Neoliberalism and gender equality policy in Australia

After a Coalition electoral victory in 2013, the Australian Office for Women was returned from the periphery to the centre of government. This was contrary to the expectation that women’s policy will be given greater salience under governments of the left rather than of the right. To unpack this puzzle, we examine institutional arrangements and policy directions under successive Labor and Coalition governments in Australia, including the abolition of intergovernmental bodies concerned with gender equality. We find that the influence of neoliberalism has resulted in a blurring of patterns of partisan difference over gender equality policy. There are some continuing partisan differences but also a common pattern of increased emphasis on international and regional rather than domestic policy. The notable exception to this pattern is in the area of gender-based violence.     

Recent Uses of Quantification in German History

Abstract

Peter H. Merkl, Political Violence Under the Swastika: 581 Early Nazis. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1975. Pp. xiv, 735. $32.50 clothbound; $10.00 paperbound.     

Making leeway in the Leewards, 1929–51: The negotiation of colonial development

Britain began to sponsor economic development in its colonial territories under the Colonial Development Act of 1929. The first CDA project was for housing on Antigua; other schemes for the Leewards soon followed. The isolation and poverty of this colony highlighted the practical difficulties of promoting development. Challenges included the negotiation of new methods of administration. Governors conceded autonomy in return for assistance; under pressure from Treasury, the Colonial Office learned how to supervise far-flung projects, while its subject departments gained influence at the expense of the regional. Trial and error in the design and supervision of projects on the Leewards provided information about what types of housing policy were cost-effective and acceptable locally. By the 1950s the advice of United States experts also made itself felt. Funds provided under the CDA and later development Acts were limited, but they transformed the machinery and influenced the content of colonial policy.     

An early Miocene ant (subfam. Amblyoponinae) from Foulden Maar: the first fossil Hymenoptera from New Zealand

Kaulfuss, U., Harris, A.C., Conran J.G. & Lee, D.E., 2014. An early Miocene ant (subfam. Amblyoponinae) from Foulden Maar: the first fossil Hymenoptera from New Zealand. Alcheringa 38, 568–574. ISSN 0311-5518.

The ant subfamily Amblyoponinae is presently represented in New Zealand by one endemic species in the cosmopolitan genus Stigmatomma and an introduced Australian species of Amblyopone. The fossil record of the group is restricted to two species of Stigmatomma from late Eocene Baltic Amber. Here, we describe the third fossil record, an Amblyopone-like specimen from the early Miocene of Otago, southern New Zealand, based on a winged male that resembles the extant A. australis Erichson in size, general habitus and characters of wing venation, but also shares features with the African amblyoponine genus Zymmer. This represents the first fossil record of Amblyoponinae from the Southern Hemisphere and the first example of Hymenoptera among the few pre-Quaternary insect fossils known from New Zealand. It suggests a long history of Amblyoponinae in New Zealand and Australia.

Uwe Kaulfuss [uwe.kaulfuss@otago.ac.nz] and Daphne E. Lee [daphne.lee@otago.ac.nz], Department of Geology, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin 9016, New Zealand; Anthony C. Harris [anthony.harris@otagomuseum.govt.nz], Otago Museum, PO Box 6202, Dunedin 9059, New Zealand; John G. Conran [john.conran@adelaide.edu.au], ACEBB & SGC, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Benham Bldg, DX 650 312, Adelaide SA 5005, Australia. Received 18.3.2014; revised 15.5.2014; accepted 23.5.2014.     

Translating Malraux

Malraux, A., The Temptation of the West (University of Chicago Press, 1992), 136pp., US$10.95; The Conquerors (University of Chicago Press, 1992), 210pp., US$10.95; The Walnut Trees of Altenburg (University of Chicago Press, 1992), 234pp., £11.95     

Book reviews

Ravi Arvind Palat (ed.). Pacific‐Asia and the Future of the World System. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. 1993. vii + 206 pp. $US55.00 (cloth).

Eric Jones, Lionel Frost and Colin White. Coming Full Circle: An Economic History of the Pacific Rim. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993. xv + 188 pp. $US49.95 (cloth), $US12.95 (paper).

Andrew MacIntyre (ed.). Business and Government in Industrialising Asia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994. xi + 312 pp. $29.95 (paper).

Michael C. Howard (ed.). Asia's Environmental Crisis. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993. ix + 293 pp. $44.95 (paper).

Richard W. Baker (ed.). The ANZUS States and Their Region. Regional Policies of Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 1994. xiii + 228 pp. $US57.95.

Stephen Chee (ed.). Leadership and Security in Southeast Asia: Institutional Aspects. Singapore: ISEAS, 1991. xii + 187 pp. $US25.00 (cloth), $US17.00 (paper).

Gerald L. Curtis (ed.). Japan's Foreign Policy After the Cold War. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993. xxvi + 382 pp. $US60.00 (cloth), $US22.50 (paper).

Taichi Sakaya. What is Japan? Contradictions and Transformations, trans. Steven Karpa. New York, Tokyo and London: Kodansha International, 1993. xxii + 312 pp. No price given.

Bill Brugger and Stephen Reglar. Politics, Economy and Society in Contemporary China. London: Macmillan, 1994. vii + 367 pp. $36.55 (paper).

Sung Chul Yang. The North and South Korean Political Systems: A Comparative Analysis. Boulder, CO: Westview/Seoul: Seoul Press, 1994. xiii + 983 pp. $US64.95 (cloth).

Mark L. Clifford. Troubled Tiger: Businessmen, Bureaucrats and Generals in South Korea. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994. xiii + 357 pp. $US19.95 (paper).

Thongchai Winichakul. Siam Mapped. A History of the Geo‐Body of a Nation. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994. xvi + 228 pp. $US34.00 (cloth).

Derek Tribe. Feeding and Greening the World — The Role of International Agricultural Research. Wallingford: Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International, 1994. xiii + 274 pp. $35.50 (paper).

Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker. Earth Politics. London: Zed Books, 1984. xii + 234 pp. $US59.95 (cloth), $US25.00 (paper)

Neil Middleton, Phil O'Keefe and Sam Moyo. Tears of the Crocodile: From Rio to Reality in the Developing World. London: Pluto Press, 1993. xii+ 228 pp. $US66.50 (cloth), $US19.95 (paper).

Boris Kagarlitsky. The Disintegration of the Monolith, translated by Renfrey Clarke. London and New York: Verso, 1992. x + 169 pp. No price given.

George Schöpflin. Politics in Eastern Europe, 1945–1992. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, USA: Blackwell Publishers, 1993. viii + 327 pp. $39.95 (paper).

Andrei S. Markovits and Philip S. Gorski. The German Left: Red Green and Beyond. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993. xiii + 393 pp. $45.00 (paper).

Raymond L. Garthoff. The Great Transition: American‐Soviet Relations at the End of the Cold War. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994. xiv + 834 pp. $US44.95 (cloth), $US14.95 (paper).

Richard N. Haass. Intervention: The Use of Military Force in the Post‐Cold War World. Washington, DC: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1994. x + 258 pp. $US24.95 (cloth), $US12.95 (paper).

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The State of the World's Refugees: The Challenge of Protection. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. ix + 191 pp. $19.95 (paper).

Francis M. Deng. Protecting the Dispossessed: A Challenge for the International Community. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1993. xii + 175 pp. No price given.

Paul Wehr. Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess (eds). Justice without Violence. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994. ix + 300 pp. $US45.00 (cloth), $US18.95 (paper).     

The civil war and its aftermath

Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, 1640–1649. By David L. Smith (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xiv + 371 pp.

Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II, 1660–1685. By Alan Marshall (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xvi + 334 pp.

Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 1678–81. By Mark Knights (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xv + 424 pp.