John Burnheim, Professor of General Philosophy at the University of Sydney, Australia.

In his book Is Democracy Possible? (1985) John Burnheim invented the term "demarchy" to describe a political system without the state or bureaucracies, and based instead on randomly selected groups of decision makers. This has striking resemblances to classical democratic ideas, as reported by Thucydides.

Burnheim used to be a Roman Catholic priest, and presided over St John's, the Catholic college attached to the University.