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Australian policymakers may have dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic effectively so far, but can they heed the lessons of this crisis in order to be ready for those still to come? Joining Mark Kenny on this episode of Democracy Sausage to discuss public policy in the wake of the pandemic are Helen Sullivan and Warwick McKibbin.

Australia has managed the joint health and economic crises brought on by COVID-19 better than most countries. But with the pandemic far from over and the damages of climate change becoming increasingly obvious, can Australian policymakers translate this short-term success across to the long-term challenges they have thus far failed to address? What price are the Australian people paying for policy uncertainty, particularly in regards to climate and energy policy? And does the country need a new macroeconomic framework if it hopes to be properly prepared for a post-pandemic world? On this episode of Democracy Sausage, ANU Crawford School of Public Policys Professor Helen Sullivan and Professor Warwick McKibbin AO join Professor Mark Kenny to discuss public policy-making in the new normal. Listen here:https://bit.ly/3a1LW4v

Helen Sullivanis Director of Crawford School of Public Policy. She has published widely on public policy, public governance and public service reform, and in 2013 established the Melbourne School of Government.

Warwick McKibbin AOis the Director of the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis in the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Mark Kennyis a Professor in the ANU Australian Studies Institute. He came to the university after a high-profile journalistic career including six years as chief political correspondent and national affairs editor forThe Sydney Morning Herald,The Age, andThe Canberra Times.

Democracy Sausage with Mark Kenny is available onApple Podcasts,Spotify,Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Wed love to hear your feedback for this podcast series! Send in your questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes topodcast@policyforum.net. You can also Tweet us@APPSPolicyForumor join us on theFacebook group.

This podcast is produced in partnership withThe Australian National University.

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Democracy Sausage: Climate, the coronavirus, and the costs of uncertainty - Policy Forum

You probably hear countries like the United States or France referred to as democracies. At the same time, you probably also hear both of these countries called republics. Is that possible? Are democracies and republics the same thing or different?

We dont blame you for confusing these two terms. With a major and heated US election underway, its the perfect time for some Government 101. Lets brush up on these two words to see what they have in commonand what sets them apart.

A democracy is defined as government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system. A nation with this form of government is also referred to as a democracy.

A democracy is achieved by conducting free elections in which eligible people 1) vote on issues directly, known as a direct democracy, or 2) elect representatives to handle the issues for them, called a representative democracy.

The word democracy dates back in English to around 15251535. It comes from the Greek dmokrata, meaning popular government. Ancient Greece was home to what most consider to be the oldest form of democracy, the city-state of Athens. In Athens, the people (Greek, dmos) held the power (Greek, krtos) and made the decisions for their societyforming a dmokrata.

But its essential to note the people who are able to vote in Athens only included certain non-enslaved Athenian men, making this direct democracy very different from the way we understand democracy today.

For example, if a town only had enough funding to repair either their sewer system or roads, it might ask the citizens to vote on which one should get the money. Its members would vote on their preference, and the towns government would follow the will of the people and go with their choice. This is a basic example of direct democracy.

Many referendums are voted on this way, such as the Scottish independence (from the United Kingdom) referendum in 2014 and the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum (popularly referred to as Brexit) in 2016.

In contrast to a direct democracy, the people in a representative democracy elect representatives who act then on behalf of them, known as their constituents. Many of the worlds parliaments and the USs Congress are an example of representative democracies.

Today, it is inefficient, if not impossible, to have every eligible citizen vote on every issueto vote on every piece of legislation that it takes to run a city, a state, a country. Instead, citizens vote for leaders to do the work of governing for them.

Lets revisit our municipal sewer/road matter. A representative democracy would not have each and every citizen of a town directly vote on whether to fund a sewer system or road repairs. Instead, the citizens would elect a mayor and city council to handle these issues in their place. The elected officials would then vote on where city funding should go, doing their best to reflect and respect the needs of the people who voted for them.

A republic is defined as a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them. Sound familiar? It should.

You see, many of todays democracies are also republics, and are even referred to as democratic republics. So, the US and France are considered both democracies and republicsboth terms point to the fact that the power of governance rests in the power, and the exercise of that power is done through some sort of electoral representation.

The key concept to the word republic is that the leader of this government (or state) is not a hereditary monarch but a president, whether they are elected or installed.

This core idea helps explain in part why autocratic governments like North Korea is officially called the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. Its citizens vote (or vote) on a single candidate. A historical example of a republic is also instructive. The Republic of Venice, a mercantile city-state of the Middle Ages, was led by a doge who was elected by wealthy merchants and served until his death. Neither of these governments would be considered a democracy.

The word republic is first recorded in English 15951605. It comes from the Latin rs pblica, meaning public thing, characterizing that a state is ultimately run by its peopleas opposed to monarchy or tyranny. For nearly 500 years, ancient Rome was a republic before it became ruled by emperors.

For all practical purposes, its both. In everyday speech and writing, you can safely refer to the US as a democracy or a republic. If you want or need to be more precise in referring to the system of the US, you can accurately call it a representative democracy. And should you need to be exacting? The US can be called a federal presidential constitutional republic or a constitutional federal representative democracy.

What you should take away in the confusion (or debate) over democracy vs. republic is that, in both forms of government, power ultimately lies with the people who are able to vote. If you are eligible to votevote. Its what, well, makes true democracies and republics.

Exercise that right to vote, whether by mail or in person. Want more information on what mail-in voting means? Read our article on absentee vs. mail-in ballots!

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Democracy vs. Republic: Is There A Difference ...

Every citizen is aware that digital technologies have transformed our individual and collective lives. But democratic theorists have been slow to take stock of this transformationand to trace how democratic theory and institutions should respond. The new bookDigital Technology and Democratic Theory, edited by Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Associate Director Rob Reich, Stanford Digital Civil Society Lab Director Lucy Bernholz, and Yale professor Hlne Landemore, brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars across political philosophy, social science, and engineering to weigh in on the implications of digital technologies for democratic societies as well as ways in which democracies might be enhanced by these advances.

Here, Reich, who is also a professor of political science at Stanford School of Humanities andSciences, director of the Center for Ethics in Society, and co-director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, discusses the books purpose, reach, and takeaways.

What are the high-level takeaways from the book?

We had at least a decade of techno-utopianism in which digital technologies were thought to be inherently liberating, that they would spread democracy across the world, and that they would enrich individual lives in some unparalleled fashion. And then we switched to a decade of techno-dystopianism in which digital technologies hijacked our attention, violated our privacy, corroded our very souls, and undermined democratic societies.

This volume takes a mature approach to thinking about the intersection of digital technology and democratic theory, so that we can better understand how to harness digital technologys great benefits and mitigate or contain the potential risks.

We call upon readers, just as has historically happened with earlier eras of technological revolution, to avoid the polar extremes of thinking about the development and deployment of technology as uniformly good or bad. This is a book for people who want to take a longer view pondering the implications of technology for democratic institutions over the next 10 to 50 years rather than reacting to the newest unicorn or the scandal du jour. Its also a book for scholars across the world who can find in this volume a rich and fertile set of research agendas to pursue as well as an appreciation for the ways in which cross-disciplinary consensus can help guide where our attention should be paid.

You and your co-authors say that democratic theorists havent really figured out if social media companies are publishers, news organizations, or a new form of private government or even private superpower. Why is it so difficult to get a clear understanding of the power wielded by the tech industry?

Social media platforms are certainly powerful. In the book, we quote from a Stanford-affiliated scholar from Oxford, Timothy Garton Ash, who says, The policies of Facebook and Google are more consequential for permissible speech than is anything decided by Canada, France, or Germany. Indeed, he says, big tech firms are the new private superpowers.

These are the great public squares of our 21st-century digital age. And as a result, the private power of the CEOs of these companies to determine permissible or impermissible content or to design the algorithms that uprank and downrank content means they shape the information ecosystems of citizens across the world. Thats an extraordinary form of power that currently has almost no form of accountability attached to it.

The decision by all the major social media companies to ban Donald Trump from posting, and then deleting his account, in the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol is just the latest proof of this extraordinary power in the hands of a few people at a few large companies.

We cant decide what to do about social media companies, or how to rein in their power, until we have a clear understanding about their actual function and purpose.

Some say that Google, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, or Twitter are like the telephone company a conduit that connects people and makes communication possible. When two people plot a crime on the phone, no one blames the phone company. Is that what a social media platform is?

Clearly not. The core function of these platforms curating and upranking and downranking information for us makes them different from the telephone company.

Some would say that the social media platforms are distributors of content that people consume. That they should abide by the kinds of professional norms or standards that newspapers, television shows, or radio programs rely on when they make judgments about what should be published. But unlike newspapers and other mass media, social media platforms dont create content users do.

So, we are left with the question, what are these platforms? The answer is that their core function is algorithmic sorting or curation. And this allows for great amplification of content and the possibility of privileging virality over veracity. And, of course, their function is also to sell advertising based upon a massive collection of data about our online behavior.

As a result of not having a clear-eyed view of what platforms are or how they wield the power they do, we dont yet have a clear understanding of how to govern them. And thats part of the great debate we see playing out today about such things as privacy policies, misinformation and disinformation, CDA 230 [section 230 of the Communications Decency Act], political advertising, and so on.

The books introduction describes one view of tech company leadership as a band of ahistorical, techno-libertarian merry pranksters and sociopaths. If these are the people with so much power, how can one avoid feeling dystopian, especially during a global pandemic?

That sentence was meant to capture the spirit of the techno-dystopian rhetoric that is so common today. My view is that we should stop focusing on the personalities of tech founders. And we should start focusing on the influence of concentrated tech power over the rest of our lives.

We have a big lesson to learn from the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic and work-from-home conditions should remind us of how essential digital technologies are and how dependent upon them we have become. The work productivity thats been possible because of videoconferencing compared to what would have been possible 10 years ago is owed to digital technology. The same is true for connecting with family and friends across the country who we cant see. Not to mention all of the AI tools that have been essential for identifying therapies and vaccine candidates for the coronavirus.

So thats partly why I would like to say were coming out of a dystopian sensibility. Perhaps the coronavirus can remind us that rather than being uniformly bad, these technologies have become something like the essential infrastructure that has allowed certain elements of our lives to continue during the pandemic. And now is the time to have this mature and sober perspective and to get serious rather than to indulge in utopianism or dystopianism.

Are there ways in which digital technologies might be used to enhance democratic institutions?

Rather than addressing the need to have democratic societies govern digital technologies before they govern us, some of the chapters in this book look at the ways digital technologies can be incorporated into democratic institutions for the purpose of enhancing the performance of democracy itself.

Indeed, digital technology can be put in the service of democracy and expand how we think about the operation of democratic societies. For example, one of the co-authors, Hlne Landemore, a political philosopher at Yale, contributed a chapter about ways in which digital technologies might help us move beyond representative democracy itself. In essence, she explores alternatives to holding elections in which our elected representatives go off and do the business of the people and then citizens do nothing except show up again in a few years to cast another vote. Are there ways in which we might crowdsource, Wikipedia style, the writing of a constitution with people across the world contributing to the writing and editing of our very laws? Or ways in which citizen assemblies can happen online as a complement to or possibly replacement of elected representatives? She shows that this is not merely possible, but that it has already been done, and to some good effect.

Again, this is a way of looking further into the future as a way to enlist digital technology not as a threat to democracy but as a handmaiden to it.

The book calls for the training of public interest technologists. What do you mean by that and what role would these people play in our democracy?

Were all familiar with the idea of public interest lawyers people who get a law degree and then work on behalf of the public interest, whether its through a public advocacy or other civil society organization. At the moment, engineering schools and computer science departments tend to pay lip service to the idea that you should acquire technical skills and then deploy them on behalf of public agencies. Most people who receive computer science training go to work at tech companies. And our universities, including Stanford, facilitate that through their recruitment programs that give unequal access to tech companies. Its much harder to get a lower-paying job in a public agency as a Stanford computer science major than it is to get a higher-paying job at a startup or big tech firm.

So the option of being a public interest technologist would open up the computer science and engineering career pipeline to multiple destinations. Its clear that technical skills are extraordinarily important within public advocacy organizations and public agencies. Imagine what the world would be like if Amnesty International, Partners in Health, the United Nations, or various governmental agencies could hire people with the technology talent that Google and Facebook get. Wouldnt it be nice to have a world in which that was seen as just as important as or more important than deploying your talent for big tech or the promise of a payday in a startup company?

Technologists often complain that democracy is too slow and the people who impose policies are never sufficiently informed; they always use a hammer instead of a well-crafted tool; Washington, D.C., is always 10 to 20 years behind on the frontier of technology. Thats why we need a new generation of people who have learned technology alongside social science, ethics, and democratic theory.

The book suggests that multidisciplinary collaborations will be a fruitful research pathway. Why is such work so important?

Above all else, this is a book that we hope exhibits the enormous importance and promise of putting philosophers, social scientists, and technologists in conversation with one another.

Stanford HAI is premised on the idea that the development of AI will be human-centered when AI scientists work alongside social scientists and humanists rather than inviting the social scientists and humanists to study the effects of AI on the world after the technologists have invented and released it. The same is true for digital technology and democratic theory.

I would like to see a world in which democratic theorists dont offer lectures to technologists about what they should do better in order to support democracy, but instead work alongside them to understand their perspectives. And reciprocally, technologists shouldnt invite democratic theorists to admire their extraordinary innovations and disruptions and then say its their job to do something about it and to keep up with the pace of innovation.

Digital technology will develop in a better way when done in tandem with democratic theorists, and democratic practice will be better when pursued in tandem with technologists.

Stanford HAI's mission is to advance AI research, education, policy and practice to improve the human condition.Learn more.

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Democracy and the Digital Transformation of Our Lives - Stanford Report - Stanford University News

The contentious 2020 election and the current state of U.S. democracy were topics discussed last week during an Ohio State University-hosted event titled Race and Democracy in America.

Tina Pierce of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs moderated a conversation between faculty experts Rachel Kleit, associate dean of faculty affairs in the College of Engineering; Wendy Smooth, associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the College of Arts and Sciences; and Winston C. Thompson, associate professor of philosophy of education in the College of Education and Human Ecology.

The discussion was part of the universitysEducation for Citizenship dialogue series.

It has been the great struggle of our national history to recognize the rights of a democratic society apply to all Americans, said President Kristina M. Johnson as she opened the conversation. Yes, we have made progress. However, after more than half of a century since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we still witness corrosive racial injustice.

Pierce began the discussion with a question about whether or not America is closer to becoming a post-racial nation. The idea seemed possible following the election of Barack Obama as the first black president, she said, but appeared less likely after President Donald Trump.

The people I think who are saying we are post-racial were not necessarily people from communities of color, Kleit said. Its not as easy as simply treating everyone the same, but really understanding that there are deep structures in society that still function, even if we want to give everybody similar opportunities.

Thompson agreed. He said fulfilling the promise of America as a society where people are not marked by race, gender or class takes effort.

What I find really interesting about the ideal, the move towards a post-racial society, is that I dont often hear people talking about the difficult work required to move towards the more utopian ideal, Thompson said. When you have a promise, a promise is a commitment. Its not a magical invocation. It requires hard work.

Smooth said the concept of moving to a post-racial nation isnt an objective to be supported if it comes at the cost of erasing the history and experiences of minority groups in the country.

The discussion also turned toward solutions to build a fairer society and a more robust democracy. Increased civic education, a commitment to truth and empirical data, and acknowledging the nations troubled racial history are important.

We as citizens need to recognize that the problems that we have in this country arent problems for one community or for another community, problems that are separate from us, distant from us, Thompson said. We have a shared responsibility for addressing these problems and, perhaps with that approach, to think of ourselves as citizens, to address problems that are affecting members of this larger community, we might move towards some greater cooperation in the service of democracy.

Smooth said faculty at Ohio State can play a role by teaching students to respect facts and critical thinking and take their education back to their communities.

We have got to figure out how to help [students] translate that learning, that classroom practice, into everyday conversation. Because when they go out across the 88 counties of Ohio, and they go around the world as Buckeye alums do, they have to be ready to have the conversation in an applied space, Smooth said. But in the open space of the everyday world, we have to make sure that they can do that kind of translation, so they can go to the Thanksgiving table and hold their own in a conversation and not a fight.

The Education for Citizenship Initiative aims to inspire the university community to engage deeply, with integrity and respect, when expressing ideas and beliefs, be it in word or action. The initiative reflects the university motto, education for citizenship, and the mission to develop informed citizens who are able to integrate what theyve learned in the classroom into their community.

Details are available on theEducation for Citizenship Initiative websitealong with resources for respectful and productive dialogue.

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Ohio State hosts discussion on intersection of race and democracy - The Ohio State University News

WASHINGTON (AP) Less than two weeks in office, President Joe Biden is facing two critical tests of whether the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol has damaged Americas standing as a beacon for democracy.

Protests in Russia and a military coup in Myanmar come as American credibility on the world stage has plummeted after last months storming of the Capitol by a pro-Donald Trump mob looking to stop the certification of Bidens election victory.

That adds to the weight on Biden as he seeks to fulfill a campaign pledge to dramatically reposition the U.S. as a global leader following four years of a Trump foreign policy driven by an America First mantra. That policy was marked by the frequent disparagement of democratic allies and the occasional embrace of authoritarian leaders.

MORE ON BIDEN'S FIRST 100 DAYS

Bidens top diplomat, Antony Blinken, acknowledged the difficulty.

I think theres no doubt that the attack on our own democracy on Jan. 6 creates an even greater challenge for us to be carrying the banner of democracy and freedom and human rights around the world because, for sure, people in other countries are saying to us, Well, why dont you look at yourselves first? the secretary of state said in an interview with NBC News.

Blinken added, The difference, though, between us and so many other countries is that when we are challenged, including when we challenge ourselves were doing it in full daylight with full transparency.

Biden, in the early days of his presidency, has sought to send the message in a series of calls with foreign leaders that America is back.

Hes reassured Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga that the U.S. has its support in an ongoing territorial dispute with China over islets in the East China Sea. Hes sought to reset the relationship with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was belittled by Trump as dishonest & weak. And hes told Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador that the U.S. would send $4 billion to help development in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala nations whose hardships have spawned tides of migration through Mexico toward the United States.

The United States remains a country in the world that is looked to for leadership, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. Its going to take some time, but hes certainly committed to doing that.

But the crises in Myanmar and Russia present Biden with difficult tests of his promise to reestablish global leadership that are likely to be far more complicated than mending fences with traditional allies.

Biden on Monday threatened to slap new sanctions on Myanmar after a coup that saw the military arrest the civilian leaders of its government, calling the episode a direct assault on the countrys transition to democracy and the rule of law.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who for years has taken a special interest in Myanmar, on Tuesday complimented the Biden administrations initial response but urged it to quickly follow through with meaningful penalties against the nations military leaders. Later Tuesday, the State Department announced it had determined that the military takeover was a coup, setting the stage for the Biden administration to move forward with sanctions and other measures targeting military officials.

In his first call with Russian President Vladimir Putin as counterparts last week, Biden raised concerns about the detention of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the crackdown on supporters backing his arrest. The mass arrests have only accelerated in the days since the two leaders spoke as protests have continued across the country.

For Putin, he looks at the Capitol riot and sees it as more evidence of his worldview, a continuation of the degradation of liberalism in the world, said Michael McFaul, who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia in the Obama administration. The Biden election doesnt mean much to him about his theory about liberal democracy. Whereas Putins opponents are very encouraged by the election of President Biden because it shows that American democratic institutions were resilient.

To that end, Navalnys supporters wrote to Biden over the weekend urging him to take meaningful action with sanctions against members of Putins inner circle to demonstrate that hes serious about reclaiming the U.S. role as a champion of democracy.

Their argument is, If you just sanction a bunch of no-name, low-level colonels ... thats exactly who Putin is expecting, McFaul said. They want the Biden administration to sanction the economic actors in the Putin regime, and theyve made it easy for the Biden administration in theyve named them all in their seven-page letter.

But Moscow chided the criticism of the Navalny verdict, with Russias deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky tweeting, A Russian citizen sentenced by Russian court in accordance with Russian laws. Who gave US the right to judge if it was wrongful or not? Wouldnt you mind your own business, gentlemen? Recent events show that there are a lot of things for you to mend!

Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and chair of the House Intelligence Committee, drew a line from Trump to the coup in Myanmar. Trump had made baseless accusations of widespread voter fraud that were rejected by multiple courts as well as Trumps own Justice Department.

An announcement read on Myanmars military-owned Myawaddy TV explained that the seizure was necessary because the government had not acted on the militarys unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the Southeast Asian nations recent elections. The military claimed the takeover was legal under the constitution

When America speaks and acts, the world watches, and when our leaders propagate conspiracy theories and subvert democracy here at home, it sets a dangerous example for the rest of the world, Schiff said.

Adversaries such as China, Iran and Venezuela pointed to the Capitol riot as evidence of the fragility of U.S. democracy. Even some allies said the scene was unsettling and has caused them to reconsider the United States position as the self-proclaimed beacon of democracy.

After something like this, I believe it would be very difficult for the world to see the United States as a symbol of democracy, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy said in an interview with Axios on HBO.

___

Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

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Biden tries to show US as democracy beacon post-Capitol riot - The Associated Press