I am scribbling down these thoughts following a lecture at Goethe University by Michael Sandel on Democracies’ Discontents. There were two important but disconnected points in the lecture, which inspired a chain of thoughts for me on the nature of elections as an avoidance mechanism.
To celebrate the new English-language MA in Comparative Democracy at Goethe University Frankfurt, Hanna Pfeifer, Julian Garritzmann and I took over the Talk Social Science To Me Podcast and produced three episodes on key themes in the field. All episodes are now available on your favourite podcast provider or click on the links below.
I was the guest for the June episode of the new podcast from Goethe University, Talk Social Science To Me. The main theme was to discuss new ways of involving citizens in democracy, but the conversation led us to many topics, ranging from the effects of the pandemic on democratic governance to the role of democracies in the climate crisis. The podcast is now available on Spotify, Youtube and other podcast providers.
Jean-Paul Gagnon has amassed over 4,000 ‘linguistic artefacts’ into a data mountain of descriptions of democracy. Yet, I note, a sustained consideration of these linguistic artefacts as language is missing from his Science of Democracy and the responses to it.
Wie können wir erkennen, wenn den Begriff ‘Demokratie’ missbraucht wird? In einem Kapitel des neues Buchs Sprachgewalt von David Ranan, versuchen Jonathan Rinne und ich diese Frage zu beantworten.
Who could have guessed, even one year ago, that America’s postal service would be central to the US Presidential Election? That political party conventions would become online events? Or that protests could be suppressed in the name of biosecurity and protesters could be fined for not wearing face masks? The COVID-19 pandemic has had myriad unpredictable impacts on democratic institutions around the world…
A new special issue of the journal Democratic Theory, co-edited with Jean-Paul Gagnon and Hans Asenbaum, tackles the question of “What is democratic theory?”. It is a surprisingly infrequently posed question in the field. With contributions from Michael Saward, John Keane, Carole Pateman, Graham Smith and many others.