Occasional Paper  

Problem-Solving at the Community Scale: A Deweyan Approach to the Democratic Practices of Minoritized Groups within the United States, South Africa, and Australia

By:

  • Katharina Liesenberg
  • Michael Lucas
  • Stefan Chavez-Norgaard

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cover photo of the occasional paper

The democratic “recession” across the globe is emerging as a political hallmark of the 21st century. This is evidenced by the incremental breakdown of formal, political democratic practices and institutions among many nations, including in the North Atlantic states, as well as by the fear or anticipation of democratic erosion. This paper uses a pragmatist approach to demonstrate how, in the face of democratic breakdowns, resilient democratic practices are taking form in remarkably varied ways in the common structural context of settler-colonial nation-states that are nominally in stages of advanced democratic consolidation.

 

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