How Australian industry policy shaped cultural policy

Public policies that aim to facilitate cultural activities to serve effectively as industries are often regarded as a new phenomenon. This article argues that arts and cultural policies in Australia have reflected and complemented Commonwealth industry policy for most of their history. The significant change that has happened in the past twenty years is not so much a change to cultural policy, but rather a change in the notion of industries and their role in the national economy.     

Footprint or fingerprint: international cultural policy as identity policy

This article focuses on government policy aimed at the presentation of the nation abroad through cultural activities and its relation to national identity, external cultural policy. The methodological framework is offered by the discourse analysis of Wodak and the notion of identity of Laclau and Mouffe, treating policy as a discourse. A closer look is taken at the concept of cultural diplomacy and the closely related term nation branding. This article will show how the shift in paradigm also changes the role of ‘the other’ in the construction of national identity and how this influences the role of the arts in international cultural policy.     

Australian economic policy

Bruce McFarlane: Economic Policy in Australia—The Case for Reform, Cheshire Melbourne. 1968, 243 pp., $3.00.     

Greening cultural policy

Abstract

This article focuses on greening cultural policy within a sustainable development context. We examine shortcomings of major public-policy responses to the ecological crisis, linking this to the ambivalent philosophical heritage of anthropocentric worldviews that underpin ideas about the relation of culture to non-human nature. This ambivalence is reflected by weak environmentalism in the cultural policy arena, exemplified by surprisingly non-green cultural platforms espoused by green political parties. Green thinking is further hampered by the widespread adoption of digitisation within cultural organizations, which we contextualise in the broader political economy of digital capitalism and the attendant myth that high-tech culture is a low emissions business. Green cultural policy necessitates intensive self-examination of cultural institutions’ environmental impact, at the same time these institutions deploy art, education, entertainment, sports, and news to raise awareness of ecological crisis and alternative models of economic activity. We cite the efforts of activist artists’ resistance against fossil fuel corporations’ sponsorship of arts and cultural organizations as a welcome provocation for greening cultural policy within cultural organizations and green political parties alike.     

Iran's ISIS policy

This article assesses Iran's strategy in dealing with the threat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). It examines the implications of the rise of ISIS in Iran's immediate neighbourhood for Tehran's policies in Syria and Iraq and investigates how each of these countries affects Iranian national interests. It provides an overview of the major events marking Iran and Iraq's relations in the past few decades and discusses the strategic importance of Iraq for Iran, by looking at the two countries' energy, economic and religious ties. It also considers Iran's involvement in Syria since the beginning of the Syrian conflict. The article sheds light on the unilateral action taken by Tehran to counter ISIS, the adjustments it may have to make to its involvement in Syria, and the potential areas for tactical cooperation between Iran and the United States, as well as other key regional states such as Saudi Arabia. The article investigates three likely scenarios affecting the developments in Iraq and Iran's possible response to them as the events in the Middle East unfold.     

Soviet foreign policy

Hannes Adomeit, Soviet Risk‐Taking and Crisis Behavior: a theoretical and empirical analysis, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1984, pp.375. $29.95 (paper)

Edwina Moreton and Gerald Segal (eds), Soviet Strategy Toward Western Europe, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1984, pp.296. $15.95 (paper)

Yaacov Ro'i (ed.), The USSR and the Muslim World, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1984, pp.298. $65.00 (cloth)     

Cultural policy as development policy: evidence from the United States

Cultural policies and cultural projects in the United States have been reframed to emphasize their economic benefits to cities. New alliances between arts advocates and place promoters are apparent at all levels, but are most prominent locally. These new alliances are facilitated by the changing interests of local officials and business people, who have come to believe there is economic value in the arts and of arts administrators, for whom attracting broader public support has become imperative. In some cities, entirely new organizational structures have sprung up to plan and implement projects that serve cultural and economic development advocates simultaneously. Such new institutions are most prominent in more economically disadvantaged cities.     

How racialized policy contact shapes the social constructions of policy targets

Policy feedback scholars argue the relationship between policy and politics is dynamic and reciprocal. For instance, policies “make citizens,” teaching the public who deserves positive government treatment and who does not. Furthermore, individual experiences with policy shape participation and beliefs about government, which shapes future policy. But few scholars have examined how experiences with a law shape attitudes toward those targeted by policy. We use a survey of 3000 respondents on MTurk (including an over-sample of people of color) to show how direct and indirect experience with policy shapes social constructions of politically relevant groups. Specifically, we examine how direct (personal) and indirect (via someone they know well) experience with two policy areas (criminal justice and social welfare) shape perceptions of the targets of criminal justice and welfare policy. We find the effect of policy contact is racialized; policy contact has a greater effect on white respondents compared to Black respondents. But despite this contact, whites' attitudes about groups' deservingness remain lower than those of their Black counterparts.