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.
Hillary Clinton, Julian Assange and the US election
Oct 31, 2016 10:27 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics
The following field note will shortly appear in Germanys Die Zeit. It is a brief commentary on the factual errors and misjudgements of numerous journalists when reporting the role recently played by Julian Assange and...
History of Russian populism provides important lessons for today
Oct 24, 2016 05:10 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics
When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called the Peoples Stick. Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy (1873) Populism is in the air: its the topic of the moment, the...
A New Democratic Enlightenment?
Sep 24, 2016 08:09 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics
This is the slightly rewritten text of my address to the opening plenary session, New Enlightenment Neue Aufklrung, at the European Forum Alpbach, Alpbach, Austria, 28 August 2016. European Forum Alpbach,...
Capitalism and Democracy [part 4]
Aug 13, 2016 11:21 am UTC| Insights & Views Economy Politics
Earlier parts of this series on capitalism and democracy raised questions about the tense and often contradictory relationship between capitalist markets and the egalitarian spirit and power-humbling institutions of...
Capitalism and Democracy [part 3]
Aug 13, 2016 11:18 am UTC| Insights & Views Economy Politics
Part two of this series on capitalism and democracy introduced the unfamiliar idea of democracy failure. Instead of seeing democracy as the hapless victim of capitalist markets, as Marxists and others have typically done...
Capitalism and Democracy [part 2]
Aug 13, 2016 11:16 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics Economy
Part one of this series on capitalism and democracy probed the famous remark of the American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen that there are historical moments when democratic sovereignty is converted into a...
Capitalism and Democracy [part one]
Aug 13, 2016 11:15 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics Economy
Lets begin with a discomforting fact often forgotten in recent years: capitalism is not naturally the best friend of democracy. Since the early years of the nineteenth century, especially during periods of economic...
Putin’s Russia: first arrests under new anti-LGBT laws mark new era of repression
Canada needs a national strategy for homeless refugee claimants