Professor Tomás (Tom) Daly is an academic and consultant in the area of democracy-building, public law, and human rights.

 

biography

Tom is Director of Research Impact at Melbourne Law School, Director of the Electoral Regulation Research Network (ERRN), Co-Convenor of the Constitution Transformation Network (Melbourne Law School), and Associate Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law.

As a consultant on public law, human rights, and democracy-building he has worked on EU, Council of Europe, African Union and International IDEA projects, including designing an African Judicial Network for the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, and managing a major €3m Council of Europe project on strengthening judicial ethics in Turkey. He has previously clerked for the Chief Justice of Ireland (6 years) and has worked at the Judicial Studies Institute and the Global Justice Academy at Edinburgh University. A qualified barrister, he holds law degrees from the University of Edinburgh, European University Institute (EUI), and Honorable Society of King's Inns.

Tom has written widely on democratic decay and democracy-building, including a monograph, The Alchemists: Questioning Our Faith in Courts as Democracy-Builders (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and recent articles on democratic decay as a field, democratic crisis in states including Brazil and Poland, and focus on democratic actors like courts, political parties, and citizens. He has written on democratic decay as a columnist for the I-CONnect blog and tweets @DemocracyTalk.

 

MY BACKGROUND and DEMOCRATIC DECAY

My interest in democratic decay has been strongly influenced by my wide-ranging experience in the public sector, academia, and as a consultant. My first inklings of what is called 'democratic decay' here were during my time representing the Supreme Court of Ireland on the Venice Commission's body for constitutional courts (the Joint Council on Constitutional Justice) from 2008-2011. The system of dealing with research requests from participating courts began to hint at some potentially serious problems during this time. This worsened during my time as consultant editor of the Venice Commission's Bulletin on Constitutional Case-Law (which provides case-law summaries from 61 states) from 2011-2018.

My awareness of the issue also grew as I wrote my first book on courts as 'democracy-builders', which focused on Brazil as a central case-study from a broad comparative and global perspective  encompassing Latin America, Europe and Africa. I can now discern democratic decay as a clear thread in the book — although it was not written from this angle. Since 2015, as well as actively researching the area, my awareness of the problem has been enhanced by managing a major €3m Council of Europe project on strengthening judicial ethics in Turkey,  designing an African Judicial Network for the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, which sharpened my knowledge of the state of democratic governance across the African Union, and my work with the Constitution Transformation Network at Melbourne Law School, which has enhanced my existing knowledge of democratic governance across the Asia-Pacific region developed through working on legal and constitutional reform projects in states including Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

 

teaching

I have designed (or co-designed) a range of subjects focused on democratic rule, including:

  • 2018: a JD legal research course on 'Understanding Democratic Decay Worldwide' at Melbourne Law School - see the Teaching section for more details. 

  • 2020: a cutting-edge intensive Master’s law subject on democratic participation worldwide: ‘Bringing in the People’ at Melbourne Law School (co-designed and taught with Professor Cheryl Saunders.cutting-edge intensive course Bringing in the People with Professor Cheryl Saunders.

  • 2020: Visiting Professor, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná (PUCPR) Brazil, Doctoral Program: 6-lecture series on ‘Democratic Decay: Courts, Populism, and Human Rights in Today’s World’.

  • 2020-present: an innovative subject for public servants on the Master of Public Administration (MPA) at Melbourne School of Government: ‘Democracy, Power and the Public Service’.

     

reading group

In 2018 I established, with Tarun Khaitan as co-convenor, a cross-disciplinary reading group on democratic decay at the University of Melbourne. The group is not currently running but might be re-convened in 2021.

 

AVAILABLE RESEARCH

I began writing systematically on the subject of democratic decay as a research subject in Spring 2016. You can find a range of research below.

BOOKS

articles & BOOK CHAPTERS

POLICY ANALYSIS

Conference papers

I-CONnect columns

‘Can International Organisations Help to Stem Democratic Decay?’ (14 November 2017)

‘Contemplating the Future in the Era of Democratic Decay’ (15 September 2017)

‘When is a Limp More than a Limp? Diagnosing Democratic Decay’ (12 July 2017)

‘Democratic Decay in ‘Keystone’ Democracies: The Real Threat to Global Constitutionalism?’ (15 May 2017)

‘The ‘C Word: Democratic Decay and the New Frontiers of Comparative Law’ (8 March 2017)

‘Enough Complacency: Fighting Democratic Decay in 2017’ (11 January 2017)

Other Blog posts

‘Democracy and the Global Emergency – Shared Experiences, Starkly Uneven Impacts’ Verfassungsblog (15 May 2020)

‘Democratic Decay: The Threat with a Thousand Names’ (Democratic Audit blog, 9 March 2019)

‘Germany’s Move to Deprive Anti-Democratic Parties of State Funding: An Effective Response to the Populist Wave?’ (ConstitutionNet Voices from the Field 26 July 2017)

‘Constitutional Ignorance and Democratic Decay: Breaking the Feedback Loop’ (I-CONnect blog, 17 November 2016)

‘Time to View Democratic Decay as a Unified Research Field?’ (I-CONnect blog, 30 September 2016)

‘Attacks on Courts: Taking Wider Lessons from Recent Irish Supreme Court Revelations’ (I-CONnect blog, 9 September 2016)

‘The Democratic Recession and the ‘New’ Public Law: Toward Systematic Analysis’ (I-CONnect blog, 22 April 2016)

 

FIND OUT MORE

You can find out more, and access my research, by:

 

CONTACT

You can contact me about this research hub, or about democratic decay and renewal more generally, by e-mailing me at democraticdecay@gmail.com. To collaborate on developing this Resource, see the Get Involved section.