Factions and Fractions: A Case Study of Power Politics in the Australian Labor Party

Over the past three decades, factions have cemented their hold over the Australian Labor Party. This has largely been due to the entrenchment of the proportional representation of factions. One of the effects of the institutionalisation of factions has been the development of factional sub-groupings ('fractions'). This article analyses the phenomenon by looking at a case study of a single ALP faction ‐ the Left in New South Wales. Since 1971, two major fractions have developed in the NSW Left, based on ideological disagreements, personality conflicts, generational differences and arguments over the role of the union movement in the ALP. This development parallels the intra-factional splits that have occurred in many other sections of the Labor Party. Yet the factional system in the 1980s and 1990s operated relatively effectively as a means of managing power. The question now is whether it can survive the challenge of new issues that cross-cut traditional ideological lines.     

The Potential Implications of the European Union Water Framework Directive on Domestic Planning Systems: A UK Case Study

The transformation of planning across Europe in recent years has been characterized by new processes at different spatial scales that reach across traditional boundaries. This Europeanization of planning processes is reflected in the emergence of cross-border initiatives, new spatial relationships and the enhancement of regional policy-making. In using the case of the UK this article analyses the possible ramifications of adopting the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). It is demonstrated that the WFD, despite its apparent focus on water regulation, is symptomatic of wider European Spatial Planning processes that are seeing a reshaping of attitudes, witnessing the emergence of new networks and challenging traditional sovereignties of planning.     

社区仪式的跨学科解读--以江南一个村落联合体庙会为中心

社区仪式,作为人类思维和行为方式的本质体现,一直处于文化人类学关注的中心地位。但是,就连他们自身也承认,也许缘于结构功能主义的学术传统的影响,“在处理社会变迁问题时,传统人类学的功能主义解释显得软弱无力;而单纯的功能主义立场亦无法解释半个世纪以来作为仪式活动背景的中国社会的剧变过程”,因此,人类学认为,“历史与变迁维度(悠久而丰富的历史文献与尚可获得的口述历史资     

Policy Decisionmaking Models in Practice: A Case Study of the Western Australian "Sentencing Acts"

While there is an extensive body of literature on a range of policy decisionmaking models, there is a lack of supporting case studies about the lived experiences of policymakers and the usefulness of various decisionmaking models in practice. This article examines two traditional models of decisionmaking, namely crisis theory and the rational comprehensive model, to assess their strengths and limitations in explaining the introduction of the controversial Western Australian Crime (Serious and Repeat Offenders) Sentencing Act 1992 and the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1992 (the "Sentencing Acts"). We argue that the "Sentencing Acts" cannot easily be reduced to, or explained through, a single policy analysis model, as significant aspects of policy remain hidden. Finally, we contend that to understand the emergence of the Sentencing Acts requires an approach that can account for the interconnection between structural, agenda-setting, and decisionmaking levels of analysis.     

The Impact of Neoliberalism and New Managerialism on Development Volunteering: An Australian Case Study

Within the large volume of research on aid and development there has been limited study of international development volunteering generally and the ways in which it has been affected by neoliberalism. Development volunteering has undergone a resurgence over the past decade and some new forms of volunteering have emerged, but state-sponsored development programs are still a key form. These programs were relatively immune from neoliberal ideas and managerial practices until the early 2000s. An interesting puzzle is why neoliberal principles were operationalised in Australia's volunteering program at the same time as it, and other donor states, softened this focus in the rest of their aid program. These shifts in Australia's development volunteering programs have changed the logic, forms and outcomes of development volunteering.     

Limits to Climate Change Adaptation: Case Study of the Australian Alps

Climate change is occurring and not being mitigated, motivating adaptation but adaptation strategies can have biophysical, economic, technological, and social limits. We review publicly available documents to assess how successful current and proposed adaptation strategies may be for the Australian Alps, including likely limits and potential collaborations and conflicts among stakeholders. Conservation managers, the tourism industry, and local communities have implemented or are proposing a range of adaptation strategies in the region. Some stakeholder strategies complement each other (e.g. invasive species control, fire management), while others are potential sources of conflict (water and electricity for snowmaking, year‐round tourism). Economic costs and biophysical constraints are the most important limits to these adaptation strategies. These types of limits and conflicts between different stakeholders on adaptation strategies are likely to occur in other regions and demonstrate that adaptation may only provide partial and short term solutions to the challenges of climate change.     

Union Responses to Mass Immigration: The Case of Miami, USA

This article places the attitudes of US unions toward immigrants within the context of a "globalized" environment and a contested and problematic history of the US labor movement regarding its conflicting tendencies toward international solidarity and nationalism. Following a review of that history, the article examines the relationships of four unions in the heavily immigrant Miami, Florida area with immigrant workers in the past four decades. The evidence indicates that explanations for differing responses can be found in the union's structure, its external environment, its leadership' vision and ideology, and its internal "cultural" practices.     

The Fate of Jewish Historiography after the Bible: A New Interpretation

What caused the eventual decline in later Jewish history of the vibrant historiographical tradition of the biblical period? In contrast to the plethora of historical writings composed during the biblical period, the rabbis of the early common era apparently were not interested in writing history, and when they did relate to historical events they often introduced mythical and unrealistic elements into their writings. Scholars have offered various explanations for this phenomenon; a central goal of this article is to locate these explanations within both the immediate historical setting of Roman Palestine and the overarching cultural atmosphere of the Greco‐Roman Near East. In particular, I suggest that the largely ahistorical approach of the rabbis functioned as a local Jewish counterpart to the widespread classicizing tendencies of a contemporary Greek intellectual movement, the Second Sophistic. In both cases, eastern communities, whose political aspirations were stifled under Roman rule, sought to express their cognitive and spiritual identities by focusing on a glorious and idealized past rather than on contemporary history. Interestingly, the apparent lack of rabbinic interest in historiography is not limited to the early rabbinic period. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, Jews essentially did not write their political, diplomatic, or military history. Instead, Jews composed “traditional historiography” which included various types of literary genres among which the rabbinic “chain of transmission” was the most important. The chain of transmission reconstructs (or fabricates) the links that connect later rabbinic sages with their predecessors. Robert Bonfil has noted the similarity between this rabbinic project and contemporary church histories. Adding a diachronic dimension to Bonfil's comparison, I suggest that rabbinic chains of transmission and church histories are not similar though entirely independent phenomena, but rather their shared project actually derives from a common origin, the Hellenistic succession list. The succession list literary genre, which sketches the history of an intellectual discipline, apparently thrived during the Second Sophistic and diffused then into both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. Thus, even though historiography was not terribly important to the early rabbis or to most Second Sophistic intellectuals, the succession list schematic, or the history of an intellectual discipline, was evaluated differently. Rabbis and early Christians absorbed the succession list from Second Sophistic culture and then continued to employ this historiographical genre for many centuries to come.     

Archaeology and the Bible Revisited: A Review Article

David and Solomon, a new book by Israel Finkelstein and Niels Asher Silberman, through their discussion of Palestinian archaeology's current understanding, proposes to provide evidence to prove the accuracy of Frank Cross's more than 30 year old revision of Martin Noth's theory of a “Deuteronomistic History.” The authors attempt to confirm the history of the redaction of the biblical narratives about Saul, David and Solomon, involving seven distinct oral and four written strata of tradition. Their argument moreover claims the warrant to assert the historicity of each of these legendary kings of Israel. The present article argues to the contrary that the “archaeological evidence” proposed does not support such a redaction history nor establish the historicity of either the biblical figures or their stories, but that the harmony of biblical and archaeological issues is circular and illegitimate by the standards of historical research. It argues, moreover, that the claim of an oral tradition, reflecting original memories of an historical David or Saul is an entirely unnecessary and unlikely explanation for the origins of both the figures and their tales in the stories of 1-2 Samuel and 1 Kings. It moreover argues that the hypothesis of a redaction history in a succession of four cumulative revisions, beginning in the eighth century and completed in the sixth to fourth century, BCE—lacking as it does reference to a readable text—is neither critical nor falsifiable. Finally, Finkelstein and Silberman's book is judged as an unsuccessful attempt to return to the methods of “biblical archaeology” that were legitimately impeached in the mid-1970s.     

Challenging the Australian Government Approach Towards Expatriate Voting: The Case of Italy

In 1999 the Australian government dropped its objections to the Italian legislation that contemplated postal voting and parliamentary representation for its Italian citizens resident abroad. This was a significant turning point for the Australian government approach on the question of voting rights for expatriate communities in Australia voting in their homeland elections. Based on undisclosed government sources and interviews with former Australian diplomatic and government officials, this paper will recall and examine the Australian government's reaction to the Italian political debates leading up to, and eventual passage of, the Italian expatriate vote legislation.     

The Soviet Union and Mosaddeq: A Research Note

Although it is generally accepted that the Soviet Union did not play a significant role in the events leading to the overthrow of Mohammed Mosaddeq in 1953, little has been written about how the Soviets perceived the Iranian leader and the movement he inspired. This article argues that Soviet leaders generally saw Mosaddeq as weak and ill-disposed towards the Soviet Union. The Soviet failure to secure an oil concession in Iran in 1946 and general conservatism about anti-colonial movements during the late Stalin period conditioned their assessment of Mosaddeq's premiership. After Soviet policy towards the Third World changed in the mid-1950s, Mosaddeq's movement was reinterpreted as a genuine “struggle of national liberation.”