Spring 2009 | Public lectures and events | Video

Contributor(s): Professor Rida Laraki | Laraki argues that the new Majority Judgement voting system is superior because it best ranks candidates according to merit. It best resists manipulation or "gaming the vote." It heeds majority rule. It is not subject to Arrow's impossibility, nor to most other classical paradoxes.

Contributor(s): David Leonard, General Olusegun Obasanjo, Professor James Putzel, Clare Short | With its most recent press release the Crisis States Research Centre (LSE) prompted fierce debate on the international response to the ongoing crisis in the Eastern DRC. Reactions to the arrest of the rebel leader Laurent Nkunda in Rwanda on 22 January are loud and divided, though international actions continue to follow the same three trends identified in the CSRC release. This response, says the CSRC, fails to comprehend the cause, complexity and extent of the crisis.

Contributor(s): Professor Michel Balinski | Balinski presents an introduction to Majority Judgement, a new voting model that proposes a solution to many of the pressing problems confronting representative democracy and its various current electoral systems.

Contributor(s): Lord Goldsmith QC, Howard Davies | The separation of powers idea is at the heart of all legal democracies. Yet within those democracies there will often be positions of high office which require their holders to perform functions which are both legal and political. In this series of events senior figures who hold or have held positions of this type talk about their lives in the law, the nature of their office, the institutions which they serve, their roles and responsibilities within those institutions, the role of lawyers in government and their understanding of the relationship between law and politics.

Contributor(s): Wayne Swan | Wayne Swan was sworn in as Australian Treasurer on 3 December 2007. He has been Member for the Brisbane seat of Lilley from 1993 to 1996, and from 1998 to the present. In 2005 he published Postcode: the Splintering of a Nation, a well-received book on economic and social policy in Australia. Before Wayne's appointment to his current role, he was Shadow Treasurer for three years and for six years Shadow Minister for Family and Community Services (1998-2004).

Contributor(s): Professor Wolfgang Streeck | How does the de-regulation of employment relate to the evolution of other social structures, in particular the family? And what are the consequences for the role of the state in society?

Contributor(s): Professor Ratna Kapur | rofessor Kapur examines the specific challenges that have faced feminist activism in South Asia, and discusses how it might forge a new political direction.

Contributor(s): Professor Gilat Levy | In this lunchtime series lectures, a selection of LSE's academics from across the spectrum of the social sciences explain the latest thinking on how social scientists work to address the critical problems of the day. They survey the leading ideas and contributions made by their discipline, explain the types of problems that are addressed and the tools that are used, and explore the kinds of solutions proposed.

Contributor(s): Professor Barry Buzan | China has moved closer to international society on regional and global levels. The tide of history will probably favour China's peaceful rise, but the country will need to act to ensure this happens.

Contributor(s): Thomas Mirow | The crisis originated in the main western financial centres, but emerging markets will pay the price. How steep a price? And what is the responsibility of the rich countries now?