There are three puzzles when it comes to Australian democracy and the climate crisis. First, Australia is a high-performing democracy and a climate laggard. According to International IDEA's Global State of Democracy Indices (GSoD), Australia is a high-performance democracy that scores 0.83 for Representative Government, 0.87 for Fundamental Rights, 0.87 for Checks on Government and 0.86 for Impartial Administration (International IDEA 2020). Democracies consistently out-perform authoritarian regimes in terms of climate change mitigation policies (Bättig and Bernauer 2009; Lindvall 2021, ch. 3). Yet, the 2022 Climate Change Performance Index places Australia sixth-last in its assessment of the climate action of 61 countries (Burck et al. 2021, 7).

Second, Australia's climate inaction jars with its climate responsibility and vulnerability. Australia is among the highest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases internationally (Climate Analytics 2019) and among the most fossil-fuel dependent countries (Australia Institute 2019; Clean Energy Council 2022). The key climate risks already experienced by Australia are:

• an increase in average temperature by 1.44 degrees Celsius (since national records began in 1910), resulting in more frequent extreme heat events including extreme fire weather;

• decline in rainfall and run-off in southwest Australia, together with increases in parts of northern Australia;

• ocean acidification and warming contributing to more frequent and longer marine heatwaves; and

• rising sea levels (including more frequent extremes).

What do baseless conspiracy theories, algorithms, and meritocracy have in common? All three avoid contingency and frantically look for necessities. The COVID-19 crisis has brought about a proliferation of baseless conspiracy theories that reject, among other things, official accounts of the virus’ origins and remedies, and sometimes even the existence of the virus itself. Conspiracy theories very often link events to secret plots concocted by powerful conspirators, whether it be Bill Gates or Big Pharma. The exceptionally powerful surge of unjustified conspiracy theories during the COVID-19 crisis has several already famous causes: there are increasing ways for new media to massively spread misinformation, and there has been a growing distrust for conventional scientific ideas among large parts of the population. In this book, I examine another dominant driving force: the desire to find apparently reasonable explanations for phenomena that are purely random and contingent. Many baseless conspiracy theories emerge because contingency is not accepted, and necessities are looked for at all costs. David Aaronovitch defines conspiratorial thought as a reasoning that “attributes deliberate agency to something that is more likely to be accidental or unintended” or which attributes “secret action to one party that might more reasonably be explained as the less covert and less complicated action of another” (Aaronovitch 2011: 5). Nothing happens by chance and there must be a plan or an intelligent design behind everything. A large part of this book deals with “contingency phobia.” This special phobia is not only manifest in the conspiratorial mindset, but it appears in Western culture as a recurrent psychological, cognitive, and scientific pattern. It is the cause of a variety of other phenomena that have become emblematic for liberal democracies, such as the contemporary algorithm culture or the obsession with merit and ranking. Not only does the conspiratorial mindset reject a world of contingency and strive to create a universe structured by a necessary order: life coaches, algorithm engineers, and neoliberal meritocrats all do the same. This book analyzes these phenomena by using the same criteria: How do humans deal with contingency, and how do they try to establish necessities?

Conspiracy and Contingency

For the most part, conspiracy theories are political or scientific; some combine political themes with religious convictions, while a few are also cultural or racist.

Introduction

A healthy democracy relies on an engaged citizenry able to freely elect their political representatives based on quality information in a diverse public sphere (McNair et al. 2017, 3). In Australia, compulsory voting ensures broad participation in elections. Beyond voting, civic engagement is supported by the media, which traditionally included print, TV and radio, in informing the public and fostering democratic involvement.

Since the commercialisation of the internet in the mid-1990s, however, the media landscape has transformed, both expanding and fragmenting at the same time. The development and proliferation of social media platforms, together with the lowered barriers to entry for news production – meaning you do not need to be a journalist or own an expensive printing press or broadcast licence to produce news – have enabled anyone with an internet connection and keyboard (or voice activation) to both consume and contribute media content.

The digital age is maturing, and the first wave of social media platforms are now being described as legacy platforms as new entrants arrive (Newman et al. 2024, 5). This high-choice, hybrid media environment that Van Aelst and colleagues (2017) describe, which combines legacy and social media, is reshaping civic engagement in Australian democracy. Political communication occurs across multiple mediums in order to target specific voters with key messages and, at the same time, reach the largest audience possible (Carson and Simon 2024). Like never before, Australians can access news from across the globe in real time. Social media platforms have made it easier for audiences to get information and for anyone to produce information and reach audiences. Access to news transcends old constraints that limited legacy media, such as time (e.g. radio bulletins), space (e.g. printed newspapers) and geography (e.g. broadcast signals). Digital and online platforms are central to how Australians send and receive information. Search aggregators such as Google and Bing are an intrinsic part of how Australians prioritise that information. As we move deeper into the twenty-first century, generative AI is supplementing search platforms to further shape Australians’ news production and use and what are now termed legacy social media sites, such as X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram.

Contingency Skepticism

Usually, contingencies are perceived with surprise, especially when they have tragic consequences, such as those following major natural catastrophes or accidents. And tragic coincidences can happen in history, such as when the accidental death or sickness of a ruler significantly alters the affairs of state. As mentioned above, whenever the repercussions of coincidence appear disproportionate to the actual event that sparked them, a certain skepticism toward contingency is likely to emerge and to question whether the event really happened by chance. Like all events, coincidences are due to causes, but in the case of coincidence, it is either impossible or too difficult (the difference between the ontological and the epistemic coincidence will be explained below) to state why the event was caused by a particular cause and not another one. Coincidences are no miracles. Coincidences have no finality, but they have a cause, whereas wonders have no cause (and are often retrospectively equipped with finality). Strangely, coincidences can incite the same kind of skepticism that occurs when we are faced with wonders. This is paradoxical because normally, an explanation involving coincidence is meant to suspend hypotheses about the wondrous and the mysterious. But coincidence can become wondrous and mysterious in its own right. Should an insignificant event like a cat crossing the street lead to a car accident killing an important politician, the accidental character of the event is likely to be challenged. Why would a cat cross the street right at this time and in this place? Behind Princess Diana’s mortal accident, the conspiratorial mindset sees an organized assassination because of Diana’s symbolic importance. In their view, this importance cannot have been compromised by a simple accident. Coincidence-skepticism is bound to arise more often when the consequences are negative and produce considerable damage; less skepticism will emerge when the coincidence brings fortune, though this can happen, too. For example, when a corrupt politician says they did not embezzle any money and simply inherited it, the general framework of the event incites us to trace the event to causes other than mere coincidence.

Both science and conspiracy theories look for necessities in a world where a necessary order that had once been guaranteed by religion has largely disappeared, and where life and the entire world can easily appear as contingent. Warranted conspiracy theories find such necessities; unwarranted ones don’t, but they believe that they have found them. When viewed through the optics of these “contingency versus necessity” relationships, the conspiratorial mindset turns out to be inscribed not only in a Western metaphysical tradition but in an even broader civilizational development.

Contingency has been on the minds of thinkers throughout the ages, but within various phases of Western civilization, its position has changed multiple times. In Antiquity, historians would attribute unexpected events to the goddess Fortuna (Tyche) or to divine Providence and thus turn the coincidence into a necessity by tracing it to a pseudo-cause (see the Greek historian Polybius [in Polybius: 29]). When no pertinent cause could be found for events such as floods or droughts, such fortuities could be connected to Tyche or divine providence, which became very important in late antiquity. This technique could even be used for events in politics. Dylan Burns shows in his Did God Care? Providence, Dualism, and Will in Later Greek and Early Christian Philosophy how in the first centuries CE, Hellenic and Christian philosophers elaborated notions about providence, divine care, and fate that would shape the European mindset. Today such devices are less available, and as a result, conspiracy theorists invent new pseudo-causes. This chapter will provide a rough historical sketch of how contingency has been dealt with by thinkers throughout history.

Antiquity

In Antiquity, almost everything was perceived to be necessary, and, compared with today, contingency could not cause existential problems for the Greek or Roman individual. It is true that the ancient world did have unwarranted conspiracy theories, for example, about “bad” emperors such as Nero, malevolent Christians, immigrants, or slaves. The existence of secret societies in Athens already spurred some conspiratorial thinking. Greek plays tell us much about conspiracies “that involve almost every facet of Athenian life.” According to Daniel Pipes, a conspiracy mentality can “be traced back to the dualist religions of Iran or the mystery religions that swept the Roman Empire” (1997: 53). Secret societies were often built around mystery cults such as the cult of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis (the Eleusinian Cult), the cult of the Great Gods at Samothrace, and the cult of Isis.

Introduction

The Australian Constitution (‘the Constitution’) does not include a right to freedom of expression. However, the Constitution's express commitment to representative government in sections 7 and 24 is regarded as giving rise to an implied freedom of political communication (‘implied freedom’). The implied freedom is not a right but rather a limit on legislative competence at all levels of government in Australia. Sourced in the political sovereignty of the people, the implied freedom plays an important role in fostering and safeguarding civic engagement. As Deane and Toohey JJ observe in the foundational case of Nationwide News Pty Ltd v Wills (1992) 177 CLR 1 (Nationwide News), representative government and hence the implied freedom entails ‘an ability of represented and representatives to communicate information, needs, views, explanations and advice. It also presupposes an ability of the people of the Commonwealth as a whole to communicate among themselves, information and opinions about matters relevant to the exercise and discharge of government powers and functions on their behalf ‘ (1992, 72).

On the basis of the implied freedom, in Brown v Tasmania (2017) 261 CLR 328 (Brown) the High Court invalidated provisions of the Workplaces (Protection from Protestors) Act 2014 (Tas) (Protestor's Act), noting that historically protests have been an important ‘means of bringing about political and legislative change on environmental issues’ (2017, 346). Conversely, in Farm Transparency International Ltd v State of New South Wales (2022) 96 ALJR 655 (Farm Transparency) the High Court upheld provisions of the Surveillance Devices Act 2007 (NSW) (Surveillance Devices Act). The Surveillance Devices Act is an example of ag gag legislation that prohibits the publication or communication of records of agricultural practices where these have been obtained through the installation of a surveillance device without the express or implied consent of the owner or occupier. Farm Transparency International Ltd is a company and not-for-profit charity whose civic engagement takes the form of advocacy for the rights of non-human animals in agriculture by publishing photos, videos and audio-video recordings of agricultural practices on their website. By exposing the realities of modern agriculture their objective is to end commercialised non-human animal abuse and exploitation, including through changes to law, policy and practice.

Classical Western (Platonic-Aristotelian) philosophies tend to split the world and everything that exists in it into two sections. According to Rorty, Kant “splits us into two parts, one called ‘reason,’ which is identical in us all, and another (empirical sensation and desire), which is a matter of blind, contingent, idiosyncratic impressions” (1989: 32). Reason reveals necessary structures whereas contingency is ignorance and blindness. It has been mentioned that already Epicurus tried to overcome this opposition by seeing coincidence as a rational explanation. The division of the world into necessity and contingency became one of the most inveterate principles of Western thought, and the last chapter demonstrated how the French “science of the coincidence” acted against it.

Contingency and Creativity

The necessary-contingent opposition is related to the Platonic opposition of the real versus the appearance. In the Republic (6: 509d–511c), especially in the Allegory of the Cave (Book VII: 514a–517a), Plato differentiates between perceptible and intelligible phenomena and explains how the ever-changing realm of physical objects (particulars) is separate from the invisible and eternal universals, that is, from ideas or “forms.” The latter we perceive through reason (noesis) or—with regard to mathematical objects and abstract ideas—through intellect (dianoia). Physical objects, which are more random than reason-based ideas, can only be cognized through opinion (doxa), practical reason (phronesis) or trust (pistis). Images and appearances of objects occupy an even lower level of cognition than physical objects. Reason “sees” abstract ideas and concepts that are necessary whereas concrete objects and the appearances of objects remain more contingent. When it comes to images in art, we can even judge them by using taste rather than reason.

The light of reason illuminates the world of objects and appearances and shows necessary ideas; thus, and only thus, randomness disappears. Causal determinists like Laplace would merely reformulate this same idea at the end of the eighteenth century. The coincidence is not real but only a dream or an appearance that we perceive because we are scientifically incompetent. As sciences progress, the unreal world of coincidences will be replaced with the real world of necessity.

Introduction

A robust constitutional framework is one of the preconditions of a healthy democracy, setting out the essential rules, principles and expectations that regulate and animate the political system. However, not all the rules that matter are set out in a codified, written constitution. Some of these rules are unwritten and take the form of constitutional conventions (or political norms). These conventions give form, meaning and substance to the written constitution. They play a crucial role in regulating democratic processes and elite behaviour, managing disagreements and in remedying constitutional and political stalemates (Azari and Smith 2012; Helmke and Levitsky 2004; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; Lieberman et al. 2019). Conceiving of a constitution without the conventions that complement it provides an incomplete picture of the framework of rules undergirding democracy in Australia or, for that matter, any democratic country.

Constitutional conventions are created, interpreted and enforced by public officials. While this arrangement is efficient and practical, and has desirable normative properties, it is not without limitations. This chapter seeks to identify the factors that may be weakening elite adherence to constitutional norms in Australia. It then examines how to address this problem, arguing that citizens have a key role to play as guardians of these norms. We argue that the important work that conventions perform in regulating public officials can be better reflected in, and supported by, the Australian citizenry. However, this requires a reinterpretation of the role of citizens and efforts to boost their capacity to play a greater role in providing critical oversight of those who violate conventions without cause.

More specifically, this chapter makes the case for the ‘democratisation of constitutional conventions’, defined for our purposes as the diffusion of awareness and knowledge about conventions beyond the political class whose actions these conventions regulate. We argue that contemporary changes in the media landscape, governmental practices and emergent political polarisation make it necessary to extend the custodianship of norms beyond government officials to be more inclusive of citizens. Doing so will increase the political and electoral costs of norm transgression without weakening the inherent flexibility of these essential constitutional devices.

Introduction

On 14 October 2023, the Australian people voted against a referendum proposal ‘To alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice’. Of those who cast a valid vote, 39.9 per cent voted ‘Yes’, and 60.1 per cent voted ‘No’. Politicians and journalists were quick to draw conclusions about what the outcome of the vote meant. Former prime minister Tony Abbott (2023) wasted no time in announcing that ‘if the people's vote is to be respected, it should mean abandoning, or at least scaling back, recent concessions to separatism’. Coalition Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (2024) claimed the vote was ‘an affirmation of every Australian's equal right to be heard, of every Australian's equal right to have a say’. Indigenous leaders stayed silent for a week after the referendum before releasing an anonymous open letter claiming the outcome was a ‘repudiation of our peoples and the rejection of our efforts to pursue reconciliation in good faith’.

It is, however, extremely difficult to draw conclusions about the meaning or significance of the vote from the result of the vote itself. As the authors of the ANU ‘Detailed Analysis of the 2023 Voice to Parliament Referendum’ write: ‘there is a real risk of reading too much into a single vote on a very specific and narrow question about a Constitutionally enshrined Voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians’ (Biddle et al. 2023, 61). Indeed, neither Abbott's conclusion nor that drawn by the sig-natories of the open letter is justified by the survey data. This should not be surprising, for, as the authors of the analysis write: ‘without asking questions directly about people's views towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues, it is not really possible to infer what those views are, let alone whether those views have changed during or because of the campaign’ (Biddle et al. 2023, 61).

In what follows, I will reflect on what the vote and the data tell us about the attitudes of Australians towards Indigenous issues and how this, in turn, bears on how we should think about arguments for proposals for reform in the future. I will then reflect on some of the arguments for the Voice in light of the outcome of the referendum.

Conspiracy and Ressentiment

Most of the time, the conspiratorial mindset is motivated not by the will to objectively judge the life world but rather by other elements, one of which is resentment. Many unwarranted conspiracy theories spring from feelings of “sublimated revenge”: some injustice has occurred, sometimes a long time ago, and cannot be amended because the opponent is too powerful. Scapegoating (blame-shifting) and conspiracism are closely linked. However, the injustice and the enemy who caused the misfortune are rarely clearly identified, and the source of the evil remains diffuse. Max Scheler, following Nietzsche, calls this diffuse feeling of vengeance “ressentiment,” and ressen-timent is also a core reason for the existence of the conspiratorial mindset. Ressentiment—derived from the French word for resentment—is deeper seated and more durable than mere resentment and can be defined as an individual’s frustration over his or her own powerlessness. Both resentment and ressentiment differ from anger because they include bitterness. Apart from being more intense, ressentiment is typically directed against sources that are more abstract than those that spark a simple resentment. In his 1915 study of resentment and the role it plays in moral behavior, Scheler gives the following definition:

Ressentiment is charged with a diffuse kind of anger combined with fear that does not really know toward what it should direct itself. Most of the time, res-sentiment is caused by hierarchies that arouse feelings of envy, humiliation, and helplessness. The ressentiment person feels dispossessed because they believe they are threatened and dominated by an ungraspable alien power. Again, this evil power is not simply frightening, but also uncanny because it is not clearly identifiable.

Ressentiment distorts our perception of reality, which also concerns our perception of irregularities and contingencies. Often the source of the evil cannot be identified beyond vague affirmations that “this is not a coincidence.”

Introduction

Ever more is being expected from not-for-profits and their directors, trustees and managers. In part, higher anticipated standards of managerial professionalism have resulted from the adoption of market sector practices in the charity sector and changing social norms emphasising greater accountability across all sectors (Anheier and Toepler 2023, 421–22; Productivity Commission 2010, xxx–xxxii; Kurti 2013). This reflects – in many liberal democracies – the adoption of new public management approaches by govern-ment (Anheier, Lang and Toepler 2020, 673–74; Brinkerhoff and Brinkerhoff 2002, 5) and more sophisticated and strategic approaches to giving on the part of donors (Anheier and Toepler 2023, 200, 213–15; Horvath and Powell 2020, 117; Considine, O’Sullivan and Nguyen 2014, 93–94). These trends have been amplified by the creation of a regulator focused on the not-for-profit sector in Australia in 2012 known as the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC).

Tougher governance requirements serve a purpose: improved systems to measure, report and ensure accountability such that not-for-profit sector assets are used for civil society purposes and not carelessly risked or captured for the enrichment of managers. These heightened governance demands may promote public confidence in the sector in some ways, but they also risk a range of unintended consequences, including disincentivising people from being involved in not-for-profits, whether as volunteers, employees, directors/trustees or as members.

Building on evidence that increased governance expectations may decrease participation, this chapter highlights some of the ways in which increased governance builds false confidence in the sector. That is, reducing participation or changing the form of participation to paid employment has major negative ramifications for the maintenance of social capital (Putnam [2000] 2020; Leigh 2014). Beyond a certain point, there are significant questions about the level of effectiveness of governance and accountability checks and the diversion of scarce resources to undertake those checks (Power 1999), especially if the governance requirements skew activities to game the governance and accountability metrics and divert attention from a not-for-profit's mission (Power 1999; Nel De Koker 2022).2 Importantly, for this chapter, declining participation in the third sector in Australia can also affect the role of not-for-profits as sites of collective action and political expression as well as civic participation more generally.3 This chapter explores the trend towards hyper-regulation of the third sector and the concomitant impact this may have on the vibrancy of engagement and civic participation in Australian democracy.

How to live with contingency? The Greeks elevated Fortuna to the status of a goddess and worshipped her in order to diminish arbitrariness. The Middle Ages managed to separate the contingent from the necessary by creating a solid theological framework. In these times, people could retreat, whenever facing contingency, into a quiet center of necessity guarded by God. Today, too many “necessities,” many of them complex, incomprehensible, not necessary at all, or simply fake, invade our lives. In our consumer-oriented societies, more than in the Middle Ages, we are overwhelmed with so-called “necessities.” These “necessities” are not as fixed and well established as they were in the past but are rather fleeting and impermanent. They are no longer rooted in a lifestyle transmitted from generation to generation following traditional, unchanging structures. In the past, the quietude of a religious center could overlap with the law-bound and purposeful environment of the almost universally rural communities, from which contingency was largely excluded. In modernity, both necessity and contingency are fluid phenomena and less clearly distinguishable.

Contingency is feared more than ever, as the loss of central authority and the multiplication of relationships between individual elements lead to disorientation and anxiety. The conspiratorial mindset “solves” the problem by creating transcendental or imaginary unities. However, it does not establish “real” necessities, nor does it manage to cope with existing contingencies. In the end, unwarranted conspiracy theories lead to even more stress and ressentiment. Similarly, merit-oriented societies treat individuals as though they could be in control of everything, when obviously, way too many things are beyond our control. In this way, meritocracies create new anxieties.

Conspiracy Skepticism

At the same time, the conspiratorial mindset does not have the serenity of Greek Pyrrhonians, who strove to live in a state of eternal suspension of judgment in order to avoid all obligations that could reach them in the form of necessities. Skeptical thought was initiated in Greece by pre-Socratic philosophers such as Xenophanes and Theophrastus; Democritus can be seen as a proto-skeptic, and Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360–270 BCE) molded skepticism into a subtle form of psychological philosophy.

Introduction

A key indicator of successful migrant settlement is often identified as participation in civic life, both in formal processes such as voting and lobbying politicians in liberal democracies, and informally in associational engagement and activity. Such engagement is also vital for a sense of national belonging and integration. According to Ager and Strang (2008, 170), civic rights are the foundation on which other settlement outcomes for migrants rest.

This chapter considers the forms of civic engagement, nationally and transnationally, of one of Australia's newest and most visible migrant diaspora communities, those from the African continent. It considers not only participation in Australian democracy but also the importance of civil society groups and transnational political engagements. We argue that civic responsibility, with a transnational orientation, is a feature of this migrant community, demonstrating a positive commitment to formal and informal democratic participation in both the host nation and the country of origin. This broader transnational political connection and commitment demands, we argue, a reconsideration of definitions of the Habermasian ‘public sphere’ as being bounded by the nation-state. However, we acknowledge that these ‘transnational’ connections are just that, enactments of a political (and economic) commitment based on national affiliation to home and host countries, as per Anderson's (1983) classic notion of ‘imagined communities’ which exist within the minds of co-nationals and manifest as ‘long-distance nationalism’ (see also Skrbis 2017). Thus we demonstrate Calhoun's (2007) argument that ‘nations [still] matter’, even for migrant populations. Rather than reporting evidence of cosmopolitan universalism in political engagement, even while personal identities begin to broaden as pan-African, African migrants’ civic commitment is to two nation-states – Australia and their countries of origin.

We begin by considering migrants’ civic engagement generally and in the Australian context and then briefly outline details of the African diaspora in Australia as background. We then make several observations about their civic or political engagement based on preliminary data from exploratory studies. These include consideration of formal citizenship, voting and political participation and other forms of civic engagement and community activity nationally and transnationally, together with questions of pan-African and diasporic local engagement. We conclude with some questions for further research.

One of UNESCO’s primary missions is to raise awareness through dialogue and international collaboration of the threats facing journalists across the world. UNESCO’s annual World Press Freedom Day is a reminder of journalism’s inherent value as a crucial element of democracy and of how freedom of expression is a crucial element of journalism.

The University of Oregon launched the Crossings Institute for Conflict-Sensitive Reporting and Intercultural Dialogue in 2013. A combination of student reporters and faculty, the institute’s members have been participating World Press Freedom Day since to cover the main themes concerning press freedoms globally. The institute’s self-assignment is to raise awareness and stimulate meaningful dialogue for the next generation of journalists.

For UNESCO’s 2024 World Press Freedom Day, student reporters Ruby Wool and I, traveled 6,284 miles from Eugene, Oregon, to Santiago, Chile. On May 3, with our cohort of professors, we attended the inauguration and ceremony, officially launching UNESCO’s theme of the year, a Press for the Planet: Journalism in the Environmental Crisis.

A year before, at World Press Freedom Day events at UN headquarters in New York City, I spoke with Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). A few months later, as detailed by CPJ in its 2023 report, “Israel made a rapid ascent on the 2023 list, becoming the source for more than 75 percent of journalist killings, and rising to the sixth-worst jailer of journalists after the start of the Israel-Gaza war on October 7.” In addition, CPJ estimated that “128 journalists have been killed since the beginning of the war, almost all of them Palestinian media workers in Gaza killed as a result of Israeli airstrikes. Some of the journalists died while wearing protective gear identifying them as members of the press.” The staggering statistics highlighted the perilous conditions facing Palestinian journalists and the lack of global attention of their current conditions.