Consensus and conflict among Australia's leaders∗

This paper reports and analyses survey data on the opinions of 353 top position‐holders in business, trade unions, federal and state politics, the Commonwealth Public Service, mass media, national voluntary associations, and major universities and research institutes during the latter half of 1975. Patterns of elite responses to 15 issue sets aggregating 46 separate opinion items are examined. The main focus is on the extent and configuration of elite conflict and consensus over economic policy, foreign and defence policy, industrial relations, social issues, and institutional structure. In general, substantial conflict between left‐of‐centre and right‐of‐centre elites in all major issue areas, save possibly that of social issues, is found. However, the extent of this conflict varies as between specific policies, over which it is relatively small, and the legitimacy or desirability of various group actions and major policy innovations, over which it is quite large. Whether conflict during 1975 was sufficiently great to threaten the fundamental unity of Australian elites is discussed.     

Water quality in international river basins

The major issue of pollution control in water quality management is too often postponed or neglected in treaties concerning international river basins. Deterioration of transboundary waters cannot be dealt with unilaterally, and is often treated by the affected parties as secondary to the primary goal of economic development, even in settings conducive to high levels of pollution. This frequently results in environmental crises.This paper focuses on the way in which water quality is addressed in seven selected international basin accords. A framework for the structured comparisons of these basins is presented, based on the following four major forces that were found to influence the extent to which pollution issues were encompassed within the accords: flash-points, financial capacities, globalization/regionalization, and political windows of opportunity.The extent to which the above forces were mobilized to influence the water quality aspects of the treaties that have been studied, varies in accordance with: the severity of the water quality problem in relation to the basins' physical and human settings; the level of competitive uses of basin waters; the level of economic development of each riparian and the co-basin states as a whole; the locational setting and political power asymmetry among riparian states; and whether or not the institutions or agreements are basin-wide. The forces identified in this study are meant to provide some guidance to the factors conducive to failure or success.     

Government's Unequal Attentiveness to Citizens' Political Priorities

An accumulation of evidence suggests citizens with low incomes have relatively little influence over the policy decisions made by lawmakers in the United States. However, long before elected officials are asked to cast a final vote on a bill's passage, an equally important decision has already been made: the decision for government to focus its limited attention and agenda space on the issue at all. Therefore, it is possible that political inequality is infused earlier in the policymaking process at the agenda‐setting stage if the issues held important by some citizens are given attention while the issues held important by others are not. To investigate this question, we develop novel state‐level measures of citizens' issue priorities and find sizable differences in which issues poor and rich citizens think are most important and deserving of government attention. We then use bill introduction data from state legislatures to measure government attention and uncover evidence that state legislators are less likely to act on an issue when it is prioritized by low‐income citizens as compared to affluent citizens. These findings have important implications for our understanding of political equality and the functioning of American democracy.     

From Consensus to Dissensus and Back Again: Habermas and Lyotard

The modernism-versus-postmodernism divide has to a large extent emerged from major disagreements among philosophers of both sides whose engagement with one another’s work had otherwise been rather minimal and non-thorough. Jean-François Lyotard and Jürgen Habermas’s debate has been a case in point. Despite the fact that Lyotard’s attack on Habermas’s philosophy was limited to a couple of ideas, Lyotardian followers have inflated the attack to a hasty and blanket dismissal of Habermas’s theory. As I argue in this article, this blocks the possibility of a more fruitful exchange and of a less polemical and more balanced response on the part of Habermasians. The article aims precisely to fill this gap by reconstructing some important points of a critical dialogical response to Lyotard’s philosophy along Habermasian lines yet beyond established polemics. These points concern assumptions on language that remain neglected especially in discussions of Habermas and Lyotard that give priority to the issue of legitimation. Hopefully, this reconstruction reinforces neither an impression that a dialogue between Lyotardians and Habermasians is reducible to a differend nor that the charge of a foundationalist “ideal speech situation” is as damning as critics of Habermas assume.     

The ideological roots of failure: the application of kinetic neo‐liberalism to Iraq

This article argues that American policy towards Iraq went through four major shifts between the invasion in 2003 and the announcement of the surge in 2007. The best way to understand the Bush administration's evolving policy towards Iraq is by examining the ideological parameters within which it was made. The article assesses various approaches to understanding the relationship between ideology, policy making and foreign policy, concluding that ideology shapes the paradigm and analytical categories within which foreign policy is made. A major change in foreign policy originates either from the decision‐maker consciously recognizing and attempting to rework the ideational parameters within which policy is made or in reaction to ‘discrepant information’ or ‘anomalies’ that destabilize the paradigm and its analytical categories. The article goes on to examine the extent to which both neo‐liberalism and neo‐conservatism shaped George W. Bush's foreign policy. It identifies a series of major analytical categories that originate from within these two doctrines and shaped policy towards Iraq. The article argues that the four major shifts in Bush's policy towards Iraq were forced upon the administration by the rising tide of politically motivated violence. Ultimately this violence forced Bush to abandon the major analytical categories that, up to 2007, had given his policy coherence. In order to extricate his administration from the quagmire that Iraq had become by 2006, Bush totally transformed his approach, dropping the previously dominant neo‐liberal paradigm and adopting a counter‐insurgency doctrine.     

Craniometric evidence for South African Later Stone Age herders and hunter–gatherers being a single biological population

Later Stone Age (LSA) hunter–gatherers and herders co-existed in South Africa during the last 2000 years. In spite of being the focus of intensive research over the years, the biological status and origins of the herders are still unclear. Did they represent a genetically distinct immigrant population who remained separate from the indigenous hunter–gatherers, or where they indigenous hunter–gatherers who took up herding after contact with herders, probably in northern Botswana? Here, this issue is investigated using craniometric data collected on a large sample of individually dated human crania from coastal LSA context. Mahalanobis distances (D), calculated from the raw metric data, show that there was a small increase in inter-individual craniofacial variation after the introduction of herding at ca. 2000 BP. Here it is argued that this small increase in variation is neither consistent with a large-scale immigration of genetically distinct herders into South Africa, or the long-term co-existence of two genetically distinct populations. Two alternative explanations fit the data better: (1) herding entered South Africa via the small-scale immigration of genetically distinct herders; and (2) local hunter–gatherer populations adopted herding after coming in contact with herders in northern Botswana. While small-scale immigration would not have had a major influence on the local gene pool, it would have increased variation to some extent as immigrants mixed with local populations. If small-scale external gene flow was not a factor in the introduction of herding, secular issues related to the introduction of herding could explain the increased variation in post-2000 BP populations.     

“All Gone Now”: The Material,Discursive and Political Erasure of Bank and Building Society Branches in Britain

Abstract: This paper examines an apparent anomaly that lies at the heart of processes of financial exclusion within Britain. Given that the branch networks of banks and building societies have shrunk in size by about one‐third since 1989, a period during which the Government has launched a wide‐ranging set of policies to tackle financial exclusion, why is it that the issue of branch closure has been neutralised as a political issue? After providing evidence to show the extent of branch closure in Britain and illustrating the ways in which geographical research in particular has drawn attention to the nature of this problem, we look at the way the issue of physical access to financial services has been discursively and politically marginalised. We undertake a detailed history of public policy in the area, and the ways in which research funded by industry bodies and Government departments has been used and framed to build a pro‐market, neoliberal policy programme that constructs branch closures as natural and inevitable.     

The ‘Australian settlement’ and Australian political thought

Arguments for reshaping political agendas invariably begin from an appraisal of past errors and achievements. Paul Kelly's notion of the ‘Australian Settlement’ attempts such a task. Kelly identifies a particular ideological and institutional tradition in Australian politics that dominated much of the twentieth century and that is now deemed to have broken down. This article accepts that the notion of a Settlement provides certain insights into the evolution of Australian political thought. Nonetheless, the paper takes issue with the specific content of Kelly's version of the ‘Australian Settlement’ and indicates how it may be reformulated. It argues that, to the extent that we can speak of a ‘Settlement’ in Australia, it was one reached on a wider range of key conflicts or cleavages than those to which Kelly refers.     

Twenty-Five Years--Where is German History Now?

As our two founding editors write in this issue, at its inception,German History fulfilled a dual purpose. First, it arose fromthe need to find a ‘home’ for a growing body ofscholarship on German history produced and debated in the UnitedKingdom, not least under the aegis of the German History Society.Second, the journal was set up with a certain sense of mission,designed to showcase an innovative brand of German history writing,which was at variance, to some extent at least, with that predominantlypublished in the American-based Central European History. Sincethen, much has changed.     

Nudging Bentham: indirect legislation and (neo-)liberal politics

SUMMARY

The debates over Sunstein and Thaler’s Nudge oppose libertarianism and paternalism, or defend the authors’ proposed manipulation of individuals’ ‘choice architectures’ as a consistent system of libertarian paternalism. My essay looks beyond the terms of this debate and revisits Bentham’s ‘Indirect Legislation’ in order to excavate the issues raised by the deployment of technologies of behavioural economics in schemes of government. On the one hand, nudging is nothing other than a mild and carefully considered mode of indirect legislation, and the authors are right to join Bentham in pointing out that the landscape they seek to improve is always with us; we are always already governed and governing others, and we might as well govern and be governed better than we do/are. On the other hand, nudge-like innovations reveal the extent to which Bentham’s insights have been captured by a disciplinary orientation that removes its subjects from political space. Put differently, the issue with this kind of government is not that it interferes with our liberty so much as that it presumes our lack of political orientation and efficacy. Bentham’s liberal subjects inhabit a public and even republican space that Sunstein and Thaler’s neo-liberal subjects have long since abandoned.     

Holocene climatic change and past Irish societal response

The extent to which North Atlantic Holocene climatic perturbations influenced past human societies is an area of considerable uncertainty and fierce debate. Ireland is ideally placed to help resolve this issue, being occupied for over 9000 yr and located on the eastern Atlantic seaboard, a region dominated by westerly airflow. Irish bog and lake tree populations provide unambiguous evidence of major shifts in surface moisture through the Holocene similar to cycles recorded in the marine realm of the North Atlantic, indicating significant changes in the latitude and intensity of zonal atmospheric circulation across the region. To test for human response to these cycles we summed the probabilities of 465 radiocarbon ages obtained from Irish archaeological contexts and observe enhanced archaeological visibility during periods of sustained wet conditions. These results suggest either increasing density of human populations in key, often defensive locations, and/or the development of subsistence strategies to overcome changing conditions, the latter recently proposed as a significant factor in avoiding societal collapse. Regardless, we demonstrate environmental change is a significantly more important factor in influencing human activity in the landscape than has hitherto been acknowledged.     

Introduction: Religion and Empire,an Historiographical Perspective*

The relations between empires and Christianity have been the subject of considerable historiographical attention and it is the object of this paper to review the major issues in this recent literature to provide a context for the specialised papers which follow. Major issues on which discussion is focussed include the extent to which missionaries can be said to be agents of empire, the significance of missionary critique of imperial practice and the extent to which missionary activity was a form of “cultural imperialism.” Examples are chosen chiefly from the British Empire but there is also some comparative material drawn from the history of the Roman, Spanish, and French empires.     

Gender and Australian Aid Policy: can women's rights be advanced within a neo-liberal framework?

The issue of gender and development has been an important part of the development discourse since the Mexico City Women Conference in 1973. This concern has been very slow to transform itself into policy. For development agencies including AusAID it has been a subsidiary policy area or an add-on, as a recipe might say'add women and stir'. The White Paper of 2007 brought gender to the centre of policy as an overarching principle. The question that arises is the extent to which these policies fit into or are driven by the neo-liberal paradigm underpinning the aid program, or if these policies can challenge it by positing a rights agenda. The 2007 Gender policy tries to sit between the two in that it focuses on the economic role that women can play in fostering growth on the one hand, and the denial of human rights that marginalisation and disempowerment represents. This paper will explore the development of gender policy in AusAID, and compare it with the development of policy of other agencies that follow the neo-liberal framework in particular the World Bank and ADB. Finally the paper will make some suggestions for the new Labor government to strengthen the Policy.     

Sense and sensitivity: Appraising the Titanic

Abstract

The first substantial exhibition of material retrieved from the wreck of the Titanic was mounted by the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, in October 1994. Extended for a second six‐month run the following April, this was to be the most popular exhibition the museum had ever staged, helping to attract some 720,000 people through the turnstiles during the year. It also generated an unprecedented level of media attention, particularly in the period leading up to the opening, placing a wide ranging (but ultimately soft) focus on the museum's motivation for proceeding into the deep waters of apparently delicate subject matter. Indeed, the controversy of the exhibition —a phenomenon partly created, developed and sustained by the media itself — not only formed a backdrop to the planning, design and installation of the show; to some extent the displays, their effects and their meanings became dependent on the context of argument and rhetoric in which they were generated. In the curators’ attempts to reconcile appropriately the often‐competing demands of the museum market of professional ethics, economics, and contemporary standards of taste and morality, it may be asked whether the National Maritime Museum was passenger or pilot in the stormy waters it encountered through this project. Moreover, what was the true nature and consequence of the unrest: a minor local difficulty or a museological issue of some significance? This article is an attempt, despite the probable partisanship of its author, to explore with some of the objectivity of hindsight these questions and the circumstances in which they arose. ¹     

From Spatial Analysis to Geospatial Science

When Spatial Analysis was published in 1968, it drew together the fruits of the first decade of geography's quantitative revolution. In the decades that have followed, quantitative geography has both diffused and concentrated, abandoned some themes, made major progress on others, and in the contemporary form of geospatial analysis has become an innovative multidisciplinary enterprise. In this article, we sketch the broad outlines of this history, lay out the main threads along which technical capabilities have developed, and describe what appear to us to be the leading questions at the research frontier. Even as many geographers disavow social science, geospatial science has emerged as a lusty arena marked by intellectual vigor, conceptual growth, and enhanced analytic abilities. What now is taking shape is a spatially integrated social–environmental science that is transcending older disciplinary attachments, boundaries, and constraints.     

The Discourse that Silences: Beneficiaries' Ambivalence Towards Redistributive Land Reform in the Philippines

This article argues that the persistence of non-capitalist dimensions within land relations in the Philippines is basic to rural livelihood strategies, and has been a major but widely-neglected factor in the failure of land reform programmes. Addressing the issue of non-capitalist relationships brings into focus the indigenous or ‘customary’ land tenure relationships that exist in lowland land tenure arrangements, with the result that the conventional dichotomy between lowland and upland ‘cultural minority’ land relations becomes spurious. The article offers some suggestions as to why, for the major part of this century, the indigenous norms of lowlanders have been overlooked, with a discussion which links up to issues of national identity and nation building.     

Easter and the Battle of Pollentia

Interest in the battle of Pollentia in recent years has been confined to the issue of dating the year in which it occurred, the extent to which either Claudian or Prudentius, the two late Roman poets who mention it, depended on the other's work, and the significance of the battle in the political and military careers of its two chief protagonists, Stilicho, the Vandal regent of the emperor Honorius, and Alaric, the Visigothic leader and rebellious Roman agent. In this paper, I consider religion as a tactic in the conduct of the battle. We know from Orosius that it was fought at Easter, something for which he chastised Stilicho. While scholars refer to its Easter date and Vanderspoel has found Easter allusions in another of Claudian's poem written in the light of the battle, none has investigated the significance of the battle taking place at Easter. It is argued here that religious considerations were crucial in determining the moment of engagement and not just coincidental and that, by attacking Alaric at Easter, we have another indication of just how precarious Stilicho's position was.     

Aiming for a Just Society

Abstract

I think it is time that theologians, as well as the Church at large, speak up and speak to the social injustice we are faced with because of the economical collapse in Iceland in autumn 2008. If we think theology (i.e. the discourse about God) does not happen in a vacuum, if we think it is affected by, and is also affecting its context, then theology must have a part to play in the political discourse. If we think everything related to our human condition is affecting our understanding and our talk about God, then all theology has to be political in the most inclusive sense of the word. In this article the intention is to test major theological terms against the situation we are faced with in our society, which is recovering from an economic collapse. Thus the question: to what extent are key theological terms useful when we need to address the outgrowth of social injustice and self-inflicted economical catastrophe?     

Introduction: The Historiography of Republicanism and Republican Exchanges

Abstract

Though the history of republicanism has been a popular topic of research since the mid-twentieth century, there are still various issues and areas that have remained neglected—not least the exchange of republican ideas from one cultural context to another, particularly across national boundaries. The purpose of this special issue is to offer some exploration of this neglected area, and this essay serves as an introduction to it. The essay offers an overview of the literature on republicanism that has been produced since the mid-twentieth century, it demonstrates the different ways in which republican exchange can be conceived and considers how the essays that follow contribute to our understanding of this issue, and finally it proposes a new way of thinking about republicanism.