who suggests that whilst we can legitimately talk about alternate systems to democracy asking about alternatives to capitalism is a rhetorical question. Professor Morlino 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, Eastern Europe, and the phenomenon of democratization. My third guest is Associate Professor Sofia Näsström who spoke about a paper she wrote with Sara Kalm from Lund University, titled A democratic critique of precarity in which they identify precarity as 'which you identify as the material and psychological vulnerability resulting from neo-liberal economic reforms.' Associate Professor Näsström is from the Department of Government, Uppsala University in Sweden. She works in the field of political theory, with a particular focus on issues related to democracy, constituent power, the people, the right to have rights, representation, freedom and precarity. And finally, I spoke with Professor Archon Fung about the relationship between representative democracy and free-market capitalism, and also about his work around workplace democracy. I hope to look at workplace democracy in more detail in a later season of the podcast. Professor Fung is the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance. He focuses on public participation, deliberation, and transparency. He co-directs the Transparency Policy Project and leads democratic governance programs of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School. In the next episode of Real Democracy Now! a podcast I'll be talking with Dr Simon Longstaff the Executive Director of the Ethics Centre here in Australia about ethics and democracy. He touches on democracy and capitalism too. I hope you'll join me then.

Welcome to this bonus episode in Season 2 of Real Democracy Now! a podcast. Season 2 is about representative democracy and this episode is about the democratic deficit. In episodes 12 and 13 of Season 2 I spoke to a range of academics about the democratic deficit arising from declining levels of trust and structural aspects of our current system of representative democracy. Today I talk with Professor Pippa Norris about the democratic deficit arising from the gap between people's expectations of democracy and their perception of its performance. Pippa is the Paul F. McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at Harvard University where she has taught for two decades. She is also ARC Laureate Fellow and Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. She is a political scientist focusing on democracy and development, public opinion and elections, political communications, and gender politics. She directs The Electoral Integrity Project, a multimillion dollar six-year research project with a team based at Sydney and Harvard. She has published almost forty books, two of which are particularly relevant to my discussion with her today Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Governance, published in 1999 and Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited, published in 2011. She continues to work in this area and she is currently writing a new book Democratic Deficits: Rising Aspirations, Negative News or Failing Performance?. Thank you for joining me for this bonus episode. I will be talking to Pippa again in Season 3 about The Electoral Integrity Project.