Valence and spatial explanations for voting in the 2013 Australian election

This article examines the 2013 Australian federal election to test two competing models of vote choice: spatial politics and valence issues. Using data from the 2013 Australian Election Study, the analysis finds that spatial politics (measured by party identification and self-placement on the left–right spectrum) and valence issues both have significant effects on vote choice. Spatial measures are more important than valence issues in explaining vote choice, however, in contrast with recent studies from Britain, Canada and the USA. Explanations for these differences are speculative, but may relate to Australia's stable party and electoral system, including compulsory voting and the frequency of elections. The consequently high information burden faced by Australian voters may lead to a greater reliance on spatial heuristics than is found elsewhere.

本文研究了2013年澳大利亚联邦选举,以检验两种竞争的投票选择：空间政治和共价议题。作者使用了2013年澳大利亚选举数据进行分析,发现空间政治（用政党认同和左右光谱自定位来测量）和共价议题都对选举的选择有重要影响。不过,空间测量比共价议题更能解释投票的选择,这和英国、加拿大及美国近年的研究形成对照。对这些差异的解释是推理性的,但跟澳大利亚稳定的政党及选举制度有关,包括义务投票、选举频率之类。澳大利亚选民面临着沉重的信息负担,由此而导致了对空间启发的依赖要大于其他地方。     

Transitional justice and human rights in Afghanistan

Like other societies emerging from protracted conflict, Afghanistan confronts a legacy of past crimes and violence. Communist rulers, Soviet occupiers, rural resistance fighters, Islamist parties, the Taleban movement, Pakistani volunteers, al-Qaeda members, power-seeking warlords, and the anti-Taliban coalition all contributed more or less to the litany of abuses since 1978. Almost no one in the society has been untouched, and almost no one with any power has clean hands. For these very reasons, caution and care are necessary. Demobilizing and reintegrating tens of thousands of irregular militia, as well as creating new security forces are the necessary conditions for the rest of the peace-building agenda, and, as shown by the author's first-hand experience in the Bonn negotiations over the post-Taleban succession, raising the issue of past crimes prematurely may lead fighters to revert to previous modes of behaviour. He argues for a careful start that emphasizes documenting the scale of the abuses with an emphasis on the suffering of the victims rather than the guilt of the perpetrators, in order gradually to support an Afghan debate on how to reconcile the society with its history.     

Structural Adjustment and Subsistence Industry: Artisanal Gold Mining in Ghana

Since the implementation of Ghana's national Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), policies associated with the programme have been criticized for perpetuating poverty within the country's subsistence economy. This article brings new evidence to bear on the contention that the SAP has both fuelled the uncontrolled growth of informal, poverty‐driven artisanal gold mining and further marginalized its impoverished participants. Throughout the adjustment period, it has been a central goal of the government to promote the expansion of large‐scale gold mining through foreign investment. Confronted with the challenge of resuscitating a deteriorating gold mining industry, the government introduced a number of tax breaks and policies in an effort to create an attractive investment climate for foreign multinational mining companies. The rapid rise in exploration and excavation activities that has since taken place has displaced thousands of previously‐undisturbed subsistence artisanal gold miners. This, along with a laissez faire land concession allocation procedure, has exacerbated conflicts between mining parties. Despite legalizing small‐scale mining in 1989, the Ghanaian government continues to implement procedurally complex and bureaucratically unwieldy regulations and policies for artisanal operators which have the effect of favouring the interests of established large‐scale miners.     

Factions and tendencies in the Australian political party system

This paper uses the 1987 Australian Election Study to examine the attitudinal, social and political characteristics of the political factions and tendencies which exist within the Labor, Liberal, National and Australian Democrat parties. We show that attitudinal groups are identifiable in all four parties, the greatest diversity existing within the Democrats and the least diversity within the Nationals. Substantial differences exist between groups within each party in social background and political characteristics. A multivariate analysis of factional and tendency electoral support shows that incumbency and control of nominations is important among ALP factions, while electorate involvement and party membership are important within Liberal and National tendencies.     

Imagining the borderlands: managing (to prolong) conflict in Tibet

The current phase of political conflict in Tibet began with pro‐independence protests in the late 1980s and saw a significant surge of unrest in 2008. But that unrest was not continuous and for much of the last 25 years was at a low level of intensity. Yet the Chinese authorities have categorised the situation in Tibet as a ‘life‐and‐death struggle’ against pro‐independence forces throughout this period. This paper notes earlier debates in Chinese history about political strategies for managing borderland peoples, including late imperial era attempts by Chinese officials to forcibly change Tibetan culture that provoked rather than assuaged conflict. It suggests that this happened again in the 1990s when a group of Chinese officials proposed policies that sought directly to change core cultural practices among Tibetans. These policies of selective cultural intervention, unprecedented in the post‐Mao era in Tibet, fuelled long‐term resentment, leading to the violence and unrest of 2008. The paper argues that these policies were inseparable from the institutional interests of the agency within the Chinese Communist Party, the United Front, which had promoted them, to the extent that its status and influence within the state bureaucracy depended on it preventing them from being challenged or reversed. It made cultural intervention in Tibet seem normative to the Chinese policy elite by invoking three interlocked imaginings about ways of managing borderland peoples – the perception of perpetual war, Han expertise at borderland management, and latent threat within borderland cultures. That these have led to the prolonging of conflict in Tibet for over a quarter‐century is a reminder of the importance of considering institutional dynamics in the analysis of ethnic conflict.     

Shame and Care: Masculinities in the Goroka Marketplace

For those women living in villages within accessible range of Goroka town, it is the norm to sell fresh produce in the Goroka market. Fresh produce trading, or maket in Tok Pisin, is common for women throughout the country. To see men selling food in the Goroka market is significantly less common, and those who do, usually sell foods brought from outside of Goroka. The gender divisions that exist in and around the marketplace today in Goroka are maintained through discourses of emotions and practice, specifically the notion of sem (Tok Pisin: shame, embarrassment). As part of a 12‐month ethnographic research project on gender relations in and around the Goroka market, I spoke with market vendors, amongst others living in and around Goroka, about why men do not market. I also interviewed some of the few men who do sell fresh produce in the market. Based on these men's explanations and those of others with whom I spoke, I suggest that these sellers exhibit aspects of masculinity that are caring for their families, putting shame second, and justifying this by their aspirations to transform their and their loved ones’ lives through education and business. These men demonstrate an emergent form of masculinity that both includes and contests aspects of hegemonic masculinity in the Highlands. Whilst selling fresh produce in the marketplace is deemed embarrassing and shameful for the majority of men, those who sell regardless justify doing so by pointing to the importance of providing for their families and loved ones.     

The Potential for Dating the Old Scatness Site,Shetland, By Optically Stimulated Luminescence

A series of deposits from the agricultural infield of the multiperiod settlement mound, Old Scatness, were investigated for their potential to yield optically stimulated luminescence dates. Luminescence properties of quartz grains were found to vary through the sequence, but dates were successfully obtained from five deposits, including anthropogenic soils, windblown sands and sands within midden deposits. Single‐aliquot equivalent dose measurement was found to be the most appropriate method for dating the deposits. The OSL dates obtained accorded well with the dates provided by archaeological evidence and included the post‐medieval, Iron Age, Bronze Age and Neolithic periods of Shetland, while a substantial midden was dated to the Bronze/Iron Age transition.