Does Institutional Location Protect from Political Influence? The Case of a Minimum Labour Standards Enforcement Agency in Australia

Among the many factors that influence enforcement agencies, this article examines the role of the institutional location (and independence) of agencies, and an incumbent government's ideology. It is argued that institutional location affects the level of political influence on the agency's operations, while government ideology affects its willingness to resource enforcement agencies and approve regulatory activities. Evidence from the agency regulating minimum labour standards in the Australian federal industrial relations jurisdiction (currently the Fair Work Ombudsman) highlights two divergences from the regulatory enforcement literature generally. First, notions of independence from political interference offered by institutional location are more illusory than real and, second, political need motivates political action to a greater extent than political ideology.     

"Showplace of the Cherokee Nation": race and the making of a southern house museum

This article traces the restoration history of the Chief Vann House State Historic Site, a former Cherokee plantation owned and operated by the state of Georgia. The article explores the make-up of the restoration community in the 1950s and identifies aspects of convergence and divergence among this white, elite group in terms of both their visions for the site and their notions of how best to represent Indians. It argues that restorers used the restoration process as a route for personal and community identity enhancement, identifying with the storied Cherokee Indians and claiming "Indian" characteristics and the historical experience of Indian removal for themselves.     

Rethinking the Katangese Secession

This article, in analysing the Katangese secession of 1960–63, argues that it should be primarily understood not simply as the result of external machinations but, at least as importantly, as the initiative of indigenous Katangese political leaders. It charts the development of the Katangese national project among self-consciously ‘indigenous’ Katangese leaders, who responded to what they saw as an imposed and illegitimate Congolese nation-state by constructing a national imagery rooted in a mythico-historical reconstruction of a usable Katangese past. The article explains how this was utilised by the Katangese state during the secession to perform an ‘authentic’ Katangese national identity. In so doing, the article draws attention to the parallels between the Katangese nation-state project and attempts by post-colonial states to perform nationhood elsewhere in Africa.     

(Un)Informed Voting? A Test of Compulsory Voting Feedback Effects

Compulsory voting is known to increase turnout and produce a more representative electorate, but there is considerable debate about whether it stimulates political learning. Analyses of political knowledge using cross‐national and intranational observational data arrive at mixed conclusions. Experimental research is similarly inconclusive. We attempt to reconcile these disparate results by employing a novel experiment that tracks political learning during real elections and randomly assigns some people to receive a punitive threat for failure to cast an in‐person vote. We demonstrate that compelled voter participation can increase voter participation and political learning, but also prompts anger.