Political Science Seminar with Mark Warren

Holder of the Harold and Dorrie Merilees Chair in the Study of Democracy, University of British Columbia, Canada

Lecture

Warren’s current research interests fall within the field of democratic theory. He is especially interested in new forms of citizen participation, new forms of democratic representation, the relationship between civil society and democratic governance, and the corruption of democratic relationships.

Spotlight publication 

2008. Designing Deliberative Democracy: The BC Citizens’ Assembly. Edited with Hilary Pearse.2008  Cambridge University Press.

Is it possible to advance democracy by empowering ordinary citizens to make key decisions about the design of political institutions and policies? In 2004, the government of British Columbia embarked on a bold democratic experiment: it created an assembly of 160 near-randomly selected citizens to assess and redesign the province’s electoral system.

The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly represents the first time a citizen body has had the power to reform fundamental political institutions. It was an innovative gamble that has been replicated elsewhere in Canada and in the Netherlands, and is gaining increasing attention in Europe as a democratic alternative for constitution-making and constitutional reform. In the USA, advocates view citizens’ assemblies as a means for reforming referendum processes.

This book investigates the citizens’ assembly in British Columbia to test and refine key propositions of democratic theory and practice.

About Mark Warren

Warren’s current research interests fall within the field of democratic theory. He is especially interested in new forms of citizen participation, new forms of democratic representation, the relationship between civil society and democratic governance, and the corruption of democratic relationships.

He is author of Democracy and Association (Princeton University Press, 2001), and editor of Democracy and Trust (Cambridge University Press, 1999). Democracy and Association was the 2003 winner of the Elaine and David Spitz Book Prize for Democracy and Association, awarded by the Conference for the Study of Political Thought, and also received the 2003 Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA).