John Keane
John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney. Renowned globally for his creative thinking about politics, history, media and democracy, he is the author of the best-selling Tom Paine: A Political Life (1995), The Life and Death of Democracy (2009), Power and Humility (2018), The New Despotism (2020) and The Shortest History of Democracy (2022), which has been published in more than a dozen languages. He was nominated for the 2021 Balzan Prize (Italy) and the Holberg Prize (Norway) for outstanding global contributions to the human sciences. His latest books are China’s Galaxy Empire (2025) and Demagogues and Despots: Democracies on the Brink (2026).
John's articles (12 total)
Decolonising democracy – part eight
In the final part of this series, John Keane asks whether democracies will have the resolve to stand up to the USA and to find remedies for the maladies of representative democracy.
Decolonising democracy – part seven
In the seventh of an eight-part series, John Keane asks if other democracies can decouple themselves from the American empire.
Decolonising democracy – part six
In the sixth of an eight-part series, John Keane discusses the ramifications of the US withdrawal from international organisations on other democracies.
Decolonising democracy – part five
In the fifth of an eight-part series, John Keane says the declining US empire will manage without democracy as it turns on its own citizens.
Decolonising democracy – part four
In the fourth of an eight-part series, John Keane shows how the fading American empire is resorting to military solutions for its mounting global ills, without winning.
Decolonising democracy – part three
In the third of an eight-part series, John Keane traces America's shift from being defender-in-chief of democracy to MAGA's denunciation of it.
Decolonising democracy – part two
In the second of an eight-part series, John Keane shows how the American empire deployed the idea of 'liberal democracy' to bolster its own interests.
Decolonising democracy – part one
In the first of an eight-part series, political theorist John Keane examines the effect of disruptions to the world order on democracy and its future.
Demagogues, despots and the rise of ‘phantom democracies’
Modern despots increasingly mimic the language and rituals of democracy while concentrating power through manipulation, spectacle, nationalism and the managed consent of their citizens.
Partners in crime: Germany, Israel and Genocide
Karl Marx, a rebel son of Jewish parents, famously remarked that in politics Germans had only thought what others had already done. His quip needs a flip: Germans are nowadays doing things others find unthinkable.
That word terrorism…
The term terrorism has become a fighting word in the arsenal of a declining world empire known as the United States of America. Its leaders’ endless talk of terrorism is in reality a desperate swansong, an indicator of the downfall of the United States as a global empire, its slow but irreversible disappearance from the headlines of world history, or so it seems to me.
Open letter from John Keane about 'foreign interference' at Sydney University.
Dear Colleagues and Friends, Many of you will have spotted recent media reports that our University, the University of Sydney, contracted the chartered accountancy firm McGrathNicol Advisory, to provide an external audit of the patterns of foreign interference in the workings of our institution.