Participatory Democracy
Category: Participatory Democracy
Featured, How we'll make change, Participatory Democracy
Voting On The Rights Of Others: A Debate
The postal survey on marriage equality in Australia has opened deep questions about the intersection between human rights and democracy. In this discussion community campaigner Hayley Conway and researcher Mary Tomsic debate what role citizens should play in voting for the rights of others. [...]
... Read MoreGreen Ideas in Action, Participatory Democracy, Responses, Uncategorised
The Trouble With Consensus Is … We Don’t Do It Enough
Co-founder of the Victorian Greens Facilitators Network, Jim Buckell, responds to Sarah Maddison In her interview with Clare Ozich in Green Agenda, Sarah Maddison puts consensus decision making under the spotlight. In doing so, she perpetuates some common myths: it’s too slow; makes for bad decisions; marginalises dissent. Then she advances a new one (to me anyway): it can apparently... Read More
Ecological Sustainability, Featured, How we'll make change, Participatory Democracy, Uncategorised
International climate agreements: useful or useless?
Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement has put the status of the international processes on climate change in doubt. In this discussion Green Agenda editor Simon Copland and researcher Felicity Gray debate whether Trump’s withdrawal should mean the end of the international climate process. [...]
... Read MoreEcological Sustainability, Featured, Participatory Democracy, Why are we here?
Is Social Democracy Ever Coming Back?
As labour parties and their political projects appear to recede deeper into irrelevance in every election around Europe, we might wonder whether the death knell ring has rung for social democracy. But what remains to be seen is whether this trajectory will continue, whether the political landscape is in the process of shifting irreversibly – and if so how Greens can... Read More
Featured, How we'll make change, Participatory Democracy
“A vibrant clash of passions”: exploring agonistic democracy
The nature of democracy is an age old question. We are currently witnessing a crisis in representative democracy. Times of crisis present opportunities for questioning assumptions and asking fundamental questions including about our conceptions and practice of democracy. Green Agenda spoke with Associate Professor Sarah Maddison about the concept of agonistic democracy and what it offers for the practice of... Read More
Featured, Participatory Democracy
Rebuilding the Public Sphere
For decades there has been concern in social and political theory about ‘the decline of the public sphere’. According to many prominent writers on the issue, an effective role for the public sphere in the exercise of political power is something that we have lost. For Hannah Arendt in her work The human condition (1958), societies in the modern age... Read More
Economic Justice, Featured, Participatory Democracy
Resisting the ‘law of greed’
What is an investor-state dispute settlement? It's complicated, but it has the potential to bridge traditional political divides, as Kyla Tienhaara explains. [...]
... Read MoreFeatured, Participatory Democracy
Democracy resides in participation in organisations
What is the place of NGOs in our democracy? Joan Staples has some thoughts on this matter. [...]
... Read More
Economic Justice, Participatory Democracy, Responses, Uncategorised
Response by Godfrey Moase to “Securing Economic Rights”
For me the question is a “how”. How can we, the people, secure our economic rights? We must go beyond “asserting” our economic rights and instead take action to “secure” them. Much work has been done on what those new economic rights should be. Personally, I believe a universal basic income is necessarily one of the rights that we should... Read More
Featured, Participatory Democracy
Things are crook in Tallarook
Why the future depends on restoring democracy Senator Milne’s essay was first published in Island magazine, Issue 139, November 2014 There is a crisis of confidence in democracy in Australia. It is a crisis for people and the environment. It is a situation I have been mulling over for quite some time, but has been front and centre since the Abbott government... Read More
