The success of the Greens and the Teal Independents in the recent Australian federal election has cultivated a sense of hope and courage. The past decade has deepened cynicism around electoral politics, not just here in Australia, but across the globe: Trump, Johnson and Morrison
NEJ’s Managing Editor Jacob Debets shares some brief thoughts on Astra Taylor’s 2019 Book ‘Democracy May Not Exist But We’ll Miss it When it’s Gone’ (excerpt published in NEJ, March 2020) Astra Taylor’s book ‘Democracy May Not Exist But We’ll Miss it When it’s Gone’
The fallacy in hoping that the people who populate and operate a democracy’s institutions will not abuse the latitude for action they find in them is illustrated by Han Fei’s story of the farmer and the hare. The story is that a farmer was ploughing a field in the middle of which stood a tree. Suddenly a hare came racing through the field, collided with the tree, broke its neck and died.
Typically, democracy is considered to consist of one person, one vote, exercised in periodic elections; constitutional rights; and a market economy. On paper at least, there is no shortage of states that conform to this rather limited conception — by some estimates, 81 countries moved from authoritarianism to democracy between 1980 and 2002. Yet recent studies reveal that democracy, defined by the preceding attributes, has weakened worldwide over the last decade or so.
We’ve had three full days and one half day of Public Hearings for the Citizens’ Inquiry into the Health of the Darling River and Menindee Lakes. And I’m feeling so much grief from the stories that have been told that I can’t eat and I can’t sleep.
A new UK report, commissioned by Power to Change, predicts that by the end of the next decade, community businesses will have proven that there’s a radically more inclusive, democratic way to run local economies – owning assets, sharing power, and putting people first. As