Centre for Deliberative Democracy & Global Governance

Australian National University

Deliberative democracy is one of the major growth areas in contemporary political theory and social science, and ANU claims what is possibly the world’s largest concentration of deliberative democracy scholars. Many of the world’s leading deliberative democrats have spent time with us. The ‘Global Governance’ in our title emphasizes research directions that encompass transnational democracy and democratization, though research on democratic theory, local and national deliberation, and the micropolitics of deliberative forums also flourishes.

Website: http://deliberativedemocracy.anu.edu.au/

The Centre for Democracy Studies (ZDA)

We are an academic research centre at the University of Zurich dealing on an interdisciplinary level with basic research and current scientific issues relating to democracy – here, there and everywhere.

The Centre for Democracy Studies (ZDA) was established in March 2009 in Aarau to practice and promote top level scientific research and teaching on democracy in political science, law and political education. The national research programme “Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century” (Website NCCR Democracy) provided an important impulse for the establishment of the ZDA.

The ZDA is a meeting point for qualified researchers, interested bodies and curious citizens from around the world who care for democracy and its development.

Website: http://www.zdaarau.ch/en/

Centre for Research on Direct Democracy (c2d)

The C2D was founded in 1993 at the Department of Constitutional Law of the University of Geneva and became a part of the new centre for democracy studies in Aarau ZDA in September 2007.

The C2D is grateful to the Law Department of the University of Geneva for hosting the centre for 15 years and letting it develop into what it is today. The centre consists of researchers in law and political science who have devoted their research interests to direct democracy as a form of contemporary democracy.

Website: http://www.c2d.ch/index.php

Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta is an independent, non-profit organisation focusing on policy-oriented studies on domestic and international issues. It was established in 1971.

CSIS’s mission is to contribute to improved policy making through policy-oriented research, dialogue, and public debate.

This is based on the belief that long-term planning and vision for Indonesia and the region must be based on an in-depth understanding of economic, political and social issues including regional and international developments.

CSIS research and studies are channeled in various forms as independent input to government, universities and research institutions, civil society organizations, media, and business.

Website: http://www.csis.or.id/

Centre for the Study of Democracy

The Centre for the Study of Democracy undertakes research, teaching and knowledge exchange in democratic theory and practice. Established in 1989, it is now a major international centre for intellectual reflection and engagement on issues relating to democracy, civil society and processes of democratisation. Chantal Mouffe, John Keane and Bhikhu Parekh have been leading contributors, and the Centre’s staff and students are currently engaged in a diverse range of research projects. CSD is an open, pluralistic and inter-disciplinary community, dedicated to bringing theory, practice and people together to deepen democracy.
CSD holds regular seminars, workshops and conferences. It also collaborates with other institutions in the organisation of international events. Recently, this has included ‘The Future of Europe,’ (with Birkbeck College, School of Law) and’A Multipolar World Orde,’ (with the Open University and Newcastle University).

The Centre is a founding member of the Space of Democracy/Democracy of Space Network. It publishes The Bulletin and hosts the annual CSD Encounter. This has included speakers such as Charles Taylor, Stuart Hall, Julia Kristeva, Bruno Latour, Quentin Skinner, Richard Rorty, Michael Walzer and Judith Butler.

Website: http://www.westminster.ac.uk/schools/humanities/politics-and-international-relations/centre-for-the-study-of-democracy

Center for the Study of Imperfections in Democracy (DISC)

By now, the common wisdom that never in human history have so many countries been governed by democratically-elected leaders has been replaced by the widespread suspicion that democracy is in crisis.

Recent developments suggest that democracies of all ages are facing serious challenges. In response to a widespread suspicion that the quality of democracy in recently re(emerged) and established democracies is increasingly low, the Center for the Study of Imperfections in Democracy (DISC), a research center at Central European University, was established in 2007 to develop and encourage research that reaches across traditional academic and geographic boundaries that exist in the study of democracy by connecting researchers from distinct world regions and from various fields and perspectives.

The present challenges and changes give rise to serious concerns about political accountability and democratic performance that signal an imperative and critical need for learning more about the present and future state of democracy.

While clearly even the most advanced democracies are pale imitations of the democratic ideal, in order to analyze the state of democracy or prescribe policies for improving the state of democracy, there must be a clear understanding of the qualities of democracy. It is no longer sufficient to define a high-quality democracy through a description of the established democracies.

Given these circumstances, a thorough (re-) evaluation of the qualities of democracy is vital for the future of democracy research. DISC aims to advance the state of research and teaching on democracy to address the challenges faced in present-day democracies through research projects, educational programs, lecture series, and conferences.

Website: http://disc.ceu.hu/

Democracy: Structures, Performance, Challenges (Research Unit)

The department investigates how institutions and political actors interact in a democracy – and how efficiently established and young democracies are when it comes to solving economic and social problems. The theoretical framework is embedded democracy – a concept in which democracies are kept intact by systems of government with interlocking partial regimes: an electoral regime, political liberties, civil rights, horizontal accountability and an effective power to govern. This approach provides a comprehensive analysis of these partial regimes, in relation both to each other and to external challenges to democracy. Researchers focus on the diagnosis of the challenges to democracy, the comparative analysis of institutional systems, such as government or electoral systems, and the comparative study of important political actors such as parliament, administration or jurisdiction.

Website: http://www.wzb.eu/zkd/dsl/default.en.htm

Democracy Unbound

Swedish Research Project Looking at Global Democracy

In the last decades, we have witnessed the emergence of powerful supranational institutions in the political sphere. This development provides a response to problems that are difficult to handle at the national level. However, it might be held that its adequacy depends on the extent to which the institutions are democratic, or constrained by democratic decision-making processes.

Indeed, it has been suggested that we should ultimately strive for a global democratic government, and that the development of bodies such as the EU is justified since it provides a step in that direction. Proposals of this kind provide the focus of our research project.

Website: http://people.su.se/~folke/index.html

Demos, Lembaga Kajian Demokrasi dan Hak Asasi (Centre for Democracy and Human Rights Studies)

This research institute was established to analyise democratic movements and trends in Indonesia. Initially under the supervision of prominent Indonesianists, Prof. Olle Tornquist (Oslo University) and Prof. Arief Budiman (Melbourne University). It now hosts individuals such as Arief Budiman and the late Munir. Asmara Nababan is also the chairman of KONTRAS (Komisi untuk Orang Hilang dan Korban Tindak Kekerasan, Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence)

Website: http://www.demosindonesia.org

Intelligence Squared

IQ² occupies a unique position in Australia’s social and intellectual landscape. It is the only institution in town – aside from Parliament – to provide a forum for debate on the crucial issues of the day.
But unlike Parliament, its debates are consistently exciting, witty, provocative – and comfortable, held as they are at the City Recital Hall Angel Place in Sydney and the Melbourne Town Hall in Melbourne. Best of all, you are invited to watch the live debates and even participate.

Website: http://www.iq2oz.com/

Lembaga Penelitian, Pendidikan dan Penerangan Ekonomi dan Sosial (LP3ES)

Institute for Social and Economic Research, Education & Information (LP3ES) is a Non-Government Organization (NGO), which is non-profit and autonomous. It was founded by a group of intellectuals and student activists on August 19, 1971. Its formation was sparked by the felt need for developing alternative thinking for national development.

Website: http://www.lp3es.or.id/

Making Electron Democracy Work

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada has awarded a major grant for a seven-year research project entitled Making Electoral Democracy Work.

Our project brings together an exceptional team of economists, political scientists, and psychologists from Canada, Europe, and the United States to undertake the most ambitious study ever undertaken of the impact of electoral rules on the functioning of democracy.
The study will examine 27 elections in five countries.

There are three inter-related components:

• An analysis of party strategies in these same 27 elections;
• An internet panel survey of the same voters over different elections;
• And a series of innovative experiments designed to complement the analyses of party and voter behaviour

Website: http://electoraldemocracy.com/

Media and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe (MDCEE)

The project looks at the often troublesome and poorly understood relationship between democracy and the media in Central and Eastern Europe.
Existing studies tend to focus on whether media are good or bad for democracy. Western media models assume that democratic institutions pre-date the rise of media, and that core qualities of democratic governance exist (including the rule of law, political pluralism, freedom of speech and information). But such assumptions do not necessarily apply in Central and Eastern Europe, where democratic institutions and media institutions emerged simultaneously and interdependently in a period of rapid and often chaotic reform.

Our project intends to take a novel and interdisciplinary approach to the question.
We aim to reverse the common framing of the media-democracy relationship. Instead of asking how media performance of certain normative functions (such as information provision and holding power elites to account) influences democracy, we ask:
What kind of democracy is needed for media to perform its agreed-upon normative functions?
In other words, we are interested in the quality of the media as a function of the quality of democracy.

Website: http://mde.politics.ox.ac.uk/

The Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD)

The Center for the Study of Democracy is an organized research unit at the University of California, Irvine. The Center sponsors research and education aimed at improving the democratic process in the United States and expanding democracy around the world.

The Center’s research activities focus on four areas:

Democracy-21, a research program aimed at improving the democratic process in the United States and other established democracies; the New Democracies Initiative, focusing on the promotion of democracy in formerly authoritarian systems; a program examining the role of social movements as a form of political expression; and a research area evaluating the intersection of race, ethnicity, and democratic politics.

Website: www.democ.uci.edu

The Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD)

The Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at Leuphana University Lüneburg conducts research on democratic structures and procedures in politics and society, economics and the environment. The central focus of research is on questions of legitimacy and performance of democracy in the 21st century.

The Center’s research activities focus on three main areas: Value Change and Human Empowerment, Party Government and Institutional Change and Participation and Public Policy. In addition, the CSD engages in active promotion of younger researchers as well as in international and regional networking of democracy research institutions.

Website: http://www.leuphana.de/en/zentren/zdemo.html

The Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship (CSDC)

The Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship (CSDC) brings together a group of scholars from four Québec universities. The centre includes scholars and students from both Communications and Political Science departments, and brings a cross-disciplinary perspective to bear on the challenges facing democratic citizenship in a rapidly changing world.

Established in 2008, CSDC researchers address a wide range of questions relating to the relationship between citizens and the political process. How do citizens decide who to vote for? Can citizens hold governments accountable? How do citizens form attitudes about public policy? What accounts for political participation, or, perhaps more importantly, a lack of political participation? What are the implications of social diversity for engagement, or policy support? These and related questions play a central role in the work pursued by scholars at the CSDC.

Website: http://csdc-cecd.mcgill.ca/indexEN.html

The Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions

The Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions seeks to advance research, teaching and the broad communication of ideas and knowledge about institutional innovation in democratic governance.

Through its programs, the Centre promotes excellence in research and teaching, brings together scholars, public officials and students from diverse backgrounds and academic disciplines, and works with governmental and non-governmental organizations.

The Centre does not engage in policy advocacy or advising. Nor does it identify with any particular political party, interest group, or ideological position. Consistent with the global mission of the university, the Centre’s activities include the major established democracies, emerging democracies, and non-democratic states.

Website: http://democracy.ubc.ca/

The Center for the Study of Democratic Politics (CSDP)

The Center for the Study of Democratic Politics (CSDP)was created in 1999 as a research program within the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The Center supports empirical research on democratic political processes and institutions. CSDP’s research program focuses on the relationship between democratic ideals and democratic practice; its aim is to encourage rigorous social scientific analysis that informs and is informed by normative theories of democracy.

Website: http://www.princeton.edu/csdp/index.xml

The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS)

The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, also called the CSDS or informally, just the Centre, is a premier institute of India in the social sciences and humanities.

The Centre provides a unique institutional space which seeks to nurture intellectual interests outside the entrenched boundaries of academic disciplines. This simultaneously gives the Centre a sense of intimacy with and distance from universities. Therefore, the Centre has deliberately chosen not to duplicate the structure of university department.

This also allows the Centre to support and nurture interdisciplinary modes of enquiry. Over the years, the Centre has also managed to generate and utilize a productive tension between rigorous scholarly work and social movements, between academic commitment and political practices. It has been frequently engaged with contentious contemporary issues which have shaped its academic programme and contributed to struggles for dignity, livelihood and creative self expression.

At the same time the CSDS zealously and meticulously guards its own space of reflective distance, theoretical work and research which has no obvious visibility in the public domain.

Website: http://www.csds.in/index.php

The Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID)

The Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID) is a non-profit organization, based in Washington DC, dedicated to studying Islamic and democratic political thought and merging them into a modern Islamic democratic discourse.

The organization was founded in March 1999 by a diverse group of academicians, professionals, and activists–both Muslim and non-Muslim–from around the USA who agree on the need for the study of and dissemination of reliable information on this complex topic.

Website: https://www.csidonline.org/

The National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Democracy

The National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Democracy is a multi-disciplinary research program launched by the Swiss National Science Foundation in 2005. The program examines the key challenges to democracy today and traces them to two major trends: globalization and the growing influence of the media on politics.

The NCCR’s basic research questions are: How are established democracies changing under the conditions of globalization and the mediatization of politics? And how can democracy be promoted horizontally (to non-democratic countries) and vertically (to supra-national regimes like the EU, the WTO, etc)? Website: http://www.nccr-democracy.uzh.ch/

The Oxford Centre for the Study of Inequality and Democracy (OCSID

The Oxford Centre for the Study of Inequality and Democracy(OCSID) – is a new organization aiming to promote both independent and collaborative research among the diverse community of comparative politics specialists at Oxford.

The Centre will foster the analysis of a broad range of issues and institutions in established and new democracies as well as the analysis of economic, social and political inequalities in regimes of any type.

Website: http://ocsid.politics.ox.ac.uk/

The Sejong Institute

The Sejong Institute of the Sejong Foundation is a private non-profit research institute in the areas of security, national unification, and foreign affairs that is dedicated to suggesting a future map of the Republic of Korea.

Established in 1983, the Sejong Institute is a private think tank located in the Republic of Korea that is dedicated to conducting researches and making analyses on the past, present and future mid- and long-term national policies in the areas of security, national unification, and foreign affairs. As an affiliated organization of the Sejong Foundation, it has been active in developing policy alternatives for the promotion of security, peace, and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula. In collaboration with numerous research fellows and experts from both domestic and international organizations, the Institute focuses its research programs and analyses mainly on security, inter-Korean relations, regional studies, and international political economy. Moreover, the Institute not only carries out various independent researches and analyses on these issues but also provides quality educational training services to related officials from both private and public sectors.

Website: http://www.sejong.org/index.php

The European Inter–University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC)

EIUC is an interdisciplinary centre formed by 41 universities from all European Union Member States. It is founded on a commitment to the realisation of the values enshrined in the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights, the promotion of high-level inter-disciplinary human rights education, research, training and culture, and a shared global understanding of human rights and democracy. EIUC is located in Venice, Italy.

Website: http://www.eiuc.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=10