The role of ‘diplomatic lobbying’ in shaping US foreign policy and its effects on the Australia–US relationship

Lobbying as a form of engagement with the US Congress has long been studied from a domestic perspective. Lobbying, however, is not a practice confined to actors with domestic interests—it is also used as a form of diplomacy by many foreign governments, including Australia. Diplomatic lobbying is a vastly understudied phenomenon and its impact on US foreign relations is rarely examined. Unlike most Westminster-based democracies, the USA has two branches directly involved with foreign affairs—the Executive and Congress—each of which is important for different aspects of foreign policy development. Australia has found lobbying the US Congress to be a powerful tool for diplomatic engagement. This article looks at the role of the US Congress in foreign affairs, the effects of lobbying, and the ways in which diplomats engage with and lobby Congress. Australia’s specific lobbying efforts and their effects on the US–Australia relationship are then examined.     

The economic impact of the Australia–US free trade agreement

The Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) came into effect in 2005. It was the second preferential trade agreement that Australia signed, after its agreement with Singapore, and marked a departure from the primacy of Australia's previous trade policy of unilateral and multilateral trade liberalisation toward preferential liberalisation. This paper assesses the economic effects of AUSFTA by applying the Productivity Commission's gravity model of trade from its Bilateral and Regional Trade Agreements review. The evidence reveals AUSFTA resulted in a fall in Australian and US trade with the rest of the world—that the agreement led to trade diversion. Estimates also show that AUSFTA is associated with a reduction in trade between Australia and the United States.     

The China factor in the US–South Korea alliance: the perceived usefulness of China in the Korean Peninsula

Over the past 10 years, South Korea has chosen inconsistent strategies with respect to the US–South Korea alliance. On the one hand, Seoul disagreed with Washington about the extended role of United States Forces Korea and the deployment of US missile defence systems in East Asia. On the other hand, these problems ironically coincided with South Korea's strong support for the USA in operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. What explains the inconsistency of South Korea's alliance policies? Major schools of thought in international relations have offered explanations, but their analyses are deficient and indeterminate. This article looks at the South Korea–China–North Korea triangle as a new approach to explaining the puzzling behaviour of South Korea. The model shows that South Korea's alliance policies are driven by two causal variables. First, North Korea is an impelling force for South Korea to remain as a strong US alliance partner. This encourages Seoul to maintain cooperation with Washington in wide-ranging alliance tasks. Second, South Korea's policies are likely to reflect the way the nation perceives how useful China is in taming North Korea. The perceived usefulness of China causes Seoul to accommodate China and decrease cooperation with the USA. This might strain the relationship with the USA should South Korea evade alliance missions that might run contrary to China's security interests.     

Substantiating the cohesion of the post-cold war US–Japan alliance

Notwithstanding current disarray, the post-cold war US–Japan alliance has enjoyed its most cohesive status in its history. Japan altered its passive cold war alliance policy and became a more active and equal partner with the United States. Even though there exist many explanations of what has caused this cohesiveness, there is hardly any attempt to substantiate the level of alliance cohesion itself. The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate the cohesion of this alliance by employing concrete operational indicators: homogeneity in goals, threat perception, strategic compatibility and command structure. By investigating how these operational indicators have changed over time, the author proves substantially that the post-cold war US–Japan alliance has developed more cohesively.     

Asymmetry of power and attention in alliance politics: the US–Republic of Korea case

While power asymmetry typically defines security relationships between allies, there exist other forms of asymmetry that influence alliance politics. In order to illustrate how they can shape policy outcomes that cannot be explained solely through the lens of power capabilities, the authors examine the role of relative attention that each side pays to the alliance. It is their central argument that since the client state has a greater vested interest in the alliance and given that attention depends on interest/need, the client state can leverage attention to get its way. By analysing two specific cases, the 2002 South Korean schoolgirls tragedy and the 2008 beef protests—instances where the South Koreans succeeded in compelling US concessions—the authors show that because the alliance was more central to the client state's agendas, there existed an asymmetry of attention that offered leveraging opportunities for the weaker ally. In this study, the authors emphasise the role of media attention as a key variable, and seek to contribute to debates on weaker party leverage in asymmetrical alliances.     

Australia’s new alliance dynamics,US–China rivalry and conflict entrapment in outer space

Canberra’s exposure to great-power conflict is arguably more complex and ambiguous than during the Cold War. Drawing from scholarly literature on entrapment and recent developments in outer-space security, this article explores Australia’s position in a hypothetical US–China war over Taiwan. The shifting military balance in outer space, recent war games by the US military and regional trends in defence planning all raise the possibility of a scenario opening with Chinese cyberattacks against information networks shared between Australia and the USA. As a result of its growing dependency on space systems, Australia may be entrapped in a novel way which poses questions for scholars and policymakers. These findings should encourage further study of regional crisis management, with the need for a shared understanding of strategic behaviour in outer space and cybernetworks.     

The role of the chair in informal international organisations: Australia’s Group of Twenty presidency

Scholars of international relations have devoted significant effort to understanding international organisations. However, two areas have been understudied: the role of the chair in international multilateral negotiations and the role of informal international organisations. Yet informal international organisations are increasingly important in international affairs as world leaders turn to smaller and more flexible forums to address global challenges. This article addresses these two blind spots in the literature by considering the role of Australia as chair in one of the most important yet most understudied informal international organisations: the Group of Twenty (G20). Drawing on primary interview data and the participant observations of the first author, who was a member of the G20 chair in 2013–14 during Australia’s presidency, the authors examine two theoretical puzzles: (1) why states delegate control of the negotiation process to a chair and (2) how the chair can, and does, influence the negotiation process. It is argued that member states delegate control to the chair to overcome specific institutional failures and, in doing so, provide the chair with the power to influence the negotiation process. The authors also argue that the G20 case indicates that existing theory overlooks key factors which restrict the capacity of the chair to influence the negotiation outcome.     

The opinion–policy link in Australia

Whether or not policy is responsive to public opinion is central to questions of representation. Democracy by many accounts is premised on there being a strong correspondence between public opinion and policy. This link has not, however, been examined in detail in Australia. This article examines the policy–opinion link in a more robust way than that has previously been achieved in Australia, through the use of legislative data from the Australian Policy Agendas Project (APAP) and public opinion data from Roy Morgan. The article asks: is policy congruent with public opinion in Australia? In addressing this question, we examine to what extent policy accords with the preferences of the public. This in turn provides us with some answers about how representative Australian democracy is, as well as contributing to an international debate about the responsiveness of policy to public opinion.

政策是否要对舆论负责,这是代表制的核心问题。民主的前提往往就在于舆论和政策之间的息息相通。但在澳大利亚,人们并没有仔细地研究过二者间的关联。本文根据澳大利亚政策议题计划提供的立法资料以及罗伊摩根提供的舆情资料,对政策—舆论关联做了比以往充分多的研究。本文试问：政策与舆论在澳大利亚是否一致？我们考察了政策在多大程度上符合民意。这也为澳大利亚民主在多大程度上具有代表性的问题提供了答案,对于国际上争论政策对民意的回应问题也具有参考意义。。     

Electoral bias in Australia 1980–1993: The impact of the 1983 electoral amendments

This paper examines the amount and sources of electoral bias at federal elections in Australia from 1980 to 1993. The main conclusion reached is that the changes to electoral legislation introduced between the 1983 and 1984 elections did not, as has previously been widely accepted, merely act to neutralise the then‐existing bias towards the Liberal and National coalition parties but actually resulted in a bias towards the Australian Labor Party. Most of the bias arose from the differential geographic concentration of voters, to which a contributing influence was a ‘size effect’ caused by increasing the number of members of parliament However, the introduction of a boundary redistribution criterion which requires equality in electorate enrolments over time (rather than immediately) has also introduced an inbuilt bias arising from differential enrolment levels into the post‐1983 electoral system. This bias has favoured the ALP at every one of the four elections held under the new system.     

Symposium: Australia–US Economic Relations and the Regional Balance of PowerAustralia–US Economic Relations following the 2005 Free Trade Agreement

The Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) came into force on 1 January 2005. Australia's exports to the US have since stagnated, while imports into and US investments in Australia have surged. This article analyses Australia–US economic relations with a focus on trade and investment flows. In addition, it examines the capital raising by US investment banks for these projects. The analysis traces the effects on the relationship of the Global Financial Crisis, the resources boom in Australia and the rise of the Australian dollar.

澳美自由贸易协定2005年元旦起生效。自那以来,澳大利亚对美出口止步不前,而来自美国的进口和投资却一路上扬。本文考察了澳美经济关系,重点分析了贸易和投资流。此外作者还研究了美国投资银行为那些项目的融资。以往分析研究探索了全球金融危机、澳大利亚起源开发热以及澳大利亚元升值三者之间关系所受的影响。     

The Campbell Committee and the origins of ‘deregulation’ in Australia

The 1981 Australian Financial System Inquiry, known as the Campbell Committee, is widely seen as the start of the reform movement of the 1980s and 1990s. Accounts of its origins have been dominated by a debate about which policy actor can take credit. This paper utilises cabinet and Reserve Bank archives to reassess the origins of the Campbell Committee. The inquiry had its origins in an earlier attempt by the Whitlam government to take federal control of the regulation for non-bank financial institutions and the building society crisis of the mid-1970s. In its response to these political and economic challenges we can identify the moment in which the Fraser cabinet turned towards market-based reform. The political decisions made in the context of crisis set the path for regulatory change in subsequent decades, particularly in the area of prudential regulation, where we have seen regulatory consolidation and expansion rather than ‘deregulation’.     

Domestic events,ideological changes and the post-cold war US–South Korea alliance

How can we account for the weakening of the US–South Korea alliance after the cold war? After the cold war, the US–South Korea alliance was expected to remain strong due to North Korea's threats of weapons of mass destruction. For the past decade and a half, this realist projection has not fully come to pass: rather, it has changed inversely. How can we account for this puzzle? In explaining this counter-intuitive development, the author employs the critical juncture approach. The author argues that in South Korea, certain domestic critical events readjusted domestic ideologies that affected its alliance policy towards the USA. With the initiation of Nordpolitik after the end of the cold war (the first critical juncture), conservative anti-communism and progressive nationalism became coexistent in South Korea, thus causing frictional policy towards the USA. The 2000 North–South Korean Summit (the second critical juncture) made the progressive nationalistic move more dominant in Korea, and this ideological change made its alliance policy towards the USA less friendly.