Knopfelmacher's essays

Frank Knopfelmacher: Intellectuals and Politics, Nelson's Australian Paperbacks, Melbourne, 1968, vii + 156 pp., $2.95.     

High Court review 2003: the centenary year

2003 marked the Centenary year of the High Court, an anniversary which provides an opportunity to revisit debates about its role in the Australian system of government. The first section of this article canvasses debates around this question, culminating in a consideration of the High Court's ‘new politics’. This sets the framework for an examination of events in 2003 from the perspective of the interaction between the judicial and other branches of government, in particular the executive. The article analyses the implications of executive interventions in relation to the judiciary, as well as important cases brought before the High Court. It argues that conflict between the executive and judicial branches is only likely to increase where contradictions of purpose arise between international legal norms and obligations, the rule of law and domestic policy objectives. This article is the third in a series of reviews of the High Court from a political‐science perspective published in the Australian Journal of Political Science.     

Euripidea. Collected essays

In the last thirty years historians of republicanism have offered us the image of Harrington as the true hero of Machiavellism. This paper suggests instead that Harrington adopted Machiavelli's method in political science, but shared only few of his master's values, often referring to those cherished in anti-Machiavellian circles, as in the case of the agrarian laws. Indebted to the anti-Machiavellian Petrus Cunaeus's analysis of the Jewish Jubilee laws, Harrington transformed Cunaeus's specific observations into a general law of his own political science. This paper emphasizes the originality and modernity of such science, based on the inextricable interconnectedness between politics and economics. Further, it argues that this science entails a new, post-Machiavellian theory of liberty and property.     

The African National Congress centenary: a long and difficult journey

The African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa was formed under difficult conditions, facing a Union government bent on extending racist laws and an unsympathetic British government to whom repeated petitions were addressed without success. By the 1930s petitioning had run its course and the organization collapsed. In the 1940s, however, structures were established which laid the basis for mass activities in the following decade. In the 1950s a range of campaigns of resistance gave rise to a large ANC constituency. It also elaborated an alternative democratic vision through adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955, after a process of lengthy consultation. The document became a rallying point for a range of democratic organizations. After the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 the ANC was banned, but continued to operate illegally. It embarked on short‐lived armed activities, leading to the arrest and exile of its leading figures. The years that followed saw further setbacks as the organization sought to establish itself outside, and in small underground units inside, the country. After the Soweto uprising of 1976, many young people joined the ANC's armed wing and carried out attacks on apartheid installations. Significantly, this period also saw the revival of mass public political activities on an unprecedented scale. A combination of internal and external pressures against apartheid paved the way for negotiations, resulting in democratic elections in 1994. The ANC now governs, having fundamentally, albeit unevenly, transformed the lives of many—but continued poverty, unemployment, extensive corruption and criminality risk leading to a deep systemic crisis affecting governance as a whole.