UC EVENTS

New Books in Democracy: The Future of Self-Governing, Thriving Democracies

This book offers a new approach for the future of democracy by advocating to give citizens the power to deliberate and to decide how to govern themselves.

Innovatively building on and integrating components of representative, deliberative and participatory theories of democracy with empirical findings, the book provides practices and procedures that support communities of all sizes to develop their own visions of democracy. It revitalizes and reinfuses the ‘democratic spirit’ going back to the roots of democracy as an endeavour by, with and for the people, and should inspire us in our search for the democracy we want to live in.

In this book launch, Brigitte Geißel will talk to Hans Asenbaum about the book’s backstory, how her thinking about democratic innovations has changed over the years that led her to the book’s core arguments, and where she thinks the field is headed given the persistent challenges to democratic practices around the world.

The book is available open access and may be downloaded for free here.

This event is co-hosted by the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra and the Democratic Innovations Research Unit at the Goethe University.

About the speaker

Prof. Dr. Brigitte Geißel, Goethe University Frankfurt a.M., is Professor of Political Science/ Political Sociology and Head of the Research Unit ‘Democratic Innovations’. She has received a number of awards for her studies on democracy and democratic innovations , including a Democracy Fellowship from Harvard University‘s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, a Senior Fellowship from the Alfried Krupp Foundation and a Marie-Curie-Fellowship from the European Commission.