Bringing lessons from crisis management into the realm of wicked problems

Despite long-term research agendas around how to better understand and address wicked problems, they remain ‘wicked’ while crises generally come to an end. The objective of this paper is to assess whether governments seeking to address wicked problems can learn lessons from the insights of crisis management. While we are careful to avoid stretching the lessons of crisis management too far, we argue that there is untapped potential in establishing the broader applicability of crisis research to wicked problems. In doing so, we identify traditional roadblocks to addressing wicked issues and suggest that they are much less discernible in many crisis conditions. We then illustrate via a case study of the whole-of-government response to the 2011 Queensland Floods in Australia. The case has broader relevance beyond Australia in identifying how the challenges of crisis management can help us find better ways of addressing seemingly intractable wicked policy problems, particularly through strategic crisis framing.     

Stitching modernity: the textile work of Fortunato Depero

Fortunato Depero (1892–1960) was a Futurist artist who worked in a variety of artistic mediums, from painting and graphic design to furniture and textiles. His work in textiles, created and produced in close collaboration with his wife, Rosetta Amadori, can be considered the most important development in his artistic career, as it comprised a large portion of his creative production. Yet this work has been largely overlooked. Many reasons explain this oversight, including categorizing inconsistencies – for example, his textiles have been described as embroidery, needlework, tapestry, patchwork, and cloth mosaic – and the persistent relegation of textiles to the realm of crafts and domestic arts rather than art, which has meant that his work in textiles has not been a priority for scholars and conservators of Futurism. This paper places Depero's textiles within the context of early-twentieth-century modernist artistic activities, and demonstrates the centrality of his textile work to his artistic oeuvre.     

Policy Fiascos,Blame Management and AWB Limited: The Howard Government's Escape from the Iraq Wheat Scandal

In 1999, the Australian government privatised the statutory Australian Wheat Board and created AWB Limited, transferring the Board's assets and its export monopoly to a grower-controlled company. In 2000, allegations surfaced that AWB Limited had made payments to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime in order to secure lucrative wheat exports worth $500 million per annum. Such actions violated the terms of the United Nations' Oil-for-Food Programme and became one of the biggest corporate scandals in Australian history. It also placed considerable pressure on senior ministers in John Howard's coalition government who were vulnerable on a number of issues, including the existence of numerous warning signs and the extent of ministerial awareness. The purpose of this article is to outline and examine the federal government's role in managing the ensuing blame game. It utilises literature on policy fiascos and blame management to create a conceptual framework that is then applied to the unfolding dynamics of the AWB Limited case. It examines issues such as the roles played by the Cole Inquiry and the political language of ministers in steering blame away from ministers and towards AWB Limited and the UN.     

Remote crisis management: Australia's 2006 rescue of citizens trapped in Lebanon

On 12 July 2006, Hezbollah's kidnapping of two young Israeli soldiers was the catalyst for a sudden escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Lebanon was host to more citizens and permanent residents from Australia than any other country in the world. This article examines the monumental challenge faced by the Australian authorities in rescuing and repatriating its citizens who were caught up in the conflict. It does so through the conceptual lens of ‘remote crisis management’ i.e. episodes where one country's traditional crisis management challenges of rapid threats, uncertainty and the need for swift decision making are compounded by ‘political remoteness’. In other words, it lacks both political sovereignty and local infrastructure capacity for crisis resolution in a faraway county. The article focuses particularly on the remote crisis management challenges of making sense of the crisis, communication with a range of interests, and the logistical challenges of arranging and installing rescue and evacuation procedures. It also addresses the significance of Australia's prior evacuation experiences, as well as the capacity it had built in local and international networks. The article draws on a range of primary and secondary sources, including interviews with public servants and community representatives.     

The Growth Cone as Seen Through Cajal's Original Histological Preparations and Publications

Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) was first presented in a clinical setting in 1838. In this paper the presentation and treatment of a transient hemiparesis in a drummer in 1789 is discussed. This may have been an early case of MS and presents evidence against the theory that MS is an infectious disease beginning in the 19th century.     

Review Article: Finding the Way Back to the Ottoman Empire

DOROTHY H. CRAWFORD. Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped Our History. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. xiv, 250. $35.95 (US). Reviewed by Linda Bryder

GREGORY CLARK. A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. Pp. xii, 420. $29.95 (US).

JUDITH HERRIN. Byzantium: The Surprising Life oj a Medieval Empire. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008. Pp. xxiii, 391. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by Warren Treadgold

RICHARD A. GABRIEL. Muhammad: Islam's First Great General. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007. Pp. xxxi, 255. $24.95 (US). Reviewed by DONALD P. LITTLE

JONATHAN PHILLIPS. The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom. New Haven, C T and London: Yale University Press, 2008. Pp. xxix, 364. $40.00 (US). Reviewed by John France

JAMKS R. AKERMAN and ROBERT W. KARROW J R. eds. Maps: Finding Our Place in the World. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. ix, 400. $55.00 (US). Reviewed by John Agnew

JOHN E. HERMAN. Amid the Clouds and Mist: China's Colonization of Guizhou, 1200-1700. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2007. Pp. x,344. $49.50 (US). Reviewed by Laura Hostetler

CAROL RICHMOND TSANG. War and Faith: Ikho Ikki in Late Muromachi Japan. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007. Pp. x, 315. $39.95 (US). Reviewed by Ethan I. Segal

JOHN M. HEADLEY. The Europeanization of the World: On the Origins of Human Rights and Democracy. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008. Pp. xvi, 290. $26.95 (US). Reviewed by Jean H. Quataert

MARGARET R. GREER, WALTER D. MIGNOLO, and MAUREEN QUILLIGAN, eds. Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Pp. vii,478. $25.00 (US), paper. Reviewed by Teofilo F. Ruiz

KARLHEINZ BLASCHKE, ed. Moritz von Sachsen - Ein Filrst der Reformationszeit zwischen Territorium und Reich: Internationales wissenschaftliches Kolloquium vom 26. bit 28. Juni 2003 in Freiberg (Sachsen). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007. Pp. 336. €72.00. Reviewed by Johannes C. Wolfart

JOEP LEERSSEN. National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007; dist. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Pp. 312. $32.50 (US), paper. Reviewed by Peter Bergmann

IAN GENTLES. The English Revolution and the Wars in the Three Kingdoms, 1638-1652. London and New York, NY: Pearson Longman, 2007. Pp. xiv, 522. £21.99, paper. Reviewed by Mark Kishlansky

MICHELLE BURNHAM. Folded Selves: Colonial New England Writing in the World System. Hanover, NH and London: University Press of New England, 2007. Pp. viii, 222. $30.00 (US), paper. Reviewed by Ralph Bauer

LARISSA N. HEINRICH. The Afterlife of Images: Translating the Pathological Body between China and the West. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2008. Pp. xiv, 222. $22.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Benjamin A. Elman

MARGARET CONNELL SZASZ. Scottish Highlanders and Native Americans: Indigenous Education in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007. Pp. xv, 285. $34.95 (US). Reviewed by Michael E. Vance

THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY, ed. The Memoirs of Captain Hugh Crow: The Life and Times of a Slave Trade Captain, intro. John Pinfold. Oxford: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2007: dist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pp. xxiv, 198. $30.00 (US). Reviewed by Emma Christopher

ELLIOTT COLLA. Conflicted Antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2008. Pp. x, 345. $22.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by James F. Goode

GIOVANNI ARRIGHI. Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century. London and New York: Verso, 2007. Pp. xiii, 418. $35.00 (US). Reviewed by Peter C. Perdue

DIANA K. DAVIS. Resurrecting the Granary of Rome: Environmental History and French Colonial Expansion in North Africa. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007. Pp. xv, 296. $26.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Caroline Ford

GEORGE STEINMETZ. The Devil's Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. xxviii, 640. $33.00 (US), paper. Reviewed by Birthe Kundrus

NORMAN ETHERINGTON, ed. Mapping Colonial Conquest: Australia and Southern Africa. Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 2007; dist. Portland: ISBS. Pp. x, 220. $31.00 (US), paper. Reviewed by Patricia Seed

DUNCAN BELL. The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. Pp. x, 321. $45.00 (US). Reviewed by Eliga H. Gould

JEFF SAHADEO. Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007. Pp. x, 316. $45.00 (US). Reviewed by Robert D. Crews

MICHELLE T. MORAN. Colonizing Leprosy: Imperialism and the Politics of Public Health in the United States. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Pp. xiii, 280. $21.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Geoffrey S. Smith

PATRICK HARRIES. Butterflies and Barbarians: Swiss Missionaries and Systems of Knowledge in South-East Africa. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi, 286. $26.95 (US), paper Reviewed by Martin Legassick

ROGER KIRK, ed. Distinguished Service: Lydia Chapin Kirk, Partner in Diplomacy, 1896-1984. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi, 273. $22.95 (US). Reviewed by Betty Miller Unterberger

STEPHEN M. MILLER. Volunteers on the Veld: Britain's Citizen-Soldiers and the. South African War, l899-1902. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007. Pp. xii, 236. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by Timothy Bowman

WOLFRAM KAISER. Christian Democracy and the Origins of European Union. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xii, 374. $105.00 (US).Reviewed by Stefan Berger

JENS RUPPENTHAL. Kolonialismus als 'Wissenschaft und Tecknik': Das Hamburgische Kolonialinstitut 1908 bis 1919. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007. Pp. 273. €56.00, paper.Reviewed by Bradley Naranch

THOMAS W. BURKMAN. Japan and the League of Nations: Empire and World Order, 1914-1938. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2008. Pp. xv, 289. $58.00 (US). Reviewed by Frederick R. Dickinson

JEFF LIPKES. Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2007; dist. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Pp. 815- $55.95 (US), paper.Reviewed by Holger H. Herwig

LEONARD V. SMITH. The Embattled Self: French Soldiers' Testimony of the Great War. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2007. Pp. xi, 214. $39.95 (US).Reviewed by Jay Winter

SUZANNE EVANS. Mothers of Heroes, Mothers of Martyrs: World War I and the Politics of Grief. Montreal, QC and Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007. Pp. xii, 211. $29.95 (CDN). Reviewed by Amy Shaw

MERRILL D. PETERSON. The President and His Biographer: Woodrow Wilson and Ray Stannard Baker. Charlottesville, VA and London: University Press of Virginia, 2007; dist. Toronto, ON: Scholarly Book Services. Pp. xii, 262. $50.00 (CDN).Reviewed by Lloyd E. Ambrosius

ALEXANDER KEESE. Living with Ambiguity: Integrating an African Elite in French and Portuguese Africa, 1930-61. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007. Pp. 344. €46.00.Reviewed by Patrick Chabal

CHARLES BURDETT. Journeys through Fascism: Italian Travel Writing between the Wars. New York, NY and Oxford: Berghahn, 2007. Pp. x, 270. $85.00 (US). Reviewed by R. J. B. Bosworth

MICHAEL PHAYER. Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi, 333. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by Peter C. Kent

PETER STANSKY. The First Day of the Blitz: September 7, 1940. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2007. Pp. xii, 212. $24.00 (US). Reviewed by Paul Addison

CYNTHIA TOMAN. An Officer and a Lady: Canadian Military Nursing and the Second World War. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2008. Pp. ix, 261. $32.95 (CDN), paper.Reviewed by Linda J. Quiney

NEIL ROLLINGS. British Business in the Formative Years of European Integration, 1945-1973. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi, 278. $85.00 (US). Reviewed by John Gillingham

ANDREW J. BACEVICH, ed. The Long War: A New History of US National Security Policy since World War II. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007. Pp. xiv, 586. $75.00 (US). Reviewed by Thorsten B. Olesen

PATRICK WRIGHT. Iron Curtain: From Stage to Cold War. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi, 488. $34.95 (US). Reviewed by Robert J. McMahon

MARC GALLICCHIO, ed. The Unpredictability of the Past: Memories of the Asia-Pacific War in US-East Asian Relations. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2007. Pp. 337. $23.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Paul Midford

SUSAN RUBIN SULEIMAN. Crises of Memory and the Second World War. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2008. Pp. x, 286. $17.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Donald Reid

IAIN CHAMBERS. Mediterranean Crossings: The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2008. Pp. 181. $21.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Larry Wolff

VLADISLAV M. ZUBOK. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Pp. xvi, 467. $39.95 (US). Reviewed by Evan Mawdsley

KATHRYN C. STATLER. Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2007; dist. Toronto, ON: Scholarly Book Services. Pp. xii, 378. $56.50 (CDN). Reviewed by Mark Philip Bradley

YAFENG XIA. Negotiating with the, Enemy: US-China Talks during the Cold War, l949-1972. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006. Pp. xv, 326. $45.00 (US); GUANGQIU Xu. Congress and the US-China Relationship, 1949-1979. Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 2007. Pp. xi,409. $59.95 (US). Reviewed by Steven I. Levine

HANNFRIED VON HINDENBURG. Demonstrating Reconciliation: State and Society in West German Foreign Policy toward Israel, 1952-1965. New York, NY and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2007. Pp. vi, 229. $80.00 (US). Reviewed by Ronald J. Granieri

VANESSA R. SCHWARTZ. It's So French! Hollywood, Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. xvii, 259. $25.00 (US), paper. Reviewed by Naomi Greene

JOSEPH T.JOCKEL. Canada inNORAD, 1957-2007: A History. Montreal, QC: Mc-Gill-Queen's University Press, 2007. Pp. x, 225. $34.95 (CDN), paper. Reviewed by Ann Denholm Crosby

DAVID C. ATKINSON. In Theory and in Practice: Harvard's Center for International Affairs, 1958-1983. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Weatherhead Center for International Affairs; dist. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2008. Pp. xvi, 248. $17.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Irene Gendzier

LEN SCOTT. The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Threat of Nuclear War: Lessons from History. London and New York, NY: Continuum, 2007. Pp. xii, 222. $49.95 (US). Reviewed by James G. Blight

JOSEPH MORGAN HODGE. Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007. Pp. xiv, 402. $26.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Zaheer Baber

BERND GREINER. Krieg ohne Fronten: Die USA in Vietnam. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2007. Pp. 59.5. €35.00. Reviewed by Marc Frey

STIG TENOLD. Research in Maritime History: XXXII: Tankers in Trouble: Norwegian Shipping and the Crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. St John's, NL: International Maritime Economic History Association, 2006. Pp. x, 257. $25.00 (US), paper. Reviewed by Lars Berggren

MIRELA BOGDANI and JOHN LOUGHLIN. Albania and the European Union: The Tumultuous Journey towards Integration and Accession. London and New York, NY: I. B. Tauris, 2007. Pp. xiii, 272. £45.00. Reviewed by Judith Hoffmann

AHMAD S. MOUSSALLI. US Foreign Policy and Islamist Politics. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2008; dist. Toronto, ON: Scholarly Book Services. Pp. 224. $74.95 (US). Reviewed by Bassam Tibi

KENNETH J. HAGAN and IAN J. BICKERTON. Unintended Consequences: The United States at War. London: Reaktion Books, 2007; dist. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Pp. 223. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by Michael S. Sherry

BERNARD ROUGIER. Everyday Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam among Palestinians in Lebanon, trans. Pascale Ghazaleh. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2007. Pp. x, 333. $28.95 (US). Reviewed by Marion Boulby

GRAHAM E. FULLER. The New Turkish Republic: Turkey as a Pivotal State in the Muslim World. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2008. Pp. xi, 196. $14.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Dietrich Jung

GREGG BRAZINSKY. Nation Building in South Korea: Koreans, Americans, and the Making of a Democracy. Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Pp. xii, 311. $45.00 (US). Reviewed by Carl J. Saxer

ROBERT J. JACKSON and PHILIP TOWLE. Temptations of Power: The United States in Global Polities after 9/11. Basingstoke and New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Pp. xiv, 228. $85.00 (US), cloth; $28.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Andrew M. Johnston

AMY B. ZEGART. Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi, 317. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by Alan Warburton

LEIGH A. PAYNE. Unsettling Accounts: Neither Truth nor Reconciliation in Confessions of State Violence. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2008. Pp. xvi, 374. $23.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Jeremy Adelman

WILE KYMLICKA. Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. ix, 374. $35.00 (US). Reviewed by Peter Kivisto

ANDREAS FAHRMEIR. Citizenship: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Concept. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2008. Pp. vi, 299. $60.00 (US). Reviewed by Dorith Geva

AMITAI ETZIONI. Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy. New Haven, C T and London: Yale University Press, 2007. Pp. xviii, 336. $27.00 (US). Reviewed by Rein Müllerson

ELIZABETH SHAKMAN HURD. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008. Pp. xiii, 247. $22.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by James L. Gelvin

ROGER C. RIDDELL, Does Foreign Aid Really Work? New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. xxvi,505. $35.00 (US). Reviewed by ØYVIND ØSTERUD

MATTHEW CONNELLY. Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. Pp. xiv, 521. $35.00 (US). Reviewed by Alfred W. Crosby