Taboos and denial in government responses

The most striking fact about HIV/AIDS is that it continues to spread even when the means of prevention are well known and do not demand costly technology to implement. This article argues that the fundamental barriers to effective prevention are social and cultural, and that many authorities place more emphasis on preserving traditional norms and social arrangements than on saving lives. The case is argued with particular reference to the impact of globalization on sexual behaviours, and the attempts by conservatives to deny existing behaviours and vulnerabilities. Current debates around abstinence, homosexuality and harm minimization are discussed to demonstrate the deeply political nature of HIV prevention.     

Electoral and partisan influences on Australian fiscal policy from Menzies to Hawke

I examine the controversial questions of whether or not partisanship and electoral motives shape the fiscal policies of Australian governments. I also extend the partisan model of policy choice for the Australian case. Specifically, using time‐series data for the financial years 1962–63 through 1989–90,1 explore partisan and electoral influences on the overall fiscal stance and the personal income transfer payments of the Commonwealth government Results indicate that, net of the influences of inertia in the policy process and of variations in economic forces, partisanship and elections play significant roles in determining both overall fiscal policy and income transfer outlays. Analyses reveal that fiscal policies become more expansionary across the electoral cycle while Labor and coalition governments have large but diminishing partisan effects cm policy over their terms in office.     

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.     

Two steps backwards: Equal opportunity policy under Howard and Hawke

Despite the deliberate attempt by the Labor and Liberal parties to pursue the ‘women's vote’ in the July Federal election, both parties have been retreating from previous commitments to equal employment opportunity (EEO). The Australian Democrats (AD) have been the only party consistently to support EEO objectives and to appear to mirror this commitment in their own practice (three of the seven AD Senators, including the Federal Parliamentary Leader, are now women).     

Editorial opinion and the Whitlam government

Half of the editorials in nine Australian newspapers referred in some way to the national Labor government between December, 1972 and March, 1975. Those editorials were 21 per cent positive towards the government, 37 per cent balanced, and 42 per cent hostile towards the government. The negative 42 per cent kept editorials negative on balance for three‐quarters of the time. Only one poper, The Age, was on balance (mildly) favourable towards the government, the rest were hostile. In their month by month variations in opinion towards the government the papers tended to move up or down together, and they made two general movements downwards and two general movements upwards. Editorial opinion towards the government and public opinion towards the government moved up and down together, with changes in editorial opinion tending to foreshadow and hence possibly helping to shape changes in public opinion. Papers in the states did not resemble each other, and whether papers in the same ownership chains did so depended on the chain. Public opinion varied more with changes in the level of employment than did editorial opinion.⁸     

Telling government to fool people somewhere else

Robert Paine, ed. The White Arctic: Anthropological Essays on Tutelage and Ethnicity. Newfoundland Social and Economic Papers No. 7. Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland. 418 pp. $12.00.     

Literacy and the law in Lombard government

This article examines the Lombard law code as evidence for literate practices in government and society in seventh- and eighth-century Italy. The effectiveness of the code as an instrument of government is testified by the charter evidence, in which the precepts of the code are implicitly acknowledged or cited directly. Although largely the result of a necessary appropriation of late Roman property law, Lombard legislation and notarial practice applied further literate methods to document, and hence to validate, a range of transactions. The use of written law was not merely limited to male landowners, but affected Italo-Lombard society more widely, as is revealed by the evidence for women's property rights and manumission. The charter evidence and references within the code itself suggest that various uses of writing for governmental administration extended beyond the royal and ducal levels into local society.     

From the government to the university: Efforts to write national history in the early Republic

ABSTRACT

From the controversies surrounding the National History Bureau in the early Republic to the short-lived National Historiography Office at Peking University, the traditional undertaking of writing dynastic history experienced many crises during the transformative Republican era. The National History Bureau was merged with Peking University as part of Cai Yuanpei’s efforts to separate the field of national historiography from the government and shift it toward universities, as well as his efforts to further reform the university system. In comparing the staff members and aims of the National History Bureau and the National Historiography Office of Peking University, the latter clearly represented an update in terms of concepts and methods. The purpose of the History Bureau’s shift from “dynastic” to “popular” history, which apparently intentionally imitated the German academic system, was to render national historiography and other related research independent of the government, cast off the traditional moral burden of “condemning evildoers and praising the virtuous,” and gradually move forward on the path of specialization for national historiography within the university system. The National Historiography Office’s various editing plans amply demonstrate this tendency. The many winding detours that the “national history” efforts took between dynastic and popular history both expressed the entanglement of new and old ideas within academic circles, and revealed the contemporary struggle between the government and universities.     

邓小平“什么时候政府都要管住金融”的论断及启示

邓小平认为,不论在革命战争年代,还是在社会主义建设时期,政府都要管住金融。因为经济发展、政治稳定、社会和谐均需要政府管住金融。在中国市场化程度日益提高的今天,政府必须比以往任何时候更加重视金融工作,提高金融管理能力,加大金融改革开放力度,促进金融和谐发展。     

恤农为政事之本:读《虞乡县强宜庵免减差徭记》碑

1998年在永济市虞乡镇发现一通古碑。碑石高2米,宽0．76米,厚0．16米。碑冠与碑座不存,唯碑体尚完整。发现时碑身被当作一工厂大门下水道上的铺板。经磨洗抄录,辨识标点,正面碑文尚完好无损,字迹清晰。碑阴剥必较重,依稀可辨为清虞乡县（今已并入永济市）知县强直庵减免当地摇役诸项科条,多不可识,现已被永济市博物馆收藏。笔者有缘一睹古碑,并对照拓片,细校细勘,感到碑文立意深远,弥足珍贵。这块碑题名为《虞乡县强宜庵免减差摇记》,立于清朝同治十三年（公元1874年）,是当地12位生员、监生代表农民百姓为虞乡县知县强直庵…     

Berlusconi,strong government and the Italian state

Over the past decade, state capacity has increased at all levels, including that of central government, and the emergence of effective government in Italy has proved popular. A second trend has been the reassertion of party government since 1996. Given these two trends, the large parliamentary majority obtained by Silvio Berlusconi's alliance, the Casa delle LibertÀ, might be expected to result in strong party government. In fact, Berlusconi's triumph offers something more and something less than party government, challenging Italian democracy. Nevertheless, as a consolidated democracy, Italy should be able to withstand such a challenge. One stable, democratic outcome to Italy's political transformation would be the consolidation of a Schumpeterian model of democracy. This would require the anomalies of the right's accumulation of powers to be resolved, a process which the left could promote by accepting that strong democratic government is a public good, and by organizing itself to challenge Berlusconi by campaigning to provide Italy with such government through parliamentary competition.