PAST LECTURES |
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Democracy and DistributionBy Professor Ian Shapiro, Yale University An enduring puzzle of our time is that democratic political institutions often coexist with great – and even increasing – inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth. In the seminar, Ian Shapiro will discuss the limitations of existing explanations of this phenomenon and outline an alternative research agenda that builds on his recent work on the politics of taxation. Ian Shapiro is Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University, where he also serves as Henry R. Luce Director of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. He has written widely and influentially on democracy, justice and the methods of social inquiry. His most recent books are The Real World of Democratic Theory; Containment: Rebuilding a Strategy against Global Terror; The Flight From Reality in the Human Sciences; and Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight Over Taxing Inherited Wealth (with Michael Graetz). His current research concerns the relations between democracy and the distribution of income and wealth.
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What Do Human Rights Demand from You and Me?By Professor Thomas Pogge, Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale Most human beings do not have all their human rights fulfilled. A better world must surely be possible. But who has what obligations to help bring it about? What do we really owe distant strangers? And is this debt measured in resources we sacrifice or in gains thereby achieved for those in need? How are our obligations affected by the fact that so many in our situation don’t lift a finger? Is it possible to lead a moral life in our highly complex world? Having received his PhD in philosophy from Harvard, Thomas Pogge has published widely on Kant and in moral and political philosophy. He is Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale, Professorial Fellow at the Australian National University, Research Director at the Oslo University Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature (CSMN) and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science. His recent publications (see pantheon.yale.edu/~tp4) include Politics as Usual, Polity 2010; Kant, Rawls, and Global Justice (Chinese), Shanghai Translation Press 2010; Hacer justicia a la humanidad, FCE 2009; World Poverty and Human Rights, 2nd edn, Polity 2008; Global Justice and Global Ethics, co-edited, Paragon House 2008; The Health Impact Fund, co-authored with Aidan Hollis, 2008; John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice, Oxford 2007; and Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right, edited, Oxford & UNESCO 2007. Supported by the Australian Research Council, the BUPA Foundation and the European Commission, Pogge?s current work is focused on a team effort toward developing a complement to the pharmaceutical patent regime that would improve access to advanced medicines for the poor worldwide (www.healthimpactfund.org).
More info: www.sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas |
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An Anatomy of Writing and Politics, Memory and DemocracyBy Javier Cercas, Spanish writer Co-presented with the Sydney Democracy Initiative University of Sydney, and the Instituto Cervantes in Sydney Javier Cercas is Spain’s most celebrated contemporary writer. He was born in Ibahernando, in central Spain, in 1962. Fascinated from a young age by the works of Jorge Luis Borges and determined to become a writer, Cercas studied Spanish literature at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. His haunting novel Soldiers of Salamis (2004) became a great success. Digging into the painful history of Spain’s Civil War through the gripping, death-defying story of fascist soldier Sanchez Mazas, Cercas uses irony, paradox and self-references to involve his readers in the creation of the novel, in this way encouraging them to ponder for themselves questions about the vital importance in a democracy of coming to terms with the past and the difficulty of deciding what is true, what is false and what cannot be remembered. Javier Cercas is the author of nine books and many shorter texts and translations. His most recent work is The Anatomy of a Moment (2011), a controversial prize-winning account of the failed coup d’état in Spain in February 1981. Cercas is the recipient of many Spanish and international awards, including the Premio Salambó and the Premio Nacional de Narrativa in Spain, the International Foreign Fiction Prize in United Kingdom, the Grinzane Cavour in Italy and the Athens Prize for Literature in Greece. A regular contributor to the Catalan edition of El Pais, he lives in Barcelona. Javier Cercas is in Australia as a guest of Adelaide Writers’ Week 2012. His books will be on sale at the event and he will be available to sign copies after the presentation.
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China’s Responses to the Arab EventsBy Professor Baogang He, Deakin University, Melbourne During the past two decades, the Chinese government has been pressured by three distinct waves of democratisation. The first wave happened in Eastern Europe in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The second took the form of the so-called Colour Revolutions in the former Soviet Republics in 2004-5. The Arab uprisings of 2011 are the most recent wave. The Chinese government has developed effective managerial strategies to respond to each of these waves. In order to examine and understand the government’s particular response to the Arab events, this seminar proposes that it is necessary to take into account the three democratic waves together, not in isolation. Date: Wednesday 16 November 2011 Time: 4pm – 6pm Venue: China Studies Centre Boardroom, Room 310, Old Teachers College, University of Sydney
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Spanish Trade Unions at the crossroads?The Sydney Democracy Initiative and the Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies By Mike Rigby, London South Bank University/Carlos III University, and Teresa Lawlor, Kingston University As well as the hostile environment faced by most contemporary trade unions in a globalized economic world, the relatively young Spanish movement faced a number of ´domestic´ challenges from its beginning ( e.g. a segmented labour market, union politicization, an SME dominated economy). The current economic crisis has raised the stakes even higher. This paper will evaluate union responses to this difficult environment three weeks before the Spanish General Election. Mike Rigby is Director of the Centre for International Business, London South Bank University and Lecturer at Carlos III University, Madrid. Venue: Eastern Avenue seminar room 404 |
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Cosmopolitanism and Global GovernanceBy Professor Roland Axtmann, University of Swansea In recent decades, we have witnessed the formation of complex, multi-level and multi-actor public authority structures, which are being discussed under such headings as ‘governance’ and ‘global governance’. The modes of co-ordination of these complex authority structures have been much discussed, with democratic institutional arrangements at a multiplicity of ‘levels’ (or ‘arenas’) and their articulations, on the one hand, and law and legal institutions, on the other hand, attracting most attention as steering and co-ordinating mechanisms. There is a proliferation of legal orders (and of the sources of law) and a pluralisation of law-making in public, semi-public and private bodies. While it remains indispensable for any legitimate exercise of public authority that it be based upon the sovereign will and active consent of the governed, democratic achievement, are seriously threatened – so runs the argument of the presentation – by the political project of global constitutionalism. By asking questions about the legitimacy of (global) legal authority, the importance of reconstituting democratic power as the (normative) foundation of global (legal) authority is reaffirmed.Professor Roland Axtmann is Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations at Swansea University, Wales. Roland has published widely in the areas of democracy, globalisation and macro-political change. He has recently renewed his research interests political thinking in Germany in the 20th century’. In this field, he has published on such thinkers as Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt, and Norbert Elias. He is currently pursuing a research project on ‘The idea of the republic in German thought’, focusing on thinkers such as Ernst Cassirer, Hans Kelsen, Ernst Fraenkel and Dolf Sternberger as well as Carl Schmitt and Eric Voegelin.
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The Spanish Revolution: The Role of the New Media Galaxyby Assistant Professor Ramon A. Feenstra, Moral Philosophy, Universitat Jaume I de Castellón, Spain This seminar analyses and explains why Spain is today living through remarkable events that no one could have anticipated it just a few months ago. Since mid-May, in over 100 cities across the country, thousands of young, and not so young, indignant Spanish citizens have taken to the streets using battle cries such as ‘Real Democracy Now: We Are Not Goods in the Hands of Politicians and Bankers!’ Madrid has become the focal point and global symbol of the protests. Now called the May 15th Movement, the protests are being fuelled by official corruption, high levels of unemployment, rising above 20%, concerns about bias within an electoral system that favors the two-party system (PSOE-PP) and suppresses other political voices. New media channels have also played a vital part, both in galvanizing support for the movement and raising important questions about the possible common interests of a movement marked by considerable heterogeneity. Ramon A. Feenstra is currently Assistant Professor of Moral Philosophy at the Universitat Jaime I de Castellón, Spain and Visiting Fellow at the Sydney Democracy Initiative. Dr. Feenstra’s current research areas include civil society, global civil society, the public sphere, new media and critical models of participatory democracy and monitory democracy. He is currently completing a book titled, Monitory Democracy and the New Media Galaxy, he is also co-editor of the Journal Recerca. Revista de Pensament i Analisi. -> Read Professor John Keane’s prologue to Ramón A. Feenstra’s recently published book, Democracia Monitorizada En La Era De La Nueva Galaxia Mediática: Based En La Propuesta De John Keane (2012)
Read Relevant Articles by Ramon A. Feenstra |
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Deliberative Democracy and Climate GovernanceThe Sydney Democracy Initiative and Sydney Political Theory Network Professor John Dryzek, Australian National University In environmental political theory and associated fields such as ecological economics, it is now widely accepted that deliberative governance ought to be able to promote both effective environmental performance and democratic legitimacy. But do these claims stand up in light of the reality of climate governance, currently so problematic at every level from the local to the global? Making reference to studies ranging from locally constituted citizen forums to global negotiations and networks, John Dryzek will claim that the theoretical arguments for deliberative democracy can be sustained when it comes to climate governance. The idea of a deliberative system proves crucial. Implications will be drawn for the content of rhetoric that can reach skeptics when climate science cannot.
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Farewell to Social Democracy?An international symposium hosted by The Sydney Democracy Initiative, University of Sydney on December 3, 2010 In a public lecture delivered in New York just before his death, the British historian Tony Judt (1945- 2010) examined the challenges facing contemporary social democracy and the welfare states it pioneered. In Europe and elsewhere, he noted, social democracy once championed great causes: political enfranchisement, government alleviation of social disadvantage, curbing the extremes of wealth and indigence and providing both middle-class and poorer citizens with education and medical care, subsidised public transportation and affordable public pensions. By contrast, contemporary social democratic parties look miserable.
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