Professor John Dryzek FASSA
John Dryzek is Professor of Political Science and Australian Research Council Federation Fellow. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, former Head of the Departments of Political Science at the Universities of Oregon and Melbourne and the Social and Political Theory program at ANU, and former editor of the Australian Journal of Political Science.
Working in both political theory and empirical social science, he is best known for his contributions in the areas of democratic theory and practice and environmental politics. One of the instigators of the ‘deliberative turn’ in democratic theory, he has published five books in this area with Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Polity Press. His work in environmental politics ranges from green political philosophy to studies of environmental discourses and movements, and he has published three books in this area with Oxford University Press and Basil Blackwell.
He has also worked on comparative studies of democratization, post-positivist public policy analysis, and the history and philosophy of social science. His Federation Fellowship funds work on deliberative global governance (with special reference to climate change) and democratization interpreted in deliberative terms (with special reference to East Asia).
Category
Cunningham LecturesThe contemporary prominence of climate change confirms the democratic and ecological deficits of global governance. When authority migrates from states into the international system, democracy does not usually follow, causing problems in a world where legitimate political authority ought to be democratic. There is no World Environment Organisation to match (say) the World Trade Organisation. The two deficits may be linked, for in national contexts democratic innovation and environmental concern have often proved mutually reinforcing. The democratisation of global environmental governance can be approached by contemplating how the engagement of discourses in the global public sphere can be subject to more inclusive and competent control. Then we might think about how this engagement could join in a more deliberative system in which effective authority is exercised. The results are likely to look very different from familiar state-based electoral democracy.
