John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB). His research interests range from democracy and governance, to theory of language, to religion and secularization in public life, and to the future of China. His best-known and best-selling books include Tom Paine: A Political Life (1995), Violence and Democracy (2004), Democracy and Media Decadence (2013) and the highly acclaimed full-scale history of democracy, The Life and Death of Democracy (2009). His most recent books are A Short History of the Future of Elections (2016) and When Trees Fall, Monkeys Scatter: Rethinking Democracy in China (2017).