The New Despotism - archive edition
Channel: Anti? Constitutional Populism Research Project
Date: 2020-09-23

This session was recorded on 20 August 2020, being a webinar hosted jointly by the Network for Interdisciplinary Studies of Law and the ARC Discovery Grant research project, Constitutional Populism: Friend or Foe of Constitutional Democracy? (www.globalconpop.blog).

The main presentation was by John Keane, Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney, speaking on his recently released book, The New Despotism.

In a disturbing in-depth exposé of the antidemocratic practices of despotic governments now sweeping the world, his book shows how governments from Russia and China through Central Asia to the Middle East and Europe have mastered a formidable combination of political tools that threaten the established ideals and practices of power-sharing democracy. He casts doubt on such fashionable terms as dictatorship, autocracy, fascism, and authoritarianism - instead making a case for retrieving and refurbishing the old term 'despotism' to make sense of how these regimes function and endure.

Discussants in conversation about the book were the Chief Investigators for the ARC Discovery Project on Contemporary Populism: Friend or Foe of Constitutional Democracy? 

Adam Czarnota, Associate Professor, UNSW Law School, 
Martin Krygier, Gordon Samuels Professor of Law and Social Theory, UNSW Law School
Wojciech Sadurski, Challis Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Sydney School of Law