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This paper adds to knowledge on the role of politicians' and voters' identities in influencing policy-making in societies marked by ethnic inequality. The outcome we investigate is the initiatives and policies targeting Indigenous populations in the context of Australia. We ask whether and how politicians' and voters' identities, defined based on a range of their observable characteristics, shape initiation and support of Indigenous-focused policies. Drawing on data on the voting history of members of the two houses of the Australian parliament, we provide an analysis of law-making behaviour and show that political ideology, and to some extent politicians' propensity to act rebelliously and diligently, are significant determinants of their agreement on Indigenous policies. Our complementary analysis of voters' attitudes on issues concerning Indigenous Australians points to the high relevance of political ideology, and in doing so, highlights the alignments in the behaviours of politicians and voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the coexistence of competing and contested interests in intercultural natural resource management ( NRM) systems in Australia and Malaysia, this paper explores the ways in which ontological pluralism and the interplay of socio-cultural, political-economic and biophysical influences shape NRM systems. We aim to foster a discursive space in which to reframe the challenges of capacity building in the rapidly changing spaces of intercultural NRM systems. The paper synthesizes the conceptual arguments of field research to conclude that capacity deficits of dominant institutions, processes and knowledge systems drive many systemic failures in land and sea management affecting Indigenous peoples. We advocate urgent action to build intercultural competence and new capacities and competencies in those institutions. The paper reframes intercultural NRM in terms of coexistence and invites wider debate about these 'new geographies of coexistence' in intercultural NRM systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the Australian monarchy-republican debate ought to be understood as competing interpretations of the relationship between political theory and practice, reflected in competing views on the ability of Australian democratic government to withstand the introduction of a republic. These interpretations, named 'minimalist' versus 'maximalist' republicanism, transcend traditional theories of monarchism and republicanism. The first part of the paper contextualises and explains the minimalist-maximalist distinction as a way of understanding the debate. The second part of the paper analyses the language in texts of key political parties and organised movements in the debate in the 1990s. The focus on elites rather than the public is an innovative approach to this debate, as is the engagement of discourse analysis which recommends these methods to other socio-political settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the relationship between the growing dominance of career politicians in the Australian federal legislature and models of party organisation. Using data on MPs in the Australian federal parliament, this study maps changes in models of party organisation to the occupational profiles of MPs between 1949 and 2007. The findings show a correspondence between the phenomenon of cartelisation and the appearance of legislators whose previous occupation was in the political sphere. The authors suggest that there is a relationship between different modes of party organisation and both the supply of candidates and the demand-side factors influencing party selectors. The paper concludes that theories of recruitment should include a greater emphasis on models of party organisation to explain better the uniformity of recruitment outcomes across advanced democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is a preliminary attempt to evaluate changing patterns of democratic governance, at least in Westminster-style parliamentary settings, and possibly more generally. It has two specific purposes: first, to propose a paradigm for evaluating the empirical evolution of democratic governance; and second, to illustrate the explanatory potential of this paradigm through a mini-case study of changing patterns of governance in one particular polity. The conceptual framework is drawn from March and Olsen's eponymous study (1995) from which polar (‘thick’ and‘thin’) forms of democratic governance are derived. Four conjectures about its evolution are then explored. First, in its mass party phase, the pattern of democratic governance approximated the‘thick’ pole. Second, the subsequent evolution of democratic politics has been in the direction of the‘thin’ (minimalist or populist) pole. Third, the cause of this shift was a failure to adapt political institutions to changing citizen identities, which was masked by the ascendancy amongst political elites of the neo-liberal account of governance. Fourth, the paper considers the means by which democratic governance might be renewed. The approach is applied to explain changes in Australian politics over recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between strategic culture and defence policies has not yet been much explored. Australia and New Zealand provide some evidence of the impact of strategic culture on defence policy. Australia has a dominant strategic culture which is strong enough to prompt both the major political parties to adopt realist defence policies, even though Labor has a traditionally 'idealist' outlook. Until the 1970s, New Zealand had a similar dominant strategic culture which influenced both major political parties, but it was always less strong than Australia's. In recent years, the Labour Party has rejected that culture, and allowed an alternative strategic culture based on its ideology to influence its defence policies. The result has been that on the last two occasions when Labour has been in government, New Zealand's defence policy has changed dramatically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of state ideology in the formation of kindergarten curriculum documents in socialist Hungary during the 1970s and in contemporary neoliberal Australia. The study explores two landmark curriculum documents, of Hungary and Australia, respectively, comparing the ways in which "the child" is conceptualized in relation to each one's particular ideas of community. Departing from earlier studies that examine images of the child as they move through history, this study uses Foucauldian genealogy for analysis and constructs a vertical case study to compare ideas of "the child" and "community" embedded in the curriculum documents' respective discursive contexts of socialist and neoliberal political ideologies. Through examination of these case studies this paper also illustrates some of the ways curriculum documents written for the early years regulate children. Sometimes, such as in socialist curriculum, this occurs in explicit and ideologically explicit ways; at other times, such as in the neoliberal curriculum, a more covert and seemingly "apolitical" regulation takes place that is nonetheless equally powerful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of a rational consensus has become an increasingly controversial dimension of recent democratic theory as radical democratic theorists have challenged the ways in which liberal democracies deal with political disagreement and contestation. As a result, several theorists within the liberal tradition have attempted to incorporate models of dissent in their democratic arguments but this paper contends that they tend to result in forms of majoritarianism or proceduralism which reflect the original limitations that inspired the radical democratic critique. A more useful approach is one that recognises that contestation is inherent to democratic politics and understands that the paradox of democracy is the need to embrace the impossibility of establishing rational consensus in democratic practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the continuing existence of monarchy in Australian politics. The argument is put forward that one of the key reasons for the continuation of the monarchy in the Australian context is its inseparable links with English conservatism. Certain loose principles or myths are discussed at some length which, it is argued, are the defining ideology of conservatism, symbolised most purely in the power of the monarch. This conservative mythology is extremely potent in Australian culture, as conservatives occupy central and often more permanent positions of power than elected officials. Each of these central tenets of conservatism is discussed in the Australian context, and suggestions are made as to their negative and constraining impact upon the potential of an Australian democratic republic. The final task of this paper lists ways in which dominant mythology is inculcated into the minds of the masses: mainly through popular literature and rituals; the latter actually playing out, as it were, the lessons derived from the mythology. The concluding argument emphasises the extent to which the monarchy remains a powerful force, and that to believe otherwise is to ignore the pervasiveness of conservative mythology in Australian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the problems involved in coordinating policy in a federal system. It examines the programs developed to control petrol-sniffing in South Australian Aboriginal communities and analyses the processes which determined policy outcomes. Both intergovernmental and intragovemmental factors are identified as contributing to the failure to achieve coordination. The particular characteristics of Aboriginal Affairs as a concurrent constitutional responsibility combined with its position as a client-specific portfolio impede efficiency in matters of funding, definition of administrative jurisdiction and political commitment to cooperative action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Federation, Australia has not been immune to violent extremism, although the scale of such violence is less evident than in many countries throughout the world. While such acts of violence within Australia have been intermittent, around 150 have occurred since World War II, though most have not been successful. Further, Australian nationals have also died overseas, such as during the 9/11 attacks in New York and the bombing of the Sari Club in Bali in 2002. These incidents have sensitised the public to extremism. Currently, the nation is responding to a heightened risk of violent extremism. It is therefore timely to describe the nature of violent extremism that has manifested in Australia - ethnonationalist, political and most recently, jihadist. This paper examines the nature of extremist violence that has impacted on Australia, and highlights changes in the risk and the nature of violent extremism over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Undesirables' explores the various border control practices employed against migrant communities that have been branded as undesirable by the authorities, including exclusion, deportation, monitoring and detention. The contemporary approaches to undesirable migrant groups have deep historical connections. This special issue offers evidence that current policy and practices are products of a long-term historical recourse. This proposed issue explores how certain migrant groups (on the grounds of race, gender, ethnicity, political ideology, and perceived criminality) were identified as 'undesirable' by the authorities of the state and subjected to various border and policing practices. This often involved the exclusion of 'undesirable' migrants at the border or the deportation of individuals if found to be 'undesirable', but also included the surveillance, arrest and detention of undesirables from migrant groups by police and intelligence agencies once they had settled in the destination country.This special issue shows that border control practices extended far beyond the physical border and that as well as using border practices to reject or expel 'undesirable' migrants, the state highly monitored those 'undesirable' migrants who had been allowed to enter the country. This builds on Paddy Hillyard's (1993) theory of the 'suspect community', which described the heavy policing of the Irish community in Britain during the 1970s-80s. While some studies have looked at how some community groups have replaced others in the contemporary government's security agenda (Pantazis and Pemberton 2009), this special issue showcases that the 'undesirability' concept has historical origin that still influences current approaches to policies, hence it warrants a more comprehensive investigation and reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between the 1920s and the 1950s, hundreds of thousands of Italians emigrated to Australia, with fewer restrictions placed upon them than other continental European migrants. However, Italian migrants, especially from southern Italy, were often seen as 'undesirable'. This was due to both their ethnicity and the view that Italians were attracted to extreme political ideologies, such as Fascism and communism. This combination led the Australian authorities to treat Italian migrants as a'suspect community', which meant prolonged surveillance of Italian communities, as well as efforts to prevent entry, deny citizenship to or deport certain undesirable individuals. The policing of Italians in Australia intensified in the Second World War, which resulted in many being interned, regardless of political affiliation. But at other times, the political persuasion of the Italian migrants did play apart in how they were viewed by the authorities, with communists being monitored more heavily in the 1920s and 1950s and fascists being the focus in the 1930s and 1940s. This article looks at the shifting undesirability to Italian political activists in Australia over four decades and how ethnicity alongside ideology informed their policing by the authorities across several periods of political upheaval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's declining electoral participation has been considered a problem in a range of democracies, including Australia. In this paper I examine youth electoral participation through the eyes and voices of young marginalised Australians. In the policy arena young people's electoral participation is usually considered a subject for education policy. Here I make the case for considering it as an issue for social policy, and as a welfare issue. In this context I examine the effects of neoliberalism and Australia's shrinking welfare state on young people's citizenship and ability to access the franchise. Whilst acknowledging the liberal roots of neoliberalism I argue that whereas the neoliberal state identifies young people's political disengagement as a problem, and constructs participation using the language of 'choice', that its own social policies act to create barriers to the franchise for young people and thus effectively disenfranchise them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Opinion polls conducted throughout the 1990s indicate most Australians favor a republic. A referendum making that constitutional change, however, was defeated. This paper investigates whether voters employ a loss-minimization rule, as opposed to a value-maximization rule, when making political decisions. Based on the predictions of each rule, political strategies are devised and compared to the official arguments employed by republicans and monarchists during the period preceding the vote. Empirical research relates voting outcomes at the individual voter level to influences that are likely to be correlated with political risk aversion. The results are consistent with the conclusion that voters do not employ value-maximization rules. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Research has identified variability in the way people see and understand privilege and their desire to address inequality. Generational and political ideological differences may be factors that shape such variability. Despite considerable inequality and a growing class system, to date, little research has been conducted in Australia to consider how people conceptualize these issues. Given this, the aim of this research was to explore how millennial Australian conservative voters conceptualize privilege. 10 semi‐structured interviews were conducted with millennial conservative party voters, and transcripts were analyzed thematically. Four themes were identified: (1) defining privilege (an advantage over others without effort); (2) comparisons: self to others (empathic downward comparisons saw participants identify qualities of their life that were privileged); (3) value tensions (tensions between participants political ideology and personal views) (4) disadvantage: individual or collective responsibility? (who and how inequality should be addressed). Combined, these themes revealed a highly contextual and nuanced conceptualization of privilege and how at times participants contested the conservative belief in meritocracy when empathically engaging in downward comparison of other's circumstances, recognizing some positions of disadvantage could not be remedied by individual effort. Findings contribute to understandings in political psychology regarding downward comparisons and meritocracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two streams of research, culture war and system justification, have proposed that religious orientations and personality, respectively, play critical roles in political orientations. There has been only limited work integrating these two streams. This integration is now of increased importance given the introduction of behavior-genetic frameworks into our understanding of why people differ politically. Extant research has largely considered the influence of personality as heritable and religiosity as social, but this view needs reconsideration as religiosity is also genetically influenced. Here we integrate these domains and conduct multivariate analyses on twin samples in the U.S. and Australia to identify the relative importance of genetic, environmental, and cultural influences. First, we find that religiosity's role on political attitudes is more heritable than social. Second, religiosity accounts for more genetic influence on political attitudes than personality. When including religiosity, personality's influence is greatly reduced. Our results suggest religion scholars and political psychologists are partially correct in their assessment of the "culture wars"—religiosity and ideology are closely linked, but their connection is grounded in genetic predispositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1980s the rise of green movements and political parties in Western democracies drew attention to the ability of political systems to address new challenges. The challenges were directed both at specific policies and at ways of conceptualising political, economic and social life. This paper acknowledges the ideological and practical aspects of the new political challenges (the so-called new politics). The primary focus, however, is on political institutions and on how, through their electoral systems, they set the framework for politics. Apart from the literature on electoral systems and the evidence of how minor parties and independents have fared, we draw on recent writings on political institutions (which have been characterised as the new institutionalism) to evaluate the possibilities for further changes in the pattern of politics in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between the local state and the community is critical to planning agencies in liberal democracies. On the one hand; planning agencies develop strategies for achieving desirable future goals on behalf of the whole community; on the other hand, without widespread support, and particularly the support of community decision-makers, strategies are unlikely to be effective. It is crucial therefore for plans to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the community. Community participation in plan- making takes many forms, ranging from grassroots democracy to mere tokenism, but the notion of legitimation has largely been ignored in these models. This article analyses the relationship between public consultation and legitimation in public policy-making, using the development of a large-scale plan for the City of Brisbane, Australia, as a case study. It explores the process of public consultation used in the plan's development. On the surface at least, widespread consultation suggests a grassroots democratic approach to planning. Serious limitations were identified, however, raising theoretical questions about the consultative mechanism as genuine participation and its role as a forms of legitimation for the local state. The analysis of the consultative process and outcomes is set against a discussion of Brisbane's changing economy and politics and the pressures these have placed on the local state.

The article presents information on a different perspective on the birth and future of the Australian Democratic Labor Party (DLP). Although religious in its origins and sponsors, the DLP has deep roots in the strains of shifting socio-economic status. It may therefore serve a transitional function of realigning politics and social class in Australia. The DLP's political permanency is thus far from guaranteed. The paper is divided into four sections. It will first explore the historical antecedents of the DLP, giving special attention to the Catholics and their allegiance to Labor in general and the Australian Labor Party in particular. Next, it will trace the actual evolution of the DLP. Third, it will examine the socio-economic status of the DLP constituency as compared with that of other parties. And finally, it will consider some general problems of political change with reference to the role of third parties within nominally two-party systems. In this respect, the DLP serves as a case study for broader speculation concerning other "two-party systems" such as those in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. Like the politics of other Western democracies, Australian politics have always been based primarily upon social class. In fact, they have been even more devoid of religious and ethnic complications than most.

Objective: Junk-food marketing contributes significantly to childhood obesity, which in turn imposes major health and economic burdens. Despite this, political priority for addressing junk-food marketing has been weak in many countries. Competing interests, worldviews and beliefs of stakeholders involved with the issue contribute to this political inertia. An integral group of actors for driving policy change are parliamentarians, who champion policy and enact legislation. However, how parliamentarians interpret and portray (i.e. frame) the causes and solutions of public health nutrition problems is poorly understood. The present study aimed to understand how Australian parliamentarians from different political parties frame the problem of junk-food marketing.Design: Framing analysis of transcripts from the Australian Government's Parliamentary Hansard, involving development of a theoretical framework, data collection, coding transcripts and thematic synthesis of results.Settings: Australia.Participants: None.Results: Parliamentarian framing generally reflected political party ideology. Liberal parliamentarians called for minimal government regulation and greater personal responsibility, reflecting the party's core values of liberalism and neoliberalism. Greens parliamentarians framed the issue as systemic, highlighting the need for government intervention and reflecting the core party value of social justice. Labor parliamentarians used both frames at varying times.Conclusions: Parliamentarians' framing was generally consistent with their party ideology, though subject to changes over time. This project provides insights into the role of framing and ideology in shaping public health policy responses and may inform communication strategies for nutrition advocates. Advocates might consider using frames that resonate with the ideologies of different political parties and adapting these over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "electoral mandate" serves a useful function as a political weapon in competitive party democracies, notwithstanding the ambiguities, multi‐layered complexities and uncertainty of many of the issues which the concept involves. The diverse uses of "mandate" indicate competing ideas in Australian politics about the responsibilities of parties to pursue commitments made during campaigns and the extent of rights to govern. This article portrays mandate not as a "theory" or "doctrine", but as a rhetorical device that needs to be examined in the context of "contested word use" in political speech. The renewed interest in the study of rhetoric reflects the usefulness of examining multiple and layered meanings that exist under what ostensibly may appear as "empty rhetoric", and to understand how rhetoric is used to persuade an audience of the validity of a particular action or viewpoint. While mandate often comes under attack as "meaningless", it is a useful persuasive tool employed by politicians to consolidate their legitimacy and justify their rights to implement a political agenda and, as such, it contributes to public discourses relating to the nature of political representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many historians of Australian political thought have attributed its pragmatic and anti-speculative tendencies to a Benthamite influence. Without denying the influence of Bentham and Benthamism on Australian thought and institutional development, this article challenges the assumption that the abovementioned tendencies necessarily betray a Benthamite heritage. By analysing the theoretical justifications for pragmatic, anti-speculative approaches to institutional design in the Federation debates (1890–1898), this article shows that there was a very strong Burkean impulse behind the sort of pragmatism that is usually attributed to Bentham. If the argument of this article is correct, then it is an invitation for historians and political scientists to reconsider significantly the nature of Australian political thought. 研究澳大利亚政治思想的史家将澳大利亚政治思想的实用、反思辨倾向归之于边沁的影响。本文并不否认边氏对澳大利亚思想以及制度发展的影响，但对上述倾向为边氏遗产的说法不能赞同。笔者分析了联邦辩论（1890—1898）中实用的、反思辨的制度设计，指出通常被归到边沁的实用主义，其背后跃动的实乃伯克的思想。如果此论不谬，历史学者和政治学者就应好好考虑澳大利亚政治思想的性质了。 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the 1970s, Australian football finally had the impact that its early promoters predicted. Fuelled by waves of British immigration, the game was changed by a post-war generation from Europe. Australia began its World Cup quest with two misses in the 1960s, before qualifying for the 1974 FIFA World Cup in West Germany. The campaign, based around an Australian team dominated by overseas-born players, coincided with the election of Gough Whitlam’s socially progressive federal Labor government with a commitment to move away from Australia’s mono-cultural past. The fortunes of these two campaigns intertwine in surprising ways. The Australian sporting landscape, long the preserve of rival football codes and Olympic success, began to change. Marking the fortieth anniversary of Australia’s first World Cup appearance, this essay re-examines issues of nationalism and inclusiveness in the light of recent global debates on the rights of overseas-born players to represent their adopted country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a narrative study of Australian visitors to the Immigration Museum in Melbourne, this article explores the hermeneutic complexities of migration encounters through the meaning-making processes of museum visitors. Th roughout this process of interpretive negotiations, museum exhibitions and visitor biographies become intertwined through narratives of migration. Th e empirical evidence emphasizes that the humanization of migration through stories and faces renders possible an understanding, explanation, and critique of sociopolitical contexts through the experience of human beings. Migration emerges as a practice that transforms cosmopolitanism from an abstract, normative ideal into a lived, interpreted reality. This article, then, is devoted to the cosmohermeneutics of migration encounters, that is, to an experienced and thus "actually existing cosmopolitanism" (Malcomson 1998) that entangles self and other through visitors' interpretive dialectics of reflexivity and empathy. The article suggests a cosmopolitan museum practice that opens interpretive spaces for shifting subjectivities and multiple identifications across diff erences and commonalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers privatization decisions by governments in four Australian states over twenty years of micro-economic reform. It focuses on the policy frameworks and political context for privatizing government enterprises, drawing on Kingdon's framework for policy change to analyze differences in the substance and timing of decisions. In the 1990s, governments considered privatization as an economic and political strategy to resolve the problem of state-level fiscal crises, but the patterns of adoption were variable. Two states resisted the general trend toward privatization, but recently changed their position. We argue that the recent financial crisis provided a window for reintroducing contentious reform initiatives that had lost momentum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times there has been an explosion of interest in the concept of citizenship. This renewed theoretical focus was sparked by voter ID statutes and jury obstruction. Defining the term "full citizenship" as it relates to African Americans has been a focus of controversy since the writing of the U.S. Constitution. Do African Americans enjoy the status of full citizenship or is it in name only? This Essay examines two fundamental areas of citizenship: voting rights and jury participation. This Essay, through comparative analysis, will show deep rooted voting suppression tactics and present jury obstruction methods that impact African Americans and their full citizenship rights. The jury system is one of the most important institutions of government. The right and duty to sit on a jury is granted to all adult citizens. Racial bias denies the defendant the right to a fair and impartial jury, and it denies citizens the fundamental right to participate fully in the judicial system. African Americans have been disproportionally excluded through pretextual peremptory challenges. Moreover, lawmakers have embarked on a new voter suppression tactic: voter identification requirements. The tactic involves imposing new laws and rules requiring voters to show identification in order to vote, despite virtually no evidence of voter misidentification fraud. Identification requirements pose a special burden to the poor, racial minorities, and senior citizens who often do not have specific forms of identification. The pretextual color-blind race neutrality argument made by state legislators rings hollow when this nation's history of voting obstruction is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examine the influence of party capability theory while controlling for legal-structural and doctrinal changes in the High Court. Based on their analysis of cases from 1970 to 2003, several notable conclusions emerge. The most interesting determinant of litigant success in Australia involves a shift within the High Court from a mechanical form of jurisprudence to a doctrine of implied rights. Once the High Court announced Mabo, ‘one-shot’ litigants gained a significant advantage and were more likely to win. Additionally, the change to a doctrine of implied rights provided barristers with new opportunities to craft novel legal arguments. Consequently, their influence over decision outcomes increased. As barristers gained more experience and more successes, the likelihood of their clients winning increased substantially. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Unlike many of its western counterparts, Australia has been spared powerful surges of the extreme right throughout its history. While the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw European democracies threatened time and time again by movements relying on ethno-exclusivism and thriving on capitalist crises, Australia suffered only relatively weak extreme right bursts whose impact remained marginal. Even the rise of the One Nation Party in 1996, as sudden as it was impressive, showed the limits in the Australian context for organisations which have proved long-lasting in Europe. This brief outline could bear a simple conclusion: Australia is immune to the extreme right. However, through a study of some of the most important extreme right failures in Australia, this article shows that rather than being immune, the country was spared an extreme right because of the policies put in place by mainstream parties and governments. By analysing mainstream politics in times of extreme right resurgence, this article highlights that by negating the extreme right's ability to appear as an alternative to the power in place, Australian mainstream politicians suffocated it. The conclusion of this article demonstrates that while the Australian extreme right has been mostly inaudible since 2001, extreme right politics, such as ethno-exclusivism, still play a crucial part in the shaping of Australian politics, notably during election campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Among the many factors that influence enforcement agencies, this article examines the role of the institutional location (and independence) of agencies, and an incumbent government's ideology. It is argued that institutional location affects the level of political influence on the agency's operations, while government ideology affects its willingness to resource enforcement agencies and approve regulatory activities. Evidence from the agency regulating minimum labour standards in the Australian federal industrial relations jurisdiction (currently the Fair Work Ombudsman) highlights two divergences from the regulatory enforcement literature generally. First, notions of independence from political interference offered by institutional location are more illusory than real and, second, political need motivates political action to a greater extent than political ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An article discussing the political preferences of Australian voters based on economic and postmaterialist values is presented. The author uses the example of the 2009 by-election for the Australian legislative seat of Higgins to examine an axis system created by scholars David Charnock and Peter Ellis, which measures the positions of Australian political parties, such as the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Liberal/Nationals (Coalition,) by synthesizing data collected by the Australian Election Study (AES.) An analysis of the data, including voter turnout trends and ideological factors, is also included

Australia has traditionally relied on two diplomatic strategies in its attempts to 'engage' Asia. The first has been to couch engagement diplomacy within broader global trends and developments, such as the response to the communist threat during the Cold War or the general move towards the 'new regionalism' after the Cold War. The second strategy has been a dogged prudentialism, building on shared (usually commercial) interests. The shortcomings of both strategies became apparent in the lead up to the 2005 East Asia Summit, during which Australia faced a diplomatic exclusion not as the specific policy choice of another country, but as the unintended by-product of rivalries among Asia's great powers. That the success or otherwise of Australia's regional engagement will be shaped by such rivalries in future was reinforced by the sensitivities aroused over the Prime Minister's trip to China in 2008. Perhaps the bigger lesson is that Asia's rivalries are no longer sub-sets of global dynamics. We may be entering an era in which Asia's rivalries drive broader global dynamics, which in turn will pose severe challenges for Australia's regional diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian utopian fiction of the 1890s and 1930s reflects the traumatic impact of the economic crises of these decades and expresses desire to avoid the insecurities of capitalism. There are significant differences, however, in the imaginative reach of the utopias devised in the 1890s and those formulated in the 1930s. In Australia in the 1890s, the possibilities for progress and perfection were varied. Unionism, socialist legislation, the formation of ideal communities based on socialist or anarchist principles, militant forms of protest, attempts to inaugurate direct rather than mere representative democracy were some of the various strategies pursued in this decade that promised a better world. The methods depicted in the utopian writings of the 1890s for achieving ideal societies are as diverse as the real politically radical currents of the time. By the 1930s, the starkly singular conception of emancipation offered by the Soviet model dominates the imagination of those who wrote of better futures. The utopian literature of the 1930s is thus diminished by its fascination with an alleged model of perfection in the real world. The differences between the utopian literatures of two decades undergoing similar upheavals confirms Darko Suvin's observation that the parameters of utopian imagination are produced by the particular radical milieux around those who dare to dream of alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian contributions to foreign policy analysis have focused mainly, but not exclusively, on the study of Australian foreign policy. Contributions have been made not just by political scientists, but also by historians, journalists and practitioners. While some Australians have made theoretical contributions that are relevant to understanding foreign policy, the emphasis in the study of Australian foreign policy has not been strongly theoretical. The main focus has been on giving greater depth to issues that have been important in the public debate about foreign policy in Australia. Considerable attention has been given to Australia's major Western relationships (Britain and then the United States) and also the Asia-Pacific regional environment. During the pre-Second World War and Cold War periods the emphasis in the study of Australian foreign policy was broadly realist (at least implicitly), but there was also an assumption that there was an element of choice in relation to the major issues. In the post-Cold War era Australia's international situation has become more complex, and this has been reflected in foreign policy studies. While the realist tradition is still strong, there has been more scope for critical approaches to emerge. Developments in cognate fields such as political economy, security studies and environmental politics have had some impact. There is considerable scope for more theoretically engaged work to be undertaken, but it is also important to continue the focus on the issues that are important in the public debate about foreign policy in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the nineteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth century, Irish constitutional nationalism developed an ambivalent discourse on the relationship between Ireland and the empire. As proponents of Repeal or Home Rule, Irish leaders repeatedly denounced the political, economic, and cultural domination imposed on Ireland through the union with Great Britain. And yet they avoided defining Ireland as a colony, and rather stressed Ireland's participation in British empire building as one further argument in favor of Irish legislative autonomy. Leading figures like Daniel O'Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell, John Dillon, or John Redmond at times opposed British imperial policy, but they were not committed anti-imperialists. Only a minority of MPs including Frank Hugh O'Donnell, Alfred Webb, and Michael Davitt were more active in denouncing the excesses of British colonialism in India or South Africa. The anti-imperialism of Irish constitutional nationalists was all the more limited as Repeal of Home Rule was not meant to lead to the dismemberment of the empire. On the contrary, leading Irish nationalist MPs were aware that, with the granting of legislative autonomy to colonies like Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, the very nature of the empire was changing and that autonomy and empire were perfectly compatible. Taking the newly autonomous colonies as models to follow, they contemplated the possibility of reorganizing the empire into a federation including Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an actor-centred institutionalist approach, parliamentary oppositions in Westminster democracies are analysed through three dimensions. Firstly, through institutional opportunity structures for opposition parties: in all four countries there are comparatively few opportunities for the opposition to affect policy-making. However, there are variances between the four countries and they change over time. Secondly, they are analysed through the parties' policy positions and the potential for cohesive behaviour by non-governmental parties. Within this aspect, there are different constellations. In most cases, opposition parties do not coordinate their strategies. Thirdly, they are viewed through bicameralism and federalism, as external veto points that may be employed by opposition parties in Australia and in Canada. Therefore, there is not only one pattern of parliamentary opposition in Westminster democracies, rather, a considerable diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How a community constructs the notion of childhood and the child is fundamentally implicated in the practices and policies of that community. This article explores the positioning of the child in historical, contemporary and emerging trends in the provision and practices of Australian early childhood education and care. It argues that if left uncontested, emerging contemporary constructions have the potential to normalise policies, practices and pedagogies derived from a commercialised view of childhood. Drawing on the experiences and practices of early childhood pedagogues and policy actors both in Australia and overseas the authors posit an alternative construction of the child as citizen and the possibility of the early childhood field as a site for the practice of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of the memory of World War I on the formation of a national identity in Australia. The "culture war" of the 1910s and 1920s is highlighted, citing the opposing arguments over the positive and negative portrayals and consequences of the war. The author focuses on war memorials and how they reveal two differing cultures in Australia that came to be at odds with each other. The particular social conflict over the Australian War Memorial and its political ideology of martial nationalism.

The article cogitates on issues regarding gender and national identity in Australia. Feminist studies have substantially redressed the absence of women from nationalism theory and analysis. In this article, the authors have highlighted the symbolic marginalization of women in dominant ideologies about national imagined communities, and made salient the importance of women’s roles in nationalist projects.

The Australian Women's National League was founded in response to the gaining of the federal franchise by Australian women. It founders were conservative elite women whose politics were anti-democratic, laissez faire and opposed to the public exercise of women's citizenship. The League's interaction with democracy proved to be mutually constitutive. The League's crude anti-socialist ideology and its capacity for electoral organisation gave the AWNL an impact on the content and conduct of Australian democracy which far exceeded that made by other groupings of political women. And the League's platforms and programmes slowly broadened to include state action in progressive and even feminist causes. But its continuing refusal to endorse a public role for political women limited the League's ability to appeal to a new generation of progressive women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys some of the key contributions to the secondary literature on Australia's foreign and defence policy during Robert Gordon Menzies' two prime ministerships (1939–41, 1949–66), and seeks to identify Menzies' place in a “Liberal” and Liberal Party tradition through a reading of this work. Via a study of Menzies' imperialism, British race patriotism, nationalism, and attitudes towards Asia and the United States of America, it argues that the prime minister stands in an ambiguous relationship to the transformation that occurred in Australia's international orientation between the 1930s and 1960s. In the 1950s the Australian government's cold war foreign policy, and the political language that Menzies used in private and public to articulate it, were largely successful in balancing the competing claims of Britishness, Australianness and the newly-formed “American Alliance”. By the early 1960s, however, his nostalgia for a dissolving imperial order was sufficiently pronounced that it contributed powerfully to a symbolic and rhetorical defeat for his side of politics, allowing Labor to claim the mantle of Australian foreign policy modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only occasionally has the worth of the Australian-American alliance been questioned in Australian politics — and then it has usually been at the expense of the detractors. More important has been the question of how the alliance has been managed. How have Australian governments of the last fifty-four years dealt with features such as the asymmetry of the relationship, in terms of power; the potential disruptions to avoid; the growing range of policy issues and ministerial portfolios to consider; the need for good relations at officials' level; and the need to keep the alliance out of party politics as much as possible? If the Menzies Government began well in the 1950s, then involvement in the Vietnam War was a low-point in the mid-late 1960s, and it took until the 1990s for the Liberals to recover from this. The Howard Government's efforts since the late 1990s, however, have gone a long way towards restoring the Liberals' reputation as effective managers of the alliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a summary of General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) proposed by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the key concerns of its potential impact upon public libraries. The WTO GATS is a framework agreement that was adopted during the Uruguay Round in 1994. GATS entered into force on 1 January 1995 and currently there are 140 WTO members that are committed to the agreement. Its drafting was largely due to the insistence of the United States that trade in services was placed on the Uruguay Round agenda. The controversy of GATS is foremost informed by its far reaching incursion upon state sovereignty and public policymaking. The impact of GATS upon services such as public libraries in Australia has not generated community concern to the extent of North America, South America and European civil society. It concludes that in minimalist liberal democracies like Australia situated at the ballot box, Australians expect their representatives to make decisions for them on the basis of their democratic mandate and that their representatives have the best interests of their electorate in mind in the course of their political deliberations.

Examines the circumstances leading to the practice of neo-liberal ideas and ideals in Ravina High, a government school in Australia. Problems in the method for recruiting staff for government schools; Influence of market devolution on the levels of equality in the school; Development of specialist programs to restructure the school's academic offering.

Discusses the role of the community and its problematic relationship with a neo-liberal health care agenda in Australia. Absence of community groups from agenda setting in health care delivery; Influence of political and economic initiatives on the health program called Multi Purpose Service (MPS);Problems in the process of establishing a cause of dissent of the MPS to the wider community.

The article focuses on the increasing popularity of Neo-Liberalism in Australia. On August 19, 996, thousands of trade unionists and others stormed the Australian Parliament protesting against the Coalition Government's Workplace Relations Bill. This outbreak of anger might be thought to herald a reaction to heightened attacks on the Australian working class. The Coalition Government comprised a traditional conservative alliance between the Liberal Party and the rural-based National Party. While the Liberal Party promised change, there is a continuity of the core neo-liberal economic agenda. The philosophy and practice of Australian "Laborism" was erected in the early years of the twentieth century upon a tripod of "White Australia," conciliation and arbitration, and strong tariff barriers. According to the authors, a new political force has recently arisen in Australian politics which challenges the bipartisan trade orthodoxy. The advent of an Australian managerial state was part of a more wide-ranging restructuring in which control over strategic state assets has been transferred from the public to the private sector.

This study examines the impact of class self-identification and class position on political attitudes in Great Britain, West Germany, Australia and the United States. The results show a basic similarity in the class structure of these four western nations, differences in patterns of class identification, and significant effects of class structure and class identification on political attitudes. Despite recent projections of its demise, for these four countries at least, class identification and class position are an important, albeit secondary, factor in explaining political attitudes. Of these class measures, class self-identification is the more salient in predicting political attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early months of 1946 Dr H.V. Evatt made a concerted effort to shape the newly formed Security Council as a security tribunal. He wanted the Security Council to be governed by the principles of the United Nations Charter, to adopt regular procedures, to have an investigatory function and to make determinations on the facts of each case, not on the basis of power politics. Evatt attempted to implement his policy during the Iranian crisis despite the opposition of all the great powers, including the United Kingdom. This episode reveals the commitment to liberal internationalism that marked Australian foreign policy during this period and demonstrates both the possibilities and limits of an 'idealist' foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]