Ideas, Progress & the Future
Deliberation at the heart of democracy – 10 years of CDDGG at UC
In 2024, democracy has been at the forefront, with elections held across the globe – almost half of the world’s population would have headed to the polls by the end of the year. Voting, a core exercise of democracy, can mobilise, inspire and empower some – but it can also leave some feeling isolated, disillusioned and powerless.
Yet democracy is more than just voting – there are many other ways people can participate in and shape democracy.
Located within the University of Canberra’s Faculty of Business, Government and Law, the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance (CDDGG) conducts world-leading research on democracy, focusing particularly on innovative and deliberative forms of citizen engagement.
Deliberative democracy is an approach that places dialogue and discussion at the heart of collective decision-making. It prioritises the voices and perspectives of everyday citizens, empowering them to actively shape the decisions that impact their lives.
“I'm interested in citizens’ attitudes to democracy, and in the way they think and feel about politics and the types of experiences that might have shaped their political views,” says Dr Adele Webb, a Research Fellow in Democracy and Citizen Engagement at the Centre.
“Do people feel empowered and motivated to take part in democracy, or do they feel powerless to make a difference.
“How do these feelings and experiences influence the participation in democracy? What impact does engaging in deliberative process have on their attitudes towards democracy?”
Deliberative citizen engagement is one of many areas of the cutting-edge research programs carried out by the Centre, which is this year marking a decade of residence at UC.
Building a team, exploring new ways of thinking
The Centre was co-founded at the Australian National University (ANU) in the early 2000s by Distinguished Professor John Dryzek and Professor Simon Niemeyer, who are both leaders in their fields, and remain an integral part of the team.
John says he has been working on deliberative democracy since “before it had a name” and describes it as a way of making the democratic process more meaningful.
“The way I see it, deliberation is the lifeblood of politics, and inclusive public deliberation acts as a defence against threats to democracy,” he says.
“Looking back on the research we’ve done in the last decade, I think we’ve really flourished since coming to UC in 2014.”
Professor Selen Ercan is the current Centre Director; she was a postdoctoral research fellow when she joined in 2012. She reflects on having lived in different countries outside of her home country of Turkey, and how it has shaped her thinking in research.
“Deliberation is something that is happening already in every society and extends beyond structured forums into the broader public sphere. The media, advocacy groups, social movements are all part of deliberative democracy. To advance democracy and make it more deliberative, we should focus on what is going on in the public sphere. What is being debated? Who is included in public debates, whose voice is heard, who is excluded, who is silenced,” she says.
Those questions shifted Selen’s thinking around deliberation and its talk-centric approach, to how non-verbal practices can also play a role in public deliberation. She received an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant to examine the public discourse around the coal seam gas controversy in Australia from a deliberative democratic perspective.
As part of this project, she examined the role of social protest groups – such as the Knitting Nannas Against Gas – in a democratic society. Using knitting as a form of protest, the group sits and knits at blockades, outside offices of politicians and energy companies, outside Parliament and at mining sites. Selen observed the group in action and conducted interviews with individual members of the team for her study. The insights from this project are captured in her co-authored book, Mending Democracy: Democratic Repair in Disconnected Times (2020).
“I found that this is a group that makes political engagement fun and engaging,” Selen says.
“It was incredibly valuable to look at the role of creative forms of political engagement, how they enrich the public debate, and shape the discourse around coal seam gas mining in Australia.”
Deliberative engagement in action
Another example of the Centre’s research in action is the Connecting to Parliament project, now in its second phase and led by Adele. The project aims to connect more Australians to democratic processes through experimental deliberative engagements with their elected representatives.
In 2020, the Centre held two deliberative town halls with the Hon Dr Andrew Leigh, who is the Federal Member for Fenner in the ACT.
A representative group of constituents weighed up the issues surrounding mitochondrial donation, an assisted reproductive technology (illegal at the time) which can help some women to avoid transmitting mitochondrial disease to their biological children.
Participants recommended it be made legal in Australia and Dr Leigh voted in favour of the Mitochondrial Donation Law Reform (Maeve’s Law) Bill in the December 2021 conscience vote in Parliament.
In a speech to Parliament, Dr Leigh thanked the Centre for its leadership and encouraged other Members of Parliament to consider deliberative democratic processes to bring citizens back into important public conversations. Mitochondrial donation became legal in Australia in October 2022.
“Many people are looking for opportunities to engage more meaningfully with their elected representatives, and to wrestle together on important issues that impact their lives. At the same time, this can benefit Members of Parliament,” Adele says.
The Centre’s Australian Citizens’ Jury on Human Genome Editing project brought together 24 randomly selected citizens from all over Australia to listen to experts and generate policy recommendations over four days. It was carried out in the Senate at Old Parliament House in 2021.
“This is an example of how we look at technological developments that bring risks, and how we then deliberate the balance of benefits and risks to consider what to do about regulating those technologies,” says John.
“When you think about genome editing, it’s such a technical topic and we were surprised by the outcomes: how thoughtful people are, how effectively they can listen to each other and how useful these recommendations could be for regulatory agencies, for parliamentary debates – not just to inform debates in Australia but around the world as well,” says Professor Nicole Curato, another of the project leads.
Growing with the Centre
Nicole joined the Centre as a postdoctoral researcher in 2011 and has built her career on rigorous research that demonstrated the transformative power of deliberation in fragile and conflict-affected settings in the Global South.
She was named one of the 2024 recipients of the prestigious ARC Future Fellowships, a four-year fellowship awarded to outstanding Australian mid-career researchers.
It’s an achievement Nicole attributes to a supportive work culture at the Centre. She believes the collegial environment has only strengthened over time.
“Our Centre is such a vibrant and hospitable space where we learn so much from one another and I think UC has been a supportive environment for us to pursue not just our research interests, but to share our knowledge with society and really make an impact,” Nicole says.
She is adept at bringing the concept of deliberative democracy to a broader audience. Drawing on her research, Nicole believes in the potential for inclusive and informed decision-making, despite the current hyper-partisan state of politics.
“Deliberative democracy is not a pipe dream, but a real-world political project,” Nicole says.
“We have evidence demonstrating that, for example, deliberative democracy depolarises opinions, it brings people back to the centre, allows people to engage in respectful discussion, and models good behaviour.
“We cannot make good policies and solve the existential threats that we face today – like climate change and violent conflict – if we keep talking to each other in a hyper-partisan way.”
Understanding the threats and building democratic resilience
Selen explains how the Centre is conducting research to understand the threats to democracy while exploring innovative solutions aimed at strengthening democracy, both in Australia and globally.
“You can’t propose a solution if you don’t have a good understanding of what the problem is,” she says.
How to make democracy more resilient in the face of diverse threats, from violent extremism to climate crisis, is another key area of research.
The Centre is currently home to ARC-funded project, Democratic Resilience: The Public Sphere and Extremist Attacks, which compares responses to violent extremist attacks in different countries, including Australia.
Translating the key learnings of this project for Australia, the Centre also led research for the Building Democratic Resilience report, a collaboration with the New South Wales Government in 2022.
This report delivered a framework for examining and improving public sphere responses to violent extremism.
“We look at how different democracies respond to extremist attacks and seek to explain why some become rapidly polarised, while others remain united,” says Selen.
“As soon as there is an external threat, some democracies start using polarised discourses right away – ‘them versus us’, ‘migrants versus natives’ – whereas other democracies can maintain some sort of integral public discourse and have a more mature response to these tragic events. In our project, New Zealand’s response to 2019 Christchurch Massacre exemplifies this kind of response.”
Senior Research Fellow Dr Jordan McSwiney devotes his research at the Centre to the areas of violent extremism and the rise of the far right. Jordan is the author of the new book, Far-right Political Parties in Australia: Disorganisation and Electoral Failure (2024). He is worried about the rise of far-right groups across the world and the threats they pose to democracy.
“These groups, though politically marginal, can still influence the shape of our public conversation,” Jordan says.
“They’ve played a role in pushing questions of immigration and race further to the right in a more exclusionary direction, and they’ve helped normalise things like Islamophobia, so they have a very real impact on the day-to-day lives of lots of people.”
Social change and examining emotions
Dr Hans Asenbaum is a Senior Research Fellow, who received the prestigious Rising Star award from the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) in 2022 for his research excellence.
Hans’ research is driven by his enthusiasm for encouraging connection and participation. Hans has examined the urgency of refocusing on life and its meaning through radical democratic practice, such as the Black Lives Matter movement.
“The idea of a living democracy also applies to our environmental crisis, yet there are people turning away from politics – I think that's dangerous,” Hans says.
“It's us humans who have caused the crisis, so I think we all need to get engaged to turn things around and develop new solutions.”
Hans’ research expands deliberative engagement into new areas, while offering innovative approaches to both practising and theorising democracy. His 2023 book, The Politics of Becoming: Anonymity and Democracy in the Digital Age, highlights the role of digital spaces in revitalising democratic thinking and practice.
Olive Mendoza is a PhD candidate and one of the newest members of the Centre. Her thesis centres around the role of emotions in democratic deliberation.
“When we talk to others about important issues, this can involve discussions about things that we care about, that really matter to us, so of course they involve emotions – positive emotions and negative emotions, such as hate, anger, resentment, but we also feel hope,” she says.
Olive was attracted to the opportunity to be part of the team for its expertise in interdisciplinary research on deliberative governance, but also its diversity in cultural backgrounds.
“As a PhD student from the Philippines, that’s important to me.”
Living their values
Reflecting on the past decade, Selen believes the values explored in their research are being put into practice by the Centre.
“We are really trying to practise what we preach – we don’t just do research and write about deliberation, collaboration, inclusion – we want our workplace to be inclusive, to rely on respectful communication and mutual support. For me, fostering a strong ethic of care – thinking about and supporting the success of our Early Career Researchers and PhD students – is an integral part of this vision,” she says.
“Working in a harmonious fashion for the most part is, I think, pretty rare. It doesn’t mean we agree on everything. We have no party line, so people can disagree quite profoundly with each other and that's fine,” John says.
“The sorts of interactions that we have – not just with the people who are actually physically within the Centre, but our broader network – are, I think, quite precious and I’m really proud that together we’ve been able to create that.”
Words by Emma Larouche, video by Liam Budge, photos by David Beach.
As part of the Research Festival 2024, the Life of a CBRn pop-up installation will showcase UC’s research impact in the capital region.
Connecting to Parliament is one of thirty impact case studies that exemplify how UC research touches the lives of Canberrans.
Life of a CBRn will be open to the public in the Canberra Centre throughout November 2024. From December, it will move to UC.