PAST EVENTS

Mediacracy?

A One-Day Symposium on Public Information and the Future of Journalism and Democratic Politics, to be held at the University of Sydney on September 7, 2011

Co-hosted by Sydney Democracy Initiative (SDI); Media and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe (MDCEE)

• The Hidden Media Powers that Undermine Democracy by Professor John Keane

Spirited Voices from the Muslim World: Islam, Democracy and Gender Rights

On April 28, 29 and 30, 2011, the Sydney Democracy Initiative (SDI) and the Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney, will host a three day symposium on Spirited Voices driving new Islamic reformation in the Muslim world.

Representation and its Discontents

Co-hosted by the School of Social and Political Sciences and Faculty of Arts and Social Science, the University of Sydney, and the University of New South Wales on February 25, 2011.

The invention of representative democracy is often said to be among the distinctive achievements of modern politics. It came as no easy victory. In its European homeland, it took seven centuries (and quite a few rebellions and revolutionary upheavals) to consolidate representative institutions.

These institutions guarantee such procedures as periodic election of candidates to legislatures, limited-term holding of political offices, voting by secret ballot, competitive political parties, the right to assemble in public and liberty of the press.

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.