movements

Discipline, Dissent and Dispossession

Dr Lara Montesinos Coleman

ISRF EARLY CAREER FELLOW 2014-16

Dominant accounts of resistance to “neoliberal globalization” too often read resistance off theories of global order or presume situated struggles to be manifestations of a global resisting subject. Comparatively little attention has been paid to the variegated texture of dissent, or to how anti-systemic struggles are routinely nullified – drawn into the very processes of order-building they profess to contest – through a nexus of interventions organized around apparently emancipatory values. This project seeks to establish a deeper understanding of what is at stake in the interplay between anti-systemic struggles and the more widely-dispersed modes of political control that may be directed toward and through practices of dissent.

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Sortition and the requirement for state impartiality in transitional and developing democracies

Dr Olly Dowlen

ISRF EARLY CAREER FELLOW 2012-13

This study programme is designed to investigate how the use of randomly selected citizens in public offices could help to develop impartial state institutions and so add stability to developing democracies. By exploring and identifying problems relating to factionalism experienced by modern states in transition to democracy or seeking to maintain democratic progress, the study then uses several model schemes to assess how sortition could contribute towards their resolution.

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