Dates and Times
03 October 2023
11:00 - 12:00
Event for
Location
Organiser
Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance
Speakers
Hoi Kong
Enquiry
Event about:
Deliberative Democratic Constitutional Referendums
This event is hybrid. Join us on Zoom or at Building 24, University of Canberra.
Deliberative Democratic Constitutional Referendums
Referendums are often associated with theories of democracy in contrast to deliberative democracy. Deliberative democratic theorists have argued that referendums reflect an aggregative understanding of democracy, in which outcomes reflect and merely aggregate voters’ pre-formed opinions. Some of these theorists also note that referendums are susceptible to populist manipulation whereby democratic-seeming procedures such as referendums are conscripted—in contexts that lack a thriving public sphere—to achieve authoritarian ends. I will argue against this tendency to associate referendums with aggregative and populist approaches to democracy. I offer instead a deliberative constitutionalist theory of referendums and I will illustrate this argument by drawing on the Canadian experience.
This seminar will be chaired by Adele Webb.
Additional Information
About the speaker
Professor Hoi Kong is the inaugural holder of The Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, P.C., UBC Professorship in Constitutional Law, which he assumed in 2018. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s Program on Constitutional Studies and a Peter Wall Scholar (2020-2021). He researches and teaches in the areas of constitutional, administrative, municipal and comparative law, and constitutional and public law theory.
UC acknowledges the Ngunnawal people, traditional custodians of the lands where Bruce campus is situated. We wish to acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the life of Canberra and the region. We also acknowledge all other First Nations Peoples on whose lands we gather.