Australian aid after the ‘Golden Consensus’: from aid policy to development policy?

ABSTRACT

In the decade preceding the election of the Abbott Coalition Government in 2013, a so-called ‘golden consensus’ governed Australian aid policy. During this period Australia’s aid spending increased by over 80% in real terms. However, after winning government the 2013 Federal Election, the Abbott Government made a series of significant and unexpected aid policy decisions, cutting the aid budget three times in fifteen months and integrating AusAID, Australia’s aid agency, into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This article considers the future role of aid in Australia’s diplomacy primarily by engaging with a prior question: how was it possible for the golden consensus to be uprooted so easily? Conducting a post-mortem reveals that Australia’s development constituency bears some responsibility for the fragility of the consensus. This analysis also reveals the critical role the development constituency will play in determining the extent to which Australia is able to embrace the ‘beyond aid’ agenda. To meet this contemporary challenge, the development community must heed the lessons of the collapse of the golden consensus and, in particular, overcome its reticence to engage in broader foreign policy debates.     

Making Headlines in a State of Emergency: The Case of the Times of Cyprus, 1955–1960

The final years of British rule in Cyprus were marked by the colonial government’s use of authoritarian measures to impose control over the local press. The most problematic publication during the 1955–60 period was the Times of Cyprus, an English-language newspaper edited and owned by experienced British journalist Charles Foley. This article examines the fraught relationship between Foley’s newspaper and the colonial government against a backdrop of social instability and political violence. In particular, it focuses on the role the newspaper played as a conduit of information between Cyprus and Britain, conveying the experience of colonial rule to influential readers in London and reporting British support for self-determination to a Cypriot reading public. This ability to undermine official control over the flow of intelligence between the colonial periphery and its metropolitan centre unsettled the British administration, leading to repeated but ultimately unsuccessful efforts to proscribe the newspaper.     

Archaeological investigations in Bergen 1980–1986: Some new aspects on the development of the town

The last six years' emergency excavations in Bergen, by pure chance covering the major part of the medieval town, have provided new information on several issues concerning the town's earliest development and structure, enabling us to sketch a development of the two somewhat different from previous suggestions. The original shoreline appears to have left rather less building land than expected, and the evidence for originally two separate centres is strong. A particularly rapid growth in the south suggests this as the major harbour in the town's earliest phase. The settlement expansion in the twelfth century resulted in the gradual merging of the two centres into one town, completed with the rebuilding after the 1248 fire providing an apparently continuous waterfront along the eastern shore of Vågen.     

Transformations in contemporary Quebec nationalism, 1960–2020: A shift in the sources of collective animosities

This article is interested in the shift of the object of hostility, which historically fuelled Quebec nationalism. The main targets of discontent have long been the ‘rest of Canada’ and the lower socio-economic status of Francophones. After the 1995 independence referendum, the feeling of dissatisfaction with Canada, and even resentment, gradually faded. This retreating within Quebec's borders has led many French-speaking Quebecers to become concerned about the conditions that make possible the preservation of their cultural and linguistic heritage in North America. This shift has meant that the source of concern is now individuals and groups who do not share this heritage rooted in Western Judeo-Christian values or who are perceived not to adhere to the concerns related to the preservation and development of the French character and the dominant values within the ‘Quebec nation’. The expression of these concerns has manifested itself primarily in debates about the place religion should occupy in public and civic spaces since the mid-2000s.     

Making leeway in the Leewards, 1929–51: The negotiation of colonial development

Britain began to sponsor economic development in its colonial territories under the Colonial Development Act of 1929. The first CDA project was for housing on Antigua; other schemes for the Leewards soon followed. The isolation and poverty of this colony highlighted the practical difficulties of promoting development. Challenges included the negotiation of new methods of administration. Governors conceded autonomy in return for assistance; under pressure from Treasury, the Colonial Office learned how to supervise far-flung projects, while its subject departments gained influence at the expense of the regional. Trial and error in the design and supervision of projects on the Leewards provided information about what types of housing policy were cost-effective and acceptable locally. By the 1950s the advice of United States experts also made itself felt. Funds provided under the CDA and later development Acts were limited, but they transformed the machinery and influenced the content of colonial policy.     

Researching and Writing in the Twilight of an Imagined Conquest: Anthropology in Northern Rhodesia 1930–1960

The rich corpus of material produced by the anthropologists of the Rhodes Livingstone Institute (RLI) has come to dominate our understanding of Zambian societies and Zambia's past. The RLI was primarily concerned with the socio‐cultural effects of migrant labour. The paper argues that the anthropologists of the RLI worked from within a paradigm that was dominated by the experience of colonial conquest in South Africa. RLI anthropologists transferred their understanding of colonial conquest in South Africa to the Northern Rhodesian situation, without ever truly analysing the manner in which colonial rule had come to be established in Northern Rhodesia. As such the RLI anthropologists operated within a flawed understanding of the past. The paper argues that a historical paradigm of colonial conquest that was applicable to the South African situation came to be unquestioningly applied by anthropologists to the Northern Rhodesian situation, and discusses what the consequences of this paradigm are for our understanding of Zambian history.     

Mapping the Nation for War: Landscape in Danish Military Cartography 1800–2000

The focus in this article is on the way the post eighteenth-century cartographic turn in military practices developed into a particular military perception of landscape that continues to set the standard of Danish topographical mapping. My argument is that the development of modern topographical maps is the result of a long process of military comprehension and measurement of the terrain in order to conduct field operations. The demand for spatial data for actual or potential military operations had a direct impact on the specifications of maps produced by the military, as landscape representation was adapted to meet operational demands and as lessons learned from war experience were incorporated. In this and other respects, the development of Danish topographical maps in and after the nineteenth century followed the general trend of European military mapping as regards methods and standards.     

‘The Bay and the Ocean’: A History of the ANC in Swaziland, 1960–1979

Abstract

South African political refugees first began arriving in Swaziland in significant numbers in the late 1950s. In the mid-1960s the ANC tried to recruit these refugees to engage in operational activities but with little success. After Swazi independence in 1968 the kingdom's rulers were too scared of South African retaliation to provide active support for the ANC's armed struggle. Meanwhile ANC members in Swaziland were cut off from ANC structures in central Africa because the kingdom was landlocked between white-ruled South Africa and Mozambique. This changed following the army coup in Lisbon in 1974 which led to Mozambican independence. Mozambique's provisional government allowed the ANC access to Swaziland. The ANC sent Thabo Mbeki to try and establish links with activists in South Africa, but whilst he made some progress, this was reversed by police countermeasures early in 1976. A rump of activists left behind after Mbeki's expulsion led ANC efforts to handle the exodus of youths into Swaziland after the June 1976 Soweto uprising. In the late 1970s Swaziland formed part of what the ANC referred to as the ‘Eastern Front’ of its liberation struggle. In trying to stop ANC infiltrations South Africa made use of an extensive network of highly-placed agents in the Swazi establishment. However this collaboration proved ineffective in stopping the ANC because, even if it wished to, Swaziland lacked the resources to prevent its territory being used, whilst there were also many prominent Swazis, including King Sobhuza II, whose sympathies lay with the ANC. By the end of the 1970s ANC activity in Swaziland had grown to such a scale that it began to unnerve the Swazi authorities. This set the stage for the closing of the ‘Eastern Front’ in the early 1980s.     

Revisiting the Great Compression: Wage inequality in the United States, 1940–1960

Seminal work by Goldin and Margo (1992 Goldin, C. D. and R. A. Margo.1992. The great compression: The wage structure in the United States at mid-century. Quarterly Journal of Economics 107 (1):1–34. https://doi.org/10.2307/2118322.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) used the first available microdata samples of the United States decennial census to document the narrowing of the wage structure between 1940 and 1960, a pattern they refer to as the “Great Compression.” We revisit their findings using newly available, substantially enlarged samples of the decennial censuses covering this period. Our findings largely replicate the patterns initially reported by Goldin and Margo. However, differences emerge when estimating rates of return to education and experience for specific groups and in a decomposition exercise. A second goal is to indicate directions for future research that might benefit from the use of the complete count census data.     

Danish and Swedish immigrants’ cultural policies between 1960 and 2006: toleration and the celebration of difference

In the late 1960s, as non-Nordic immigrants became an important component of their immigration flows, despite their similar policy backgrounds Sweden opted for multiculturalism, while Denmark did not. Their policies diverged even further from the so-called migration crisis of the 1990s. This article compares and analyses Sweden and Denmark’s respective policies between 1960 and 2006, arguing that their policies effectively diverged in the late 1960s; Danish assimilation is constituted of the toleration or acceptance, albeit disapproving, of immigrants’ cultures. Swedish multiculturalism, by way of contrast, celebrates difference, holding that immigrants’ cultures are necessary for their well-being and that ethnocultural diversity enriches the national culture. However, both policies deemed some aspects of immigrants’ cultures unacceptable, in that they were looked upon as illiberal or repugnant. This study also contends that, alongside citizenship and national identity studies, Ministries of Culture’s policies are a relevant field of enquiry into states’ policies on immigrants’ cultures.     

River landscapes: The origin and development of the printed river map in the Netherlands, 1725–1795

Abstract

River management in the province of Holland in the eighteenth century was co‐ordinated by a Hydraulic Department which worked closely with local, regional and other provincial authorities to maintain river beds and channels. To perform its function efficiently, all the Hydraulic Department's main river maps followed general precepts laid down as early as 1725 by the surveyor Nicolaas Cruquius (1678–1754). The basic principle was to create clear maps with uniform scale and design which contained only the topographical information relevant to the work of the department. Experiments with depth contours were made, and profiles and diagrams were included in order to portray as accurately as possible the invisible natural processes which influenced the river landscape. The cartographical model thus established was followed consistently throughout the eighteenth century.