“Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today’s technical resources while maintaining the property system.”

- Walter Benjamin, 1936

About John Keane

John Keane is Director of the newly-founded Sydney Democracy Initiative and Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney. His most recent book, The Life and Death of Democracy (2009), was short-listed for the 2010 Non-Fiction Prime Minister’s Literary Award. The launch column of Democracy Field Notes is here.

Articles by John Keane

A short history of banks and democracy

John Keane 23 April 2013

The extraordinary bounce-back of the banks reveals the most disturbing, but least obvious, largely invisible, feature of the unfinished European crisis: the transformation of democratic taxation states into post-democratic banking states.

Refolution in the Arab world

John Keane 28 April 2011

A new word is needed to describe these events of recent months. They should be called ‘refolutions’, radical refusals of the old choice between reform and revolution - remarkably sensitive to the grave dangers and high costs of using violent means to get their way

Libya, intellectuals and democracy: an open letter to Professor David Held

John Keane 18 March 2011

John Keane asks David Held to look back over events and reconsider his reactions to a dissimulator. Was this an error of theory or of practice? Hasn’t the LSE Libya affair done damage to the scholarly credibility of research programmes in the area of democracy?

This week's editor

Niki Seth-Smith is a freelance journalist and co-editor of OurKingdom.

Europe from the bottom up

European Union stars in Paris. Flickr/notarim. Some rights reserved.

A new Europe can only come from the bottom up
Etienne Balibar

A social Europe must be a political Europe
Bo Stråth

As Europe is provincialized: a reply to Etienne Balibar
Sandro Mezzadra

European debate

A republican call for a basic income
Daniel Raventos and Julie Wark

Nuclear non-proliferation

Women and the Arab Spring

oDRussia at journalismfestival .com

Mali - the plot thickens

Remote control war

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Conference coverage from 50.50

Conference. Moving beyond Militarism and War to a Nonviolent World: A Forum Devoted to Sharing Women-Driven Solutions

Articles exploring the themes of the fourth international Nobel Women's Initiative conference May 28-31. Jennifer Allsopp and Heather McRobie will be reporting for 5050

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Dan Hancox Revel, Riot and Rebellion

Martin Rose Bliss Was It in that Dawn to Be Next Door

Vron Ware Up in Arms

Jim Gabour Sunday Comics

James Warner Standing Perpendicular, as books do

Markha Valenta Inter Alia: religion, politics, culture

Paul Rogers on Global security

Mary Kaldor on Human security

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OurKingdom works to investigate and illuminate the crisis of democracy in Britain and analyse how its failings can be redressed.

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50.50 Dialogues

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50.50 is openDemocracy's section dedicated to exploring issues of gender equality and social justice at the global level.

We are committed to promoting human rights and inclusive democracy through dialogue and debate. But a global debate without the female half of humanity is neither global nor democratic. With this in mind, 50.50 publishes women's analysis, insight and views on current affairs.

Can Europe Make It?

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Arab Awakening

In the months following the start of the Arab Revolutions, articles and analysis poured into openDemocracy from contributors across the Middle East and Europe. Gradually, the impact of Tahrir Square began to extend well beyond the Middle East as democratic inspiration travelled from east to west. Arab Awakening tries to capture that inspiration and use it to help us read a rapidly changing world.

"As students of politics is it is vital to study the power of imagination." -Professor Charles Tripp, SOAS

Debates

Columnists | This week's window on the Middle East

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