The benefits of foreign policy bipartisanship revisited: lessons from two Canadian cases

Although foreign policy bipartisanship in Westminster systems is often heralded as a normative good, there is an emerging scholarship which suggests that a bipartisan approach to foreign and defence policy comes with considerable costs. This article seeks to join that debate. It does so by examining two contemporary foreign/defence policy issues in Canadian politics: the mission in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014 and the efforts to replace the CF-18 Hornet flown by the Royal Canadian Air Force. These two cases do not offer clear conclusions about the normative argument about foreign policy bipartisanship. The embrace of a bipartisan approach to the Afghanistan mission confirms the criticism that bipartisanship can suppress public debate and did indeed distort a consideration of policy options. But the case of the CF-18 replacement suggests that there are significant costs if government and opposition replace a search for bipartisan consensus on key policy issues with an overt politicisation that seeks partisan advantage by ‘playing politics’ with foreign and defence policy issues, concluding that the quality of partisanship is a necessary condition to avoid the dysfunctions and costs of bipartisanship.     

Book reviews

Heinz W. Arndt, The Rise and Fall of Economic Growth: A Study in Contemporary Thought. Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1978, pp. 161. $6.95.

Coral Bell (Ed.), Agenda for The Eighties. ANU Press, Canberra, 1980, pp.256. $12.95 (paper).

Mohammed Ayoob (ed.), Conflict and Intevention in the Third World. Croom Helm, London, and ANU Press, Canberra, 1980, pp. 261. $37.50.

Anthony Reid, The Blood of the People Revolution and the End of Traditional Rule in Northern Sumatra. Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur. 1979, pp. 288. $43.20.

Leslie H. Gelb with Richard K. Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked. The Brookings Institution, Washington, 1979, pp. 387. £12.50 hardcover, £4.95 paper.

B. N. Pandey (ed.), Leadership in South Asia. New Delhi, Vikas Publishing House, 1977, pp.xxiv+731.

S.A.A. Rizvi, Iran: Royalty, Religion and Revolution. Ma'rifat Publishing House, Canberra, 1980, pp. 392. $30.00.

Amin Saikal, The Rise and Fall of the Shah, Princeton University Press and Angus and Robertson (Australia), 1980, pp. 279. US$14.50.

Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1978. pp.1283. $94.00.

Uri Davis, Israel: Utopia Incorporated. Zed Press Ltd., London, 1977, pp.182. £5.00 (Paperback: £2.95).

Rosemary Sayigh, Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries. Zed Press Ltd., London, 1979, pp.206. £8.95 (Paperback: £2.95).

Selwyn Lloyd, Suez 1956: A Personal Account. Jonathon Cape, London, 1978, pp. 282. £6.50.

John Kane‐Berman, South Africa: The Method in the Madness. Pluto Press. London. 1979, pp. 265. £2.95.

Rene Lemarchand (ed.), American Policy in Southern Africa: The Stakes and the Stance. University Press of America, Washington, D.C., 1978, pp. 450.

Richard E. Bissell, Southern Africa in the World: Autonomy or Interdependence? Foreign Policv Research Institute. Philadelphia, 1978, pp. 67. US $4.00.

Claude Ake, Revolutionary Pressures in Africa. Zed Press Ltd., London, 1978, pp. 109. £6.50.

Robin Palmer and Neil Parsons (eds.), The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa. Heinemann, London, 1977, pp.xviii + 430. £2.90.

Karl Kaiser and Hans‐Peter Schwarz (eds.), America and Western Europe: Problems and Prospects. Lexington Books, D. C. Heath and Company, Lexington, Mass., 1978, pp. 448.

Walter F. Hahn and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr. (eds.), Atlantic Community in Crisis: A Redefinition of the Transatlantic Relationship. Pergamon, New York. 1979. pp. 386.

Annette Baker Fox, The Politics of Attraction: Four Middle Powers and the United States. Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 371. $US21.90.

Nikolai Sivachev and Nikolai Yakovlev, Russia and the United States. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1979, pp.301. $12.95.

L. F. Fitzhardinge, The Little Digger 1914–1952: William Morris Hughes, A Political Biography, Volume II. Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1979, pp.xx + 703. $40.

Australia and the Indonesian Revolution: by Margaret George. (M.U.P. in association with the Australian Institute of International Affairs).     

Amplification and sequencing of Trichuris trichiura ancient DNA extracted from archaeological sediments

Despite high prevalence of Trichuris trichiura infection, PCR-based analysis on T. trichiura from archaeological samples has not been established so far. In the present study, we sought to perform PCR-based amplification of T. trichiura aDNA using the sediments from medieval tomb of Korea. The presence of Trichuris eggs were first detected by microscopic observation; then confirmed by PCR-based aDNA analysis. Obtained sequence showed 100% homology to that of the small subunit ribosomal RNA (SSUrRNA) gene of T. trichiura but distinct from that of other Trichuris species. PCR-based aDNA analysis in this study can serve as effective method to confirm the presence of T. trichiura eggs in the soils or coprolites collected from archaeological sites.     

Mad cow militancy: Neoliberal hegemony and social resistance in South Korea

Massive protests shook South Korea through the summer of 2008. This political eruption which exhibited many novel and unexpected elements cannot be explained by pointing to basic political conditions in South Korea (strong labor unions, democratization, and so forth). Neither does the putative reason for them – to protest the new President’s decision to reopen South Korea’s beef market to the U.S. – adequately explain the social dynamics at play. In this paper, we examine the political geography of the ‘candlelight protests’ (as they came to be known), focusing in particular on their novel aspects: the subjectivities of the protesters, fierce ideological struggles, and differentiated geography. We argue that the deepening of neoliberal restructuring by the new conservative regime formed the underlying causes of these intense conflicts. In other words, the new protests should be seen as a response to the reinforced contradictions engendered by neoliberalization and a new alignment of social groups against the prevailing hegemonic conditions in South Korea. In this view, the huge demonstrations revealed vulnerabilities in conservative hegemony but failed to produce a different hegemony. To advance these claims, we examine three aspects of the protests: first, the neoliberal policies of the new conservative regime; second, the intense ideological conflicts around the media; and finally, the spatial materialization of the protests.     

The corporeal,the social and space/place: exploring intersections from a midwifery perspective in New Zealand

This article explores the interrelations between the corporeal, the social and the spatial as they operate to shape the discursive and material realities of childbirth in the obstetric hospital setting. It draws on interviews conducted with midwives throughout New Zealand and embodies key insights derived from the work of Michel Foucault and Elizabeth Grosz. The obstetric hospital is theorised as a product of particular socio-political relations that privilege biomedical constructions of the body and childbirth. Midwives, however, proffer an alternative construction of childbirth and the space/place it is enacted. It is one that requires a woman to actively engage with a variety of birth spaces and take up a range of subject positions that enable her to be a more active agent in the process of parturition. The limited and limiting spatial and discursive arrangements of the obstetric hospital, it is argued, shape the behaviour, subjectivity and corporeality of the maternal body confined within it and therefore the practises of midwives. Unfortunately, and as this article demonstrates, the opportunity to take up such an alternative is limited in the obstetric hospital despite some recent cosmetic attempts to render it more welcoming.