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Enlivening the Democratic Imagination

Enlivening the Democratic Imagination [This conversation with John Keane was first published in the book Democratic Theorists in Conversation: Turns in Contemporary Thought.] Defining democracy Gagnon: How do you define democracy? Keane: My conjecture is that, in matters of democracy, we are living in a period that resembles the end of the eighteenth century and […]

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Women keep democracy’s heart beating in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe

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 […]

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Questions about the New Democratic Theory

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, […]

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Introduction: New Democratic Theory?

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 […]

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Does ecological policy have to be so cruel?

Embracing epistemic multiplicity offers a different way

Does ecological policy have to be so cruel? Embracing epistemic multiplicity offers a different way Originally published by ABC Religion & Ethics, 24 Jan 2020. Co-authored with Robin Ladwig and Hannah Barrowman. [The original motivation for this article was the over-application of a positivist epistemology in the management of so-called invasive species in Australia and […]

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Resist and Revivify. Democratic theory in a time of defiance

Resist and Revivify: Democratic Theory in a Time of Defiance Originally published by Democratic Theory, June 2017. Co-authored with Dr Emily Beausoleil. [I remember preparing the issue of Democratic Theory that this editorial prefaces during a very difficult time, politically. These were the early days of a shock Trump presidency, of a deeply confused Brexit […]

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Globalizing the Intellectual History of Democracy

Professor Samuel Moyn (Yale) and Jean-Paul Gagnon (Canberra) in conversation.

Globalizing the Intellectual History of Democracy Originally published by Democratic Theory, 7(1), Summer 2020. Pp. 99-107. [The drive for this conversation, with Professor Samuel Moyn, came in most part out of a trend I had been observing in the democratic theory literature. There is a double dynamic at play, particularly over the last 15 or […]

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Suppressed Democracy in China: Theoretical Rationalisation using a Cosmopolitan Methodology

Surpressed Democracy in China: Theoretical Rationalisation using a Cosmopolitan Methodology Originally published February 9, 2011, by the Centre for Strategic Research and Analysis (online April 1, 2014). [How red-cheeked one can get running into a short, brash, essay written by their younger self. Nearly ten years have passed since this small push in a magazine […]

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The Democratic University

The Democratic University Originally published by Arena, 3 September, 2020. [This essay is motivated by the literature on university democracy but also the complex landscape of lived experiences of academics working in universities: this includes my own experiences from working with six universities but is primarily motivated by the stories that are made known to […]

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