The spread of democracy has been driven by a struggle for freedom and opportunities for human flourishing, and yet democratic institutions based on full and inclusive citizenship face a variety of global challenges.
In 2016 and 2017, the Research Excellence Cluster on Global Challenges to Democracy: Rights, Freedoms, and Human Development organized collaborative, international, and interdisciplinary workshops on:
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- Global rights and democracy;
- Indigenous rights and self-determination; and
- Human development and the quality of democracy.
Research Excellence Cluster
Generous research support from UBC’s Office of the Vice President Research (VPR) under the UBC Strategic Excellence Fund allowed for the creation of the 2016 Research Excellence Cluster on Global Challenges to Democracy: Rights, Freedoms, and Human Development.
Max Cameron (Professor, Political Science, Director of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions), Sheryl Lightfoot (Associate Professor, Political Science and First Nations and Indigenous Studies, Canada Research Chair of Global Indigenous Rights and Politics) and Lisa Sundstrom (Associate Professor, Political Science) were awarded funds to further their respective research programs and to engage in future collaborative research on the Global Challenges to Democracy. In aiming to develop a ‘cluster of expertise’ on democratization in Political Science – and in bringing together colleagues within the Department and researchers from other institutions – they sought to confront the major challenges and problems facing democracies around the world.
Workshops on Global Challenges to Democracy
When three faculty members from the Department of Political Science came together to prepare a research grant on the challenges to democracy, they had no idea that 2016 would end with the US imposing sanctions on Putin’s Russia for interfering in the US election in favour of Donald Trump. While some less than fully democratic countries (often called hybrid regimes) had taken steps towards becoming less democratic, it was now clear that established democracies were also in trouble. Brexit, terrorist attacks in Europe, mass migration of refugees out of Syria, crisis in Turkey, and meltdown in Venezuela, all suggest that as 2016 came to an end, the ‘crisis of democracy’ was in fact the new normal.
In May 2017, workshops were held on human development and the quality of democracy (held May 4-5th in San Jose, Costa Rica), indigenous rights and self-determination, and global rights and democracy (held May 15 & 16, at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC) – thanks to the generous support from UBC’s Office of the Vice President Research (VPR). The workshops were attended by an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners.
On May 17, 2017, at the Liu Institute, a workshop on legal mobilization and International Courts was held with leading academics and practitioners whose work on international human rights courts is generating ground-breaking research. This workshop was funded by a SHRCC Connection Grant.