The Jaws Effect: How movie narratives are used to influence policy responses to shark bites in Western Australia

This article examines the way political actors use film narratives to influence policymaking following shark bites. To analyse these relationships I propose the concept of the Jaws Effect, where film-based historical analogies are used as a political device to frame real-life events in ways that make the events governable and prejudice certain policy options. Three elements of the Jaws Effect are reviewed including the intentionality of the shark, perception that these events are fatal and the belief that ‘the shark’ must be killed. These elements are applied to a case study of policy responses to shark bite episodes in Western Australia in 2000, 2003, 2011 and 2014. The reasons why this political device may not always work are also suggested.

本文研究了政治主体以什么方式使用电影叙事来影响鲨鱼咬人之后的政策制定。笔者提出“《大白鲨》效应”的概念,也就是以取自电影的历史类比为政治手段来言说现实生活中的事件,让事件根据言说者的需要,不利于某些政策选择。本文分析了《大白鲨》效应的三要素：鲨鱼的目的性;现实生活的事件性命攸关;鲨鱼必须被杀死。笔者将三要素用于研究2000、2003、2011和2014年西澳大利亚鲨鱼要人事件之后的政策反应。文章也探讨了为什么这种政治手法并不总能凑效。     

International relations and foreign policy in the Australian Journal of Political Science: A review

The Australian Journal of Political Science (AJPS) has evolved from a publication that deliberately relegated articles in international relations (IR) to a secondary status to one that has defined and encouraged leading-edge contributions to that field. This development can be attributed to successive AJPS editorial teams’ realisation that contemporary political problems are increasingly interconnected and that emerging approaches to IR reflect this condition. Several recent and key IR debates that have emerged within the journal’s pages are assigned special attention here: the linking of Australia’s domestic politics to that country’s foreign policy interests and behaviour; in-depth discussions that relate to ongoing trends in the international political economy; critical analysis of national defence and regional security postures; and diverse theoretical perspectives that are increasingly shaping the IR field’s paradigmatic identity. It is concluded that the AJPS is now a leading source of IR thought and discourse.     

Policy Networks in Complex Governance Subsystems: Observing and Comparing Hyperlink,Media, and Partnership Networks

Methods for observing policy networks have not kept up with the development of new network analytic techniques required to understand governance in complex settings. We compare three unobtrusive methods for observing policy networks based on hyperlinks between policy actor web sites, on media reports, and on public policy partnerships. Observations of one complex local water policy arena with all three methods provide a comparison of the general as well as actor‐specific network characteristics in the three observed networks. The core network of actors observed by all methods has similar network level statistics, highly correlated relationships measured by Quadratic Assignment Procedures models, and the same significant network microstructures as measured by Exponential Random Graph Models. The full networks including actors observed by any method also exhibit similar actor‐level characteristics, although the correlations across networks are stronger for bridging capital measures than for bonding capital measures, and each method has different apparent biases. Once biases are accounted for, similarities suggest that these methods may provide useful proxies for each other and for other relationships that are more difficult or impossible to measure, particularly when combined to offset each method's biases. If so, they can extend the range of policy networks observable with limited resources across space and time.     

Pivoting toward Asia: Comparing the Canadian and American Policy Shifts

Both Canada and the United States have “pivoted” toward Asia in their foreign policy over the past decade, although emphases in those pivots differed between the two countries. The former focuses on an economic pivot initially, the latter on a security one. What factors explain these shifts? What was the magnitude of policy change by both? Utilizing some important theoretical works by Charles Hermann, we discuss the factors that appear to have brought about this policy change toward Asia, outline the actions and activities that both countries have initiated toward Asia in the past decade to illustrate the type and magnitude of policy change that has occurred, and compare some areas of political, economic, and military similarities between Canada and the United States toward this region. Finally, we assess the likely future of these pivots to Asia in light of the change in political leadership within both nations.     

Tourism as a vehicle for regional development in peripheral areas – myth or reality? A longitudinal case study of Swedish regions

In the contemporary so-called ‘competition state era’, many rural and peripheral regions are in decline. Tourism is increasingly viewed as being able to alleviate and rejuvenate regions that are facing economic difficulties. The European Union has launched several programmes with the goal of stimulating growth and employment in peripheral areas. These programmes are often used to support tourism development projects. In this paper, a longitudinal analysis of spatial changes in Swedish tourism is conducted. The analysis is based on statistics regarding overnight stays in Swedish commercial accommodation facilities. The aim is to investigate if tourism and tourism policy contribute to the reduction in disparities between regions. Although there are exceptions, the main findings indicate that the potential for creating sustainable rural tourism growth through tourism policy seems to be much less than the popular discourse suggests.     

Borders,planning and policy transfer: historical transformation of development discourses in the Finnish Torne Valley

European Union spatial policies have become a key institutional context in which to study policy transfer processes in European border areas. These policies are, however, only the most recent part of these transformation processes which raises a need for more historically sensitive approaches. An historical perspective is important, since border regions are historical processes with particular path-dependent development trajectories and power structures. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion concerning the transformation of European border regions by looking at the policy transfer of regional development discourses in the Finnish Torne Valley. The study material consists of strategic development documents produced by the Finnish border municipalities and the municipal-based co-operation organizations from the 1930s to 2013. The examination, based on critical discourse analysis, shows that the transformation process is driven by national trends and the dominant planning discourse. Nevertheless, the particular border setting and local discourse on ‘united Torne Valley’ have also intertwined with political and economic processes during different time periods.     

When regional innovation policies meet policy rationales and evidence: a plea for policy analysis

In spite of recent advancements regarding regional innovation policy rationales and evidence, there are few analyses about the actual features of existing regional innovation policies. Nevertheless, a policy analysis perspective is important in order to recognize their distinctive patterns across regions, and to understand how rationales and evidence can be translated into policy-making. To this purpose, this paper develops a framework to study the extent to which regional innovation policies have changed during the past few years. Since the mid-2000s, there has been an important development of innovation policy rationales, advocating for more specialization; likewise, greater data availability at the regional level has allowed more sophisticated assessment of innovation performance. Finally, the crisis since 2008 has had ravaging effects in some regions, with job losses and severe economic sluggishness. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect transforming dynamics in regional innovation policies. Against this backdrop, the paper compares the institutional frameworks and budgetary priorities of four Spanish regions during the period 2001–2014: Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and Andalusia. In so doing, it aims at studying the extent to which regional governments have readily addressed past and new challenges related to their regional innovation system, and if so, how.     

Towards individualising couple finance: women’s housing assets and household decisions in Japan

Individualisation, which is increasingly promoted in European welfare states, tends to be absent from policy discourse as well as housing studies in Japan. It is largely because the ‘family as a unit’ is still a dominant approach in their household finance, social security and taxation systems, which also reflects women’s lack of home ownership. However, recent demographic trends such as falling marriage rates, low fertility and increased female labour participation indicate significant diversification in women’s life-course. Thus, today women making their own financial investment and house purchase have increasingly become popular practice. In this context, a new approach beyond the conventional ‘family as a unit’ may be required in the development of a new social contract. Drawing on data from qualitative research conducted among women in their 30s, this article explores the relationship between financial independence, household decisions and asset holding of partnered women in Japan, which reveals contested dimensions of women’s independence and autonomy in household and family life. Through the lens of home ownership, it considers the importance of promoting individual assets in order to foster gender equality in marriage.