The Domestic Politics of Globalisation

This article provides a domestic-focused account of the impact of globalisation on Australia. The overriding aim of government in recent years has been to educate the population about the imperatives of globalisation and the need for economic liberal policy change. Labor succeeded in breaking down Australia's protectionist policy structure but both Labor and Coalition governments have found it difficult to manage globalising policy change. The Howard government has continued Labor's efforts to sell globalisation but has often diluted its message through its policy choices and rhetoric. It has been less concerned with maintaining the consistency of its message. This reflects the continuing need for governments to manage what can be called the domestic politics of globalisation. Contrary to the arguments of global determinists, domestic politics continues to shape policy and the impact and trajectory of globalisation.     

The Politics of Broadband: Labor and New Information Technology from Hawke to Gillard

Labor's broadband policy influenced key regional independents to support the formation of the minority Gillard government. However, analysing information technology policy doesn't only demonstrate continuing differences between Labor and the Coalition. It also demonstrates changing Labor attitudes on issues ranging from neoliberalism, globalisation and social inclusion to conceptions of market failure and the rising power of Asia. In particular, this article compares and contrasts the attitudes of the Rudd government to those of the Hawke and Keating governments, arguing that the Rudd government placed much more emphasis on the role that market failure had played in contributing to Australia's poor broadband provision. The resulting policy involved an increased role for government in rolling out broadband not only to the cities but also to regional Australia. That approach benefitted Gillard. It also reflected ideological differences between not just Labor and the Liberals, but also between Rudd and his Labor predecessors.     

The Turnbull government’s ‘Post-multiculturalism’ multicultural policy

ABSTRACT

The Turnbull government presented Australia’s fifth national multicultural policy statement in March 2017. This article analyses the policy statement and argues that it represents the most significant change to Australian multicultural policy in four decades. Among other things, it abandons the language of government responsiveness to cultural diversity that previously defined Australian multiculturalism. The 2017 policy amounts to a new form of post-multiculturalism—different from earlier conservative, neoliberal and centre-left versions—in that it seeks to ‘mainstream’ multicultural policy on the grounds that Australian multiculturalism has succeeded in its intended task. While a mainstreaming strategy of this sort is, I argue, theoretically consistent with Australia’s liberal nationalist approach to cultural diversity, the institutional and attitudinal conditions that it presupposes are yet to be fully realised in Australia. More multicultural work needs to be done before this kind of post-multiculturalist approach is practicable.     

Multiple multiculturalisms: insights from the Edinburgh Mela

This paper contributes to debates about the future of multiculturalism in Britain by exploring how it is conceptualized, constructed and experienced in contemporary Scotland. The work is grounded in Hall's (2000) important but commonly overlooked distinction between a ‘multicultural society’, which designates a condition of cultural diversity, and ‘multiculturalism’, which refers to processes and policies that attempt to fix the meaning of such diversity. As these definitions suggest, the abandonment of multiculturalism as a ‘policy failure’ cannot be a solution to problems arising from the complex composition of contemporary societies. The fact that all societies must make decisions about the significance of cultural diversity and its management—they must all practise some form of multiculturalism—is established through a review of how multiculturalism has been conceptualized and pursued to date. The paper then draws on the example of Edinburgh's South Asian Festival—the Mela—to explore the empirical complexities of these different applications in a Scottish context. An analysis of the Mela's changing organization and artistic programme over time reveals the coexistence of multiple conceptions of multiculturalism—in time, space and experience. This progressive reinterpretation of multiculturalism—as multiple—advances the goals of both cultural diversity and societal cohesiveness.     

Neoliberalism and gender equality policy in Australia

After a Coalition electoral victory in 2013, the Australian Office for Women was returned from the periphery to the centre of government. This was contrary to the expectation that women’s policy will be given greater salience under governments of the left rather than of the right. To unpack this puzzle, we examine institutional arrangements and policy directions under successive Labor and Coalition governments in Australia, including the abolition of intergovernmental bodies concerned with gender equality. We find that the influence of neoliberalism has resulted in a blurring of patterns of partisan difference over gender equality policy. There are some continuing partisan differences but also a common pattern of increased emphasis on international and regional rather than domestic policy. The notable exception to this pattern is in the area of gender-based violence.     

The Varieties of Cultural Perception: Multiculturalism after Recognition

Doubts about the enterprise of cultural recognition have helped to fuel a backlash against the politics of multiculturalism in Europe during the last decade. Such doubts are well-founded. Charles Taylor's seminal discussion of the politics of recognition neglects serious difficulties that arise for the activity of recognition when the objective and subjective dimensions of cultural identity diverge. Narratives of cultural “passing” help to highlight these difficulties and demonstrate that recognition can sometimes contribute to identity-based oppression. However, this conclusion does not commit us to a politics of cultural indifference or assimilation: the rejection of recognition does not entail the rejection of perception in general. Iris Murdoch's notion of “attention” provides a corrective to our understanding of recognition and thereby supplies a potentially superior ethical and perceptual basis for European multiculturalism in the twenty-first century.     

From Commonwealth Responsibility to the National Interest: Australia and Post-war Decolonisation in South-East Asia

This article re-examines the drivers of post-war Australian foreign policy in South-East Asia. The central argument is that the motive of Commonwealth responsibility has not been given sufficient explanatory weight in interpreting Australia's post-war engagement with South-East Asia under both Australian Labor Party and Liberal-Country Party (Coalition) governments. The responsibility expressed by Australian policy-makers for the decolonisation of the Straits Settlements, Malayan Peninsula and British Borneo Territories cannot be adequately understood within a cold war ideological framework of anti-communism. Nor can it be explained by the instrumental logic of forward defence. The concept of responsibility is theorised as a motivation in foreign policy analysis and applied to Australian involvement with British decolonisation in South-East Asia between 1944 and 1971. The article finds that in its approach to decolonisation, Australia was driven as much by normative sentiments of responsibility to the Commonwealth as it was by instrumental calculations of cold war strategic interest. This diminished with the end of Indonesia's ‘Confrontation’ of Malaysia in 1966 and subsequent British commitment to withdraw from East of Suez. Australia's policy discourse becomes more narrowly interest-based after this, especially evident in Australia's negotiations with Malaysia and Singapore over the Five Power Defence Arrangements from 1968 to 1971.     

THE AMBIVALENCE OF POSTCOLONIAL MAURITIUS

At the independence of Mauritius, multiculturalism policy, as part of the decolonisation agenda of “Mauritianisation”, was instituted in education. The official English language, through the curriculum, was buttressed to police the population according to the moral standards of multiculturalism. In this article, popular culture as manifested through ethnographic research into students’ negotiations of official multiculturalism implemented through school textbooks, will be shown to flout policy. It will be demonstrated that resistive cultural practices of Mauritian students, embodied by vernacular Creole, contest the cultural essentialism promoted by the government. Creole language, in particular, and various in‐between cultural experiences articulate the hybrid, diasporic and global dimensions of the lives of ordinary postcolonial Mauritians.     

A continuing confusion? A comment on the appropriate dispersal of policy powers in the Australian federation

Dissatisfaction with Australia's federalist constitutional and administrative arrangements seems universal. The Labor Party has historically preferred a centralist thrust to the Australian federal compact. From the opposite, decentralist tack the Liberal‐National Coalition parties currently propose that the Commonwealth should hive‐off policy functions to the States. These attitudes are expressed in an intellectual climate that disparages the allocative efficiency of Australian federalism and debates these issues in terms of shifting power to or from the Commonwealth. A more sensible focus is on the usage that the citizenry has made of the federal system in obtaining satisfactory service delivery. Using this approach our federal system works efficiently (in a limited political‐administrative sense.

This is not an argument that Australia's federal system is good because it maximises fiscal efficiency or guarantees equity. It does not do the former'and varies in its attainment of the latter. The federal system is good because it maximises opportunities and avenues for citizens to obtain what they want from government. In that sense the Coalition parties are fundamentally confused both about their philosophy and that philosophy's relationship to the political nature of Australian federalism. Labor's slowly‐ebbing centralism equally ignores the political usage that citizens have made of the administrative and funding arenas provided by our federal system.     

Australia's trade policy dilemmas

In recent years, Australia has had a very active agenda for the negotiation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) whose net economic benefits remain at best unclear. There has been a strong defensive element to some of this PTA activity but the Howard government also used PTAs to pursue non-economic objectives, such as the promotion of foreign policy and security interests. This article broadly outlines Australia's PTA policy and the problems and dilemmas that it has generated. More importantly, it looks ahead to consider likely scenarios for trade policy under the Rudd Labor government. Each of these scenarios has different implications for policy strategies and outcomes. This article concludes that while there could be significant pay-offs should Labor choose to pursue its traditional preferences for non-discriminatory trade arrangements, the world has changed considerably since the heydays of the multilateral trade system. A commitment to reinvigorating multilateralism will require strong political leadership, imaginative thinking, and creative diplomacy.     

In pursuit of independence: the political economy of Catalonia's secessionist movement

This article examines the fiscal dimensions of recent support for Catalan secession. Since the region is a cultural community distinct from the rest of Spain, much research has spotlighted national identity features in the calculus of Catalan political aspirations. This study supplements this work by contextualising support for Catalan independence in terms of the state's fiscal arrangements with the use of public opinion survey data. Even after controlling for self‐reported cultural identity and other relevant factors, it argues that support for independence is a function of grievances rooted in the desire for Catalonia to assume responsibility for taxation and spending policy. Meanwhile, it validates some observations about Catalonia's separatist movement, while bringing others into question, and offers support for the theoretical framework linking political economy to secessionism. The results suggest that Spain might be able to stave off Catalonia's separatist bid through some form of political and taxation policy reconfiguration, with the caveats that cultural identity factors and the existence of other separatist movements across the country complicate this strategy.     

Whatever Happened to Industry Policy in Australia?

Since the 1980s and early 1990s, there have been few constructive developments towards a comprehensive and coherent productivity-enhancing agenda. Labor governments have often provided rhetorical support but have fought over whether industry policy represents a new protectionism or market-enhancing development policy. The Coalition in opposition and in office has generally opposed the idea of industry policy, but has continued to support ad hoc and costly policy interventions. Australia's 20 years without a recession has disguised the need to reconsider industry policy and questions of economic diversity. This article argues that dealing with problems of economic structure – particularly resource dependence and climate change adaptation – requires a revitalisation of the industry policy debate. It tracks the theory and practice of industry policy in Australia and concludes that advocates for industry policy must formulate new policy ideas outside the framework of the traditional divide between intervention and free markets.     

Nation-building and Canada's national symbolic order, 1993–2015

This article examines the symbolic construction of Canadian national identity by the 1993–2006 Liberal governments and the 2006–2015 Conservative governments. To do so, it employs the concept of a ‘national symbolic order’, which refers to the complex set of public symbols that invoke, transport, and define claims to a shared national identity. Within Canada's national symbolic order, we focus on the state's use of national symbols across two domains: Speeches from the Throne and banknotes. Our analysis shows that Canada's recent Conservative government has used both of these domains to reshape Canadian national identity in ways that accord with neo-conservative values and ideology, and that it has done so in a coherent, consistent, and comprehensive fashion. This analysis highlights the symbolic strategies employed by state actors in linking particular ideologies to their nation-building projects; these strategies span multiple political and policy spaces.     

Policies and performance in the 2019 Australian federal election

ABSTRACT

The Liberal–National Coalition success in the 2019 Australian federal election surprised many observers, with the opinion polls consistently predicting a Labor victory. The election was notable for Labor’s proposals for wide-ranging tax changes, a historically unpopular Labor leader, and the fourth change of prime minister outside an election since 2010. Using the 2019 Australian Election Study, we test the influence of two models of voting, the first based on ideology together with an emphasis on policy, and the second on performance. The results show that performance was the dominant explanation for the result, with evaluations of party competence and leader popularity playing a major role in explaining voting behaviour in the election, both of which benefitted the Coalition.     

The ‘arc of instability’ and Australia's strategic policy

The proposition that Australia faces an ‘arc of instability’ to its north has been an important feature of the Australian strategic debate in the early twenty-first century. Prompted by worries in the late 1990s over Indonesia's future and East Timor's uncertain path to independence, the ‘arc’ metaphor also encapsulated growing Australian concerns about the political cohesiveness of Melanesian polities, including Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. While tending to overlook the divergent experiences of countries within its expanding boundaries, the ‘arc’ fed from Australia's historical requirement for a secure archipelagic screen. As such it has became an important weapon in the debate over whether the locus of Australia's strategic priorities should be increasingly global in the ‘war on terror’ period or remain closer to home in the immediate region. The ‘arc of instability’ metaphor was consequently adopted by leading Australian Labor Party politicians to argue that the Howard Coalition government was neglecting South Pacific security challenges. It became less prominent following the Howard government's greater activism in the South Pacific, signalled by Australia's leadership of the East Timor intervention in 2003. But its prominence returned in 2006 with the unrest in both Honiara and Dili. In overall terms, the ‘arc of instability’ discussion has helped direct Australian strategic and political attention to the immediate neighbourhood. But it has not provided specific policy guidance on what should be done to address the instabilities it includes.     

Promoting multiculturalism and tolerance: Expanding the meaning of “unity through diversity” in the United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has sought to establish a national identity among its nationals since its inception in 1971. Contrary to the pessimism in its first few years, the UAE was able to create a national identity among its nationals despite their initially differing loyalties. The UAE has now embarked on a phase of creating a new national identity that includes non-nationals, encompassing migrants and expats. This study argues that this new identity aims to include, at least discursively, non-nationals, presenting them as an integral part of society. It should be noted that this new identity does not seek to standardize or assimilate the whole population, in contrast to the first identity, which aimed to standardize the nationals. Its primary aim is rather to express its appreciation of the migrant population through the notions of tolerance, diversity, and multiculturalism, while also preventing complaints from the nationals. This study analyses the ways of including non-nationals in a new national identity through national gatherings (national days), institutional activities (heritage festivals, cultural gatherings, cultural center visits and activities), media analyses (state-sponsored media), and foreign policy initiatives that emerged (or presented) due to domestic diversity, such as Pope's visit.     

Shock troops: The emerging role of Senators in House of representatives campaigns

Since the 1949 introduction of proportional representation for the Senate there have only been two elections (1983 and 84) at which the ALP has gained more Senators in the chamber than the Coalition. The Coalition has held more seats than the ALP since 1987. The decline in Senate fortunes for the Labor Party has occurred despite (or, perhaps, because of) consecutive ALP Governments from 1972–75 and, more conspicuously, 1983–96. The professionalisation of politics through the 1980s and 1990s has dramatically changed the role major parties expect of their Senate teams. The Coalition and Labor Parties each use their Senators and Senatorial office resources as ‘shock troops’ in marginal seats, as well as points of constituency contact for electors in marginal seats or seats held by the opposition. Given that major party Senators are increasingly being used by the party machines as campaign tools, and are increasingly locating their offices and staffers in marginal seats, the numerical advantage the Coalition enjoys in the Senate is worthy of consideration. The additional campaign resources that Senators provide translates potentially into an electoral advantage in the House of Representatives for the Coalition. The Coalition's majority in the Senate may therefore be of as much interest outside the chamber as it is within it.     

An economic analysis of a National Theatre: The case of the ‘Abbey’

Abstract: This article asks how a regional community is culturally constructed as a policy subject in the centre/periphery relation of Finnish cultural policy. The focus is on the options the cultural recognitions analysed from the cultural policy documents of central government and the provincial administration of North Karelia provide for different political interests. It is stated here that the democratisation of cultural policy can be open for and a vehicle of the interests the prevailing spatial dominance attempts to get within the population of peripheries. North Karelia has for centuries been a geographic and economic periphery without inner cultural distinctions. Yet it is regarded as a culturally rich and specific area. The analysis shows that the regional community has continuously been used as a partisan identity for maintaining and reinforcing the spatial integration of national projects. Public cultural image would provide a symbolic compensation for the economically underprivileged. Furthermore, the strong cultural identity of North Karelia has constantly been taken by the regional establishment as an instrument to fight the “opponents of common regional interests” in political conflicts. Thus the principles of democracy have not always meant the capability or attitude to notice cultural polyphony within the region abreast of cultural political decision-making.