Anglo-American followers or Antipodean iconoclasts? The 2008 TRIP survey of international relations in Australia and New Zealand

This article examines the results of the world's largest ever survey of international relations (IR) scholars with an eye to establishing the particularities of the discipline in Australia and New Zealand. The survey covered the areas of teaching, research, the structure of the profession and scholars’ views on foreign policy. From these results, this paper compares IR in New Zealand and Australia, and discusses the extent to which the discipline in these two countries is distinctive from its overseas counterparts, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. The particular areas of focus include the degree to which the field in Australasia conforms to or differs from US or Commonwealth identities; epistemological and gender divides; the distinctive foci of what IR scholars in both countries teach and research; which publications are favoured and disfavoured; and the contrasting linkages between academia and the world of government and policy. We conclude with some suggestions about how the field in both countries might be improved.     

Can Australia save the world? The limits and possibilities of middle power diplomacy

Australian policymakers have always harboured a desire to ‘punch above their weight’. On occasions they have succeeded. At a time when Australia's strategic, economic and environmental future is inextricably bound up with that of its immediate neighbours and the wider world, there are compelling reasons for hoping that they still can. This paper explores some of the most important aspects of Australian foreign policy during the Rudd era and asks whether the Australian government can play a constructive—even an exemplary—role in finding solutions for some of the planet's most pressing problems.     

Australian Federalism and Domestic Violence Policy-Making

The influence of state architecture on gender policy and politics is an emergent strand of feminist research. This paper contributes to this research by undertaking a detailed case study of one specific gender policy area – domestic violence policy – in old federation Australia. Drawing on the experiences of the past decade, it confirms earlier research findings that demonstrate that under certain conditions, federal structures can influence the development of gender policy in positive ways, such as providing opportunities for ‘venue shopping’ and policy innovation. The paper engages, too, with recent research on Australian federalism and challenges the consensus about the centralised nature of the Australian federal system by demonstrating that in the area of gender policy, states and territories are more than just the implementation arms of the Commonwealth government. Sub-national governments continue to play an important and autonomous role in policy relating to women and therefore remain central sites for advancing gender equality.     

Money talks: banknote iconography and symbolic constructions of Scotland

ABSTRACT. It has become common for scholars of nations and nationalism to use banknotes, coins and postage stamps as passing examples of everyday objects expressive of nationalism. Until recently, however, it has been less common for these objects to form the focus of empirical enquiries that substantiate their contribution to the creation and transmission of national symbolism. This article addresses this lacuna through an empirical investigation of over 300 years of Scottish banknote iconography. In their symbolic content, banknotes are shown to be amenable to the service of both national and non‐national political agendas. To explain this phenomenon, we advance three interrelated arguments. First, we contend that variations in banknote iconography reflect the different political contexts in which notes were produced and the distinctive loyalties and customer constituencies of the banks that issue them. Second, we argue that changes in banknote imagery reflect changes in the scale of their circulation. Third, we argue that Scottish banknotes have always included iconography that constructs the image of the bank and advertises its reliability, often through association with national images. The article concludes by addressing Scotland's place in wider understandings of the iconographic power of banknotes.     

The politics of recognition: symbols,nation building and rival nationalisms

ABSTRACT. Ceremonial initiatives linked to nation‐building projects are highly visible in multiethnic states, where governments seem to have adopted a Durkheimian approach in which ceremonies contribute to the strengthening of communities. However, national ceremonies are not invented or exported to other nations easily, as seen when outlining the pattern of a successful national day. A unifying narrative (sometimes the historical genesis) is significant in the establishment of successful national days, as is the nature of the national day design. The celebrations of the constitution in Norway – and the 77 year struggle to get the Norwegian flag officially recognised – became part of resisting the enforced union with Sweden (1814–1905). Therefore, the growth of Norwegian nationalism must be understood in the context of rival nationalisms in Scandinavia. However, Constitution Day (17 May) has remained a powerful component of Norwegian nationalism long since the constitution ceased to be threatened because of its incorporation in primary and secondary school curricula and, more recently, within the debate on multiculturalism.     

Premature exit from and delayed entrance into the less developed status: An empirical appraisal of the structural funds allocation criterion

This paper investigates the impact of the main criterion employed by the European Commission for the allocation of the largest portion of Structural Funds, based on the threshold of the 75% of European Union (EU) average gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. We focus on the 2014–2020 programming period and on EU-15 regions to analyze if this criterion has penalized some of them, as a consequence of the 2004 EU enlargement, which has represented an exogenous shock in the allocation process, due to the economic backwardness of new member states. Through the application of Synthetic Control Methods and Difference-in-Differences estimators at different geographical scales, we show that regions that did not obtain the less developed status in both the programming period 2007–2013 and 2014–2020, but that would have obtained it in the period 2014–2020 without the 2004 EU enlargement, experienced a significantly lower GDP per capita growth between −10.5% and −5.7%. Conversely, territories that in the period 2014–2020 lost the less developed status, previously obtained in the time frame 2007–2013, were not characterized by a significantly lower economic growth, providing some evidence of the effectiveness of the safety net.     

Environmentalism and Chinese urban order: The ecological control line policy in Shenzhen,China

There has been growing research interest in processes of selective ‘ecological gentrification’ and ‘environmental enclosure’ in cities where environmental controls are used to attract and retain more affluent residents and attract higher value economic development. This dimension of urban policy might be increasingly relevant to major Chinese cities, which are facing increasing competitive pressures to reorient modes of growth and development around ecological security and quality of life in social and environmental domains. In that context, we examine the development and implementation of the ‘basic ecological control line’ policy (BECL) in the fast-growing city of Shenzhen. In essence the BECL marks a rezoning of the city to enhance ecology and reverse previous environmental degradation, but in doing so it also does political work in reordering space in line with changing economic and social priorities. The question we ask is how the BECL might be read in the context of ecological gentrification and the wider political context of Chinese urban policy. Through detailed empirical investigation, we trace the political economy of the BECL and draw out the insights it offers on transitional urban economy-ecology relations in China and theories of urban environmentalism more generally.     

Multiculturalism in taiwan

This study explores the contradictions and challenges in the development of multiculturalism in cultural policy in Taiwan. The approach used involves an exposition and critique of the two dominant models of multiculturalism in Western theory – namely, liberal multiculturalism and postmodern multiculturalism. From the perspective of liberal multiculturalism, I argue that ignorance of multicultural citizenship limits the scope and impact of multicultural policy. I then go on to suggest that postmodern multiculturalism addresses problems related to the visibility of cultural differences and shifting identities. Through analysing the various contradictions and challenges inherent in these two approaches, this study hopes to identify appropriate forms of multiculturalism capable of taking into account both multicultural citizenship and the dynamics of cultural diversity.     

THE AMBIVALENCE OF POSTCOLONIAL MAURITIUS

At the independence of Mauritius, multiculturalism policy, as part of the decolonisation agenda of “Mauritianisation”, was instituted in education. The official English language, through the curriculum, was buttressed to police the population according to the moral standards of multiculturalism. In this article, popular culture as manifested through ethnographic research into students’ negotiations of official multiculturalism implemented through school textbooks, will be shown to flout policy. It will be demonstrated that resistive cultural practices of Mauritian students, embodied by vernacular Creole, contest the cultural essentialism promoted by the government. Creole language, in particular, and various in‐between cultural experiences articulate the hybrid, diasporic and global dimensions of the lives of ordinary postcolonial Mauritians.