Democratic Theory and Theoretical Physics Originally published by the Taiwan Journal of Democracy, 6(2), 2010. Pp. 1-22. [This journal article was written in the end game of the doctoral thesis I was, at the time, writing whilst an intern at the International Labour Organization in Geneva and, later, at my doctoral alma mater the Queensland […]

Women keep democracy’s heart beating in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe [First published in The Conversation, and co-written with Mark Chou and Tezcan Gumus, this essay was borne from the deeply satisfying effect of a group of women, from a country maligned for its Mugabe relation, visiting various Australian parliaments and asking: where are your women, where are your […]

The Reflexive Modernization of Democracy [Ulrich Beck was at the London School of Economics when I was visiting London in early 2012 (I had a conversation with David Held then, too). I have a memory of us finding an occasional room to use, some hot desk, and sprucing it up a bit with books in […]

Questions about the New Democratic Theory [This conversation with David Held was our second. The first, on cosmopolitanism and democracy, appears here. For the second, I traveled from Toronto to London in early 2012 and met with him at his (then) London School of Economics office (I remember a football jersey, signed, in a frame, […]

New Democratic Theory? [This is the introductory chapter to my second book, Democratic Theorists in Conversation: Turns in Contemporary Thought, published in 2014 by Palgrave Macmillan. It, as the chapter title suggests, offers an inquiry into whether the field of democracy studies/democratic theory is entering new ground. This line of inquiry is the most commented […]

Schrödinger’s Democracy [This is chapter 4 of my first book, Evolutionary Basic Democracy, published in 2013 by Palgrave Macmillan. The name of the chapter, of course, comes from the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger. A canine friend, who I have the pleasure of caring for, is also called Schrödinger (Odie for short). I have fond memories […]

Arguments Against Evolutionary Democracy [This is the 4th chapter to my first book Evolutionary Basic Democracy published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013. I was visiting my parents when writing it and have sweet memories of typing from my childhood’s dining table where, decades prior, relatives had held me accountable to my vegetables and there, decades […]

Representing Nature and Contemporary Democracy [This conversation was originally published by Democratic Theory (vol 1, issue 2, pp. 94-108) in 2014. The most distinct memory I have of the discussion on the whole was the time we spent focusing on just how difficult it is to talk to other people, to break into different enclaves, […]

Arguments For Evolutionary Democracy [This is the third chapter from my book Evolutionary Basic Democracy (Palgrave, 2013). It offers arguments in favor of the theory that forms of democracy have independently evolved many times in this world, especially among non-humans!] Abstract: I investigate the sciences for their use of the terms ‘democracy’ and ‘democratic’. Findings […]

Human Enhancement Technologies and Democratic Citizenship [Originally published in Steven John Thompson’s Global Issues and Ethical Considerations in Human Enhancement Technologies. I really enjoyed the Isaiah Berlin-inspired fiction method employed for this essay: Steven was open to the prospect of my thinking through what electoral democracy, democratic citizenship, and technology could look like in the […]