John Keane is co-founder of the Sydney Democracy Network (SDN) and Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB). His full-scale history of democracy, The Life and Death of Democracy (2009), was short-listed for the 2010 Non-Fiction Prime Minister’s Literary Award, and recently ranked (by one of Japan's leading newspapers, Asahi Shimbun) within the top three non-fiction books published during 2013 in Japan. His new book, Democracy and Media Decadence has just been published.
Jul 18, 2017 12:39 pm UTC| Insights & Views Economy Politics
This research note on Mexican politics and society was inspired by a recent visit to Mexico City, Puebla and Oaxaca, as a guest of the countrys Instituto Nacional Electoral (INE). Visitors to Mexico are almost always...
Wittgenstein and the Dangers of Certainty
Apr 30, 2017 13:54 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
The following notes on the politics of rising uncertainty and the future of democracy were prepared for the inaugural CISS global forum, Peace and Security under Uncertainty, Quarantine Station, Sydney, April 28 2017. The...
How the Spanish political laboratory is reconfiguring democracy
Mar 23, 2017 03:08 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics
This article is part of the Democracy Futures series, a joint global initiative with the Sydney Democracy Network. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st...
The Cherry Blossom Uprising: Monitory Democracy in Korea
Mar 13, 2017 06:52 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics
Political scientists trained or based in the Atlantic region have a bad habit of ignoring trends in our Asia-Pacific region. When they do pay attention to its dynamics, they often misleadingly measure them by their own...
Feb 18, 2017 00:14 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics
We live in darkening times, so its time for some dark humour. Inspired by the antics of a Big Man with a Big Mouth, think just for a moment about the important subject of how democracies treat their elected leaders....
War and Democracy in the Age of Trump
Dec 17, 2016 01:34 am UTC| Insights & Views
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus once observed that Persian rulers indulged the habit of getting drunk when making important decisions. When sober and sensible next morning, their custom was to reconsider their...
Dec 04, 2016 01:30 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics
Theres a widespread belief that actually existing democracies are in the grip of a fast-paced world dominated by breaking news and all things instant. The following contribution sets out to question this belief. It takes...
‘We have thousands of Modis’: the secret behind the BJP’s enduring success in India