Passmore Lecture

John Passmore was Professor of Philosophy at the Research School of Social Sciences, ANU, from 1959 until 1979. A Fellow and past President of the Australian Academy of Humanities, he is also a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Foreign Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters. John Passmore was made a Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia in 1992, and was recently awarded the Centenary Medal for services to Philosophy. The John Passmore Lecture is held annually in his honour.

A list of John Passmore's publications is available here, in PDF format.

The John Passmore Lecture 2006

Friday, 3rd November 2006, 5.30pm
Law  Link Lecture Theatre, ANU Law School
Fellows Rd,  ANU     

Professor Jane Mansbridge, Harvard University,
will deliver the Passmore Lecture for 2006

'Kicking the Bastards Out?'

Abstract:
Demands for more transparent and more accountable legislatures have spread throughout the world.  Advocates of such reforms want to subject their representatives to constant scrutiny, allowing voters to judge every word spoken, coalition joined, and compromise approved. This approach to reform is misguided.  A better strategy is to allow more discretion in office and concentrate on three goals:  1) Select better legislators to begin with; 2) Communicate with both legislators and bureaucrats in settings where they have a strong incentive to listen; and 3) Kick out the legislators who don't do their job well.  

Jane Mansbridge is the Adams Professor at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.  In Beyond Adversary Democracy she showed why marginalized people often fail to participate even in "open door" participatory democracies.  That book also showed what happens when democracies are based on common interests.  In Why We Lost the ERA she analyzed the reasons why social movement activists do not listen to the opposition.  She has also edited Beyond Self-Interest, Feminism (with Susan Moller Okin), and Oppositional Consciousness (with Aldon Morris).  She is currently writing Everyday Feminism, a book on the "everyday activism" of ordinary people, as well as articles on the importance of self-interest in deliberative democracy and the "selection model" of political representatives.

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Past Lectures:

2005: Sheila Jasanoff( Harvard), Categorical Impreratives: Biotechnology and the Democratic Politics of Novelty
2004: Anne Phillips ( LSE), Multiculturalism, Autonomy & Gender
2003: Jeremy Waldron (Law, Columbia University), The Primacy of Justice
2002: James M. Buchanan (George Mason University), Classical Liberalism and the Perfectability of Man
2001: Alan Gibbard (Michigan), Knowing What to Do: Can There be Knowledge of Oughts?
2000: Quentin Skinner (Cambridge), Why does Laughter Matter to Philosophy?