Ron Levy
Professor Ron Levy is an interdisciplinary researcher writing on public law and political theory - especially deliberative democratic theory. His recent projects explore referendums in deeply divided societies, Indigenous constitutional reform, environmental constitutionalism and the deliberative dimensions of rights practice. Levy's books include Deliberative Peace Referendums (Oxford University Press, 2021, with Ian O'Flynn and Hoi Kong); The Cambridge Handbook of Deliberative Constitutionalism (Cambridge University Press, 2018, with Hoi Kong, Graeme Orr and Jeff King eds); and The Law of Deliberative Democracy (Routledge, 2016, with Graeme Orr). He has published numerous works on law and political theory, in several countries, including in Public Law, McGill Law Journal, UBC Law Review, UNSW Law Journal, Melbourne University Law Review, Griffith Law Review, Public Law Review, Election Law Journal, Australian Journal of Political Science, Journal of Deliberative Democracy and The Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy.
Levy is the winner of several research awards including grants from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Australian Research Council. He was a chief investigator on two ARC Discovery Projects: 'The Law of Deliberative Democracy: Theory and Reform' (DP130100706, 2013-2015) bridging research on election law with deliberative democratic theory; and 'Confronting the Devolution Paradox' (DP140102682, 2014-2016) on federalism and political culture.
Levy convenes the International Advisory Panel on Referendums, a global network of scholars providing advice to governments and non-governmental organisations on referendum design and innovation. He also co-convenes the ICON•S Australia/New Zealand Constitutional Theory Group. And he is the Director of the ANU Law School's LLB and JD Programs.
Levy has been a Fellow or Visitor at Cambridge, Yale, UC Berkeley, Stanford, McGill, Hebrew University, Sydney, King's College London and Oxford. He previously worked in the Ministry of the Attorney-General of Ontario, Constitutional Law Branch.
Levy is the winner of several research awards including grants from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Australian Research Council. He was a chief investigator on two ARC Discovery Projects: 'The Law of Deliberative Democracy: Theory and Reform' (DP130100706, 2013-2015) bridging research on election law with deliberative democratic theory; and 'Confronting the Devolution Paradox' (DP140102682, 2014-2016) on federalism and political culture.
Levy convenes the International Advisory Panel on Referendums, a global network of scholars providing advice to governments and non-governmental organisations on referendum design and innovation. He also co-convenes the ICON•S Australia/New Zealand Constitutional Theory Group. And he is the Director of the ANU Law School's LLB and JD Programs.
Levy has been a Fellow or Visitor at Cambridge, Yale, UC Berkeley, Stanford, McGill, Hebrew University, Sydney, King's College London and Oxford. He previously worked in the Ministry of the Attorney-General of Ontario, Constitutional Law Branch.
less
InterestsView All (10)
Uploads
Papers by Ron Levy
Popular sovereignty begs the question of who in practice should pronounce the intentions of the people, and by what institutional means. The democra- tisation of constitutional reform continues to face doubts about the quality of popular deliberation, which sometimes thwart democratic innovation around constitutional reform. Many contemporary scholars assume that elite leadership or even dominance is required. But are there circumstances in which, despite longstanding concerns about deliberation, ordinary citizens should be free to author their own constitutional norms? I show how a selection of principles from deliberative democratic theory, as well as related cultural and institutional trends, bear on this question. One trend is a gradual culture-wide reappraisal, at least in some established liberal democracies, of ordinary citizens’ relative capacities to deliberate over constitutional matters. Another is the mounting body of encouraging evidence from experiments with democratic reform techniques designed to help realise citizens’ deliberative capacities. In many places these and other developments have contributed to what I will call a ‘popular sovereignty culture’, which impels further democratisation.
Research in deliberative democracy - with its concern for channelling disagreement into reasoned forms of persuasion - has yielded insights relevant to resolving violent inter-communal conflict. In this article we suggest the use of a specially-designed ‘deliberative referendum’ in Bougainville. Such a referendum may improve the conflicting parties' prospects of reaching common ground. Even a marginal improvement in the referendum’s deliberative quality may help to reconstruct the referendum from a potential destabilising factor to a more effective peace-building tool. Yet, while we explore how a deliberative referendum might help to impel the Bougainville peace process toward successful resolution, we also consider the referendum’s hazards.
Based on this theoretical groundwork, the article’s second half evaluates a selection of “deliberative voting” innovations. This focus on voting is largely unique in the literature, and is especially relevant, for it is at the stage of voting that deliberative democratic constitutional reform faces the greatest impediments. Prior to the vote, several new kinds of deliberative fora may be able to enhance deliberation (e.g., Citizens’ Assemblies); yet most citizens do not become meaningfully involved in reforms until the final, largely solitary act of voting. The prospects for deliberative democratic constitutional reform may therefore remain limited without new approaches to public constitutional voting. For example, a proposal for “integrated referenda” would partially redefine voting and deliberation — traditionally conceived as separate — by merging voting with deliberative fora such as Citizens’ Assemblies. Other potential innovations, aiming to prompt informed and purposive reasoning, include mandated online tutorials before the referendum vote; “preliminary values questions”, which ask voters to rank the general constitutional values that should drive reform; and “scaled referenda”, which present voters with not one but a range of options clearly stating costs and benefits.
In this introduction to the symposium I provide theoretical context and map out where the various contributions fit among key emerging debates in the law of deliberative democracy. Throughout, I argue that we cannot understand the conditions for effective deliberative democracy without considering the roles of election law. Election law is a pervasive and distinctive element of deliberative democracy’s institutional backdrop. Yet deliberation still enjoys too little normative weight in studies of election law, in comparison with libertarian, egalitarian and other sources of legal reasoning.
Initially I identify three reasons why election law may be unable appreciably to set conditions for deliberative democracy: (1) the accommodation problem: that “accommodative” (win-win) reasoning in deliberative democracy may clash with law’s focus on balancing (zero-sum); (2) the elite problem: that legal elites may be unusually hostile to deliberative democratic projects; and (3) the performative problem: that election law’s underlying assumptions promote partisanship rather than deliberation. However, I conclude by identifying provisional solutions to each of these difficulties."
ABSTRACT:
In its first half, this article considers whether democratic legitimacy entails deliberative requirements during the reform of constitutions. Norms of widespread direct citizen involvement have emerged in the constitutional law and practice of many countries. Yet corresponding standards of deliberation in democratic constitutional reform remain unsettled. Drawing on theories of deliberative democracy, the article suggests that, to count as democratically legitimate, constitutional reform must safeguard the quality of deliberation. This strong claim is tempered by a view of legitimacy not as absolute, but as a proportionate and comparative concept. Even so, the article identifies an onerous double-requirement for constitutional legitimacy: that reforms must be at once widely participatory and robustly deliberative.
Based on this theoretical groundwork, the article’s second half evaluates a selection of “deliberative voting” innovations. This focus on voting is largely unique in the literature, and is especially relevant, for it is at the stage of voting that deliberative democratic constitutional reform faces the greatest impediments. Prior to the vote, several new kinds of deliberative fora may be able to enhance deliberation (e.g., Citizens’ Assemblies); yet most citizens do not become meaningfully involved in reforms until the final, largely solitary act of voting. The prospects for deliberative democratic constitutional reform may therefore remain limited without new approaches to public constitutional voting. For example, a proposal for “integrated referenda” would partially redefine voting and deliberation—traditionally conceived as separate—by merging voting with deliberative fora such as Citizens’ Assemblies. Other potential innovations, aiming to prompt informed and purposive reasoning, include mandated online tutorials before the referendum vote; “preliminary values questions”, which ask voters to rank the general constitutional values that should drive reform; and “scaled referenda”, which present voters with not one but a range of options clearly stating costs and benefits.
"
The article sets these results in context, reading the Assemblies against theories of deliberative democracy and public trust. One reason for greater public trust in the Assemblies’ may be an ability to accommodate key values that are otherwise in conflict: majoritarian democratic legitimacy, on the one hand, and fair and well-informed (or ‘deliberatively rational’) decision-making, on the other. Previously, almost no other poll had asked exactly how much Australians trust in constitutional change. However, by resolving trust into a set of discrete public values, the polling and analysis in this work provide evidence that constitutional reform might only succeed when it expresses, at once, the values of both majoritarian and deliberative democracy.
Popular sovereignty begs the question of who in practice should pronounce the intentions of the people, and by what institutional means. The democra- tisation of constitutional reform continues to face doubts about the quality of popular deliberation, which sometimes thwart democratic innovation around constitutional reform. Many contemporary scholars assume that elite leadership or even dominance is required. But are there circumstances in which, despite longstanding concerns about deliberation, ordinary citizens should be free to author their own constitutional norms? I show how a selection of principles from deliberative democratic theory, as well as related cultural and institutional trends, bear on this question. One trend is a gradual culture-wide reappraisal, at least in some established liberal democracies, of ordinary citizens’ relative capacities to deliberate over constitutional matters. Another is the mounting body of encouraging evidence from experiments with democratic reform techniques designed to help realise citizens’ deliberative capacities. In many places these and other developments have contributed to what I will call a ‘popular sovereignty culture’, which impels further democratisation.
Research in deliberative democracy - with its concern for channelling disagreement into reasoned forms of persuasion - has yielded insights relevant to resolving violent inter-communal conflict. In this article we suggest the use of a specially-designed ‘deliberative referendum’ in Bougainville. Such a referendum may improve the conflicting parties' prospects of reaching common ground. Even a marginal improvement in the referendum’s deliberative quality may help to reconstruct the referendum from a potential destabilising factor to a more effective peace-building tool. Yet, while we explore how a deliberative referendum might help to impel the Bougainville peace process toward successful resolution, we also consider the referendum’s hazards.
Based on this theoretical groundwork, the article’s second half evaluates a selection of “deliberative voting” innovations. This focus on voting is largely unique in the literature, and is especially relevant, for it is at the stage of voting that deliberative democratic constitutional reform faces the greatest impediments. Prior to the vote, several new kinds of deliberative fora may be able to enhance deliberation (e.g., Citizens’ Assemblies); yet most citizens do not become meaningfully involved in reforms until the final, largely solitary act of voting. The prospects for deliberative democratic constitutional reform may therefore remain limited without new approaches to public constitutional voting. For example, a proposal for “integrated referenda” would partially redefine voting and deliberation — traditionally conceived as separate — by merging voting with deliberative fora such as Citizens’ Assemblies. Other potential innovations, aiming to prompt informed and purposive reasoning, include mandated online tutorials before the referendum vote; “preliminary values questions”, which ask voters to rank the general constitutional values that should drive reform; and “scaled referenda”, which present voters with not one but a range of options clearly stating costs and benefits.
In this introduction to the symposium I provide theoretical context and map out where the various contributions fit among key emerging debates in the law of deliberative democracy. Throughout, I argue that we cannot understand the conditions for effective deliberative democracy without considering the roles of election law. Election law is a pervasive and distinctive element of deliberative democracy’s institutional backdrop. Yet deliberation still enjoys too little normative weight in studies of election law, in comparison with libertarian, egalitarian and other sources of legal reasoning.
Initially I identify three reasons why election law may be unable appreciably to set conditions for deliberative democracy: (1) the accommodation problem: that “accommodative” (win-win) reasoning in deliberative democracy may clash with law’s focus on balancing (zero-sum); (2) the elite problem: that legal elites may be unusually hostile to deliberative democratic projects; and (3) the performative problem: that election law’s underlying assumptions promote partisanship rather than deliberation. However, I conclude by identifying provisional solutions to each of these difficulties."
ABSTRACT:
In its first half, this article considers whether democratic legitimacy entails deliberative requirements during the reform of constitutions. Norms of widespread direct citizen involvement have emerged in the constitutional law and practice of many countries. Yet corresponding standards of deliberation in democratic constitutional reform remain unsettled. Drawing on theories of deliberative democracy, the article suggests that, to count as democratically legitimate, constitutional reform must safeguard the quality of deliberation. This strong claim is tempered by a view of legitimacy not as absolute, but as a proportionate and comparative concept. Even so, the article identifies an onerous double-requirement for constitutional legitimacy: that reforms must be at once widely participatory and robustly deliberative.
Based on this theoretical groundwork, the article’s second half evaluates a selection of “deliberative voting” innovations. This focus on voting is largely unique in the literature, and is especially relevant, for it is at the stage of voting that deliberative democratic constitutional reform faces the greatest impediments. Prior to the vote, several new kinds of deliberative fora may be able to enhance deliberation (e.g., Citizens’ Assemblies); yet most citizens do not become meaningfully involved in reforms until the final, largely solitary act of voting. The prospects for deliberative democratic constitutional reform may therefore remain limited without new approaches to public constitutional voting. For example, a proposal for “integrated referenda” would partially redefine voting and deliberation—traditionally conceived as separate—by merging voting with deliberative fora such as Citizens’ Assemblies. Other potential innovations, aiming to prompt informed and purposive reasoning, include mandated online tutorials before the referendum vote; “preliminary values questions”, which ask voters to rank the general constitutional values that should drive reform; and “scaled referenda”, which present voters with not one but a range of options clearly stating costs and benefits.
"
The article sets these results in context, reading the Assemblies against theories of deliberative democracy and public trust. One reason for greater public trust in the Assemblies’ may be an ability to accommodate key values that are otherwise in conflict: majoritarian democratic legitimacy, on the one hand, and fair and well-informed (or ‘deliberatively rational’) decision-making, on the other. Previously, almost no other poll had asked exactly how much Australians trust in constitutional change. However, by resolving trust into a set of discrete public values, the polling and analysis in this work provide evidence that constitutional reform might only succeed when it expresses, at once, the values of both majoritarian and deliberative democracy.
The book presents a challenging critique of laws governing electoral politics in the English-speaking world. Judges often act as spoilers, vetoing or naively reshaping schemes meant to enhance deliberation. This pattern testifies to deliberation's weak penetration into legal consciousness. It is also a fault of deliberative democracy scholarship itself, which says little about how deliberative democracy connects with the actual practice of law. Superficially, the law of politics and deliberative democracy appear starkly incompatible. Yet, after laying out this critique, The Law of Deliberative Democracy considers prospects for reform. The book contends that the conflict between law and public deliberation is not inevitable: it results from judicial and legislative choices. An extended, original analysis demonstrates how lawyers and deliberativists can engage with each other to bridge their two solitudes.