Sharpening Advocacy Coalitions

The concept of “advocacy coalitions” is the bedrock of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), one of the most established and successful approaches for understanding policy processes across the globe. This article revisits and sharpens the conceptual definition of advocacy coalitions. We summarize the lessons from its theoretical emphases under the ACF and specify its five attributes (policy actors, shared beliefs, coordination, resources, and stability). Through this specification, we identify the ideal coalition type and several coalition subtypes. We then clarify and make a distinction between how we think about coalitions as a concept and how we approach coalitions empirically. This article sharpens the lens for describing and explaining coalitions toward better observations, theorizing, and measurements. It ends with next steps for further deepening and broadening knowledge about advocacy coalitions.     

Platform Capitalism’s Hidden Abode: Producing Data Assets in the Gig Economy

In this article, we argue that the governance of gig work under conditions of financialised platform capitalism is characterised by a process that we call “dual value production”: the monetary value produced by the service provided is augmented by the use and speculative value of the data produced before, during, and after service provision. App-governed gig workers hence function as pivotal conduits in software systems that produce digital data as a particular asset class. We reflect on the production of data assets and the unequal distribution of opportunities for their valorisation, after which we survey a number of strategies seeking data-centric worker empowerment. These strategies, we argue, are crucial attempts to push back against platform capitalism’s domination, bankrolled by what we term “meta-platforms”. Ultimately, it is the massive wealth and synergetic capacities of meta-platforms that constitute the most formidable obstacle to worker power and social justice in increasingly data-driven societies.     

From Labrets to Cranial Modification: Credibility Enhancing Displays and the Changing Expression of Coast Salish Resource Commitments

Recent developments in evolutionary psychology expanding on signaling theory provide key insights to the connections between expressing social commitments and resource rights. Credibility enhancing displays (CREDs) are a means to convince individuals of commitment to belief systems and can link costly acts or extravagant displays to social success. In the Salish Sea, the transition from labrets to cranial modification from 3200 to 1000 BP has often been framed in terms reflecting a shift from achieved to ascribed social status. Other researchers have argued that labrets may reflect village scale identity not tied to political power. We suggest that an explicitly evolutionary approach provides novel insights into the changing material expressions of Coast Salish social commitments, specifically reciprocal resource access. The shift to cranial modification reflects increased CRED investment and cost, but not necessarily a transition towards ascribed status. Instead this shift may be changing expressions of the same forms of social commitments.     

Denial strategy in Australian strategic thought

Although denial has been at the centre of Australian strategic thought for decades, it has frequently been used as a broad catch-all term. This article shows, however, that there are two distinct denial traditions in Australian strategic thought: anti-access denial and area denial. Despite the different denial strategies having significantly different implications for defence budgets, procurement and force structure, official strategic guidance and defence scholars themselves have rarely specified which variant they are referring to. This article first maps the conceptual genealogy of anti-access denial and area denial within Australian strategic thought, before showing why acknowledging the specific type of denial is critical for policy and operational considerations. In addition to the two traditional approaches to denial, this article introduces a third approach—‘dissuasion by denial’—which, notwithstanding its growing influence in deterrence research and high relevance to twenty-first-century Asia-Pacific security dynamics, has yet to be introduced into Australian denial debates. The article finally addresses the conditions under which each denial strategy would be the most appropriate for Australia.     

Knowledge nodes and international networks of connection: representations of private philanthropy by elite higher education institutions

This paper investigates the social and cultural geographies of large-scale individual giving in supporting the work of ‘elite’ international universities. With public funding of higher education in general decline, universities in countries of the global North are increasingly seeking funding from alternative sources, including private philanthropy. Although scholarly work has examined corporate and foundational giving to Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), there has been little enquiry into how donations from wealthy individuals are represented by universities in their official literature. Publications such as annual reports, giving reports and campaign reports are used strategically by HEIs to project a global image. We examine the official literature of 50 elite HEIs located across the globe, uncovering new discourses into the cross-cultural reach of universities. We draw attention to complex social and cultural relations between HEIs and philanthropists, describing their encounters with reference to debates on personal mobilities, world-making and global and social inequalities. We conclude by highlighting the implications for theoretical work on ‘strategic philanthropy’ and on the transformative nature of HEIs as global centres of knowledge.     

Medium-sized cities in urban regions

A research project of the German Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning focussed on the role and the perspectives of medium-sized cities in urban regions. Quantitative and qualitative research approaches were combined. The main results concretize the development, the functions and the perspectives of medium-sized cities. Simultaneously, the role of medium-sized cities was investigated in the regional context, considering that in urban regions the hierarchy of large, medium-sized and small cities is overlapped by network structures.