“We're not a paper for working women,but of and by them”: Australian communist party womens’ papers 1930–1939

Historical studies of the radical left in Australia have, until recently, been neglectful of the contribution of female activists. The specific problems and issues faced by these women have been largely ignored. For instance, the principal academic history of the CPA mentions in passing only a handful of prominent women members and alludes to no issues which were of specific concern to the female membership of the CPA (Davidson, 1969). However, despite a ’line’ which opposed separate womens’ organisations, the CPA was sufficiently mindful of the specificity of a range of issues facing women to establish a separate national women's journal in 1930. This journal was called Working Woman, and continued in publication until 1936, when it was succeeded by a new journal entitled Woman Today, which went out of existence in 1939.     

France’s ‘elites’, Islamophobia,and communities of friendship in Sabri Louatah’s Les Sauvages

Sabri Louatah’s Les Sauvages (2011–2016) joins an ongoing discussion over the French political class’s relationship with the racial and religious divides in contemporary French society. Louatah portrays the political class as imposing from above a divide between French descendants of Muslim immigrants and their majority-culture compatriots, and suggests that the functioning of the modern state makes this necessary: states are founded upon communities of belonging which require the exclusion of given minorities, and will reimpose that exclusion with force if a more inclusive model of community threatens to emerge. Two readings of how Les Sauvages suggests we should respond to this are possible. One suggests that subjects should reject the state entirely, seeking to form inclusive communities escaping its control. Another suggests that the structures of the modern state should be appropriated to promote inclusion, but that the nature of modern democracy will prevent such action from succeeding completely; as such, traditional political engagement must work in conjunction with more radical attempts to form communities free from exclusion. Both readings, however, hold in common the idea that racial and religious divides are imposed from above and that these divides cannot be completely overcome while working within mainstream political structures.     

Reviews Australian

Francis G. Castles, The Working Class and Welfare: Reflections on the Political Development of the Welfare State in Australia and New Zealand, 1890–1980, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1985, pp.128. $11.95 (paper)

B. Costar and D. Woodward (eds), Country to National: Australian Rural Politics, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1985, pp.150. $24.95 (cloth), $12.95 (paper)

Jim Moss, Sound of Trumpets: History of the Labour Movement in South Australia, Adelaide, Wakefield Press, 1985, pp.454. $20.00 (paper).

Julianne Schultz, Steel City Blues: the human cost of industrial crisis, Ringwood, Penguin, 1985, pp.282. $7.95 (paper)

Jane Ross, The Myth of the Digger, Sydney, Hale & Iremonger, 1985, pp.251. $14.95 (paper)

Pat O'Malley, Law, Capitalism and Democracy: A Sociology of the Australian Legal Order, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1983, pp.204. $12.95 (paper)

A. Patience and J. Scott (eds), Australian Federalism: Future Tense, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1983, pp.217. $14.99 (paper)

Trevor Barr, The Electronic Estate: New Communications Media in Australia, Ringwood, Penguin, 1985, pp.271. $8.95 (paper)

Michael Roe, Nine Australian Progressives: Vitalism in Bourgeois Social Thought 1890–1960, St Lucia. University of Queensland Press, 1984, pp.328. $40.00 (cloth)

Strobe Talbott, Deadly Gambits, London, Pan Books, 1985, pp.380. £3.95 (paper)

Ian Clark, Limited Nuclear War, Oxford, Martin Robertson, 1982, pp.266 £9.95 (paper)

Peter Pringle and William Arkin, SIOP: Nuclear War from the Inside, London, Sphere Books, 1983, pp.225. £2.95 (paper)

R.F. Miller and F. Feher (eds), Khruschev and the Communist World, London, Croom Helm, 1984, pp.237. $31.95 (cloth)

N. Nugent and D. Lowe, The Left in France, London, Macmillan, 1982, pp.275. $18.95 (paper)

C. O'Faircheallaigh, Mining and Development: Foreign‐financed Mines in Australia, Ireland, Papua New Guinea and Zambia, Sydney and London, Croom Helm, 1984, pp.302. $33.95 (cloth)

D. C. Pitt and B. C. Smith (eds), The Computer Revolution in Public Administration, Brighton, Wheatsheaf Books, 1984, pp.214. £6.95 (paper)

R. L. Wettenhall, Architects of Departmental Systems: Five Profiles, Canberra, CCAE, Canberra Series in Administrative Studies, Occasional Paper 3, 1984, pp.60 (no price given).

Ian McAllister & Richard Rose, The Nationwide Competition for Votes: The 1983 British Election, London and Dover, Francis Pinter, 1984, pp.257. £12.00 (cloth)

F. Feher, A. Heller, G. Markus, Dictatorship Over Needs: An Analysis of Soviet Societies, Oxford, Blackwell, 1984, pp.299. $14.95 (paper)

Lea Campos Boralevi, Bentham and the Oppressed, European University Institute — Series C:I, Berlin and New York, Walter de Gruyter, 1984, pp.xii + 248. DM88.00 (cloth)

Conal Condren, The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts: An Essay on Political Theory, Its Inheritance, and the History of Ideas, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1985, pp.xiii + 303. US$36.00 (cloth)

J. M. Barbalet, Marx's Construction of Social Theory, London, Routledge & Regan Paul, 1983, pp. 228. $25.95 (cloth)

Dag Anckar and Erkki Berndtson (eds), Essays on Democratic Theory, Helsinki, Finnish Political Science Association, 1984, pp.166, US$10 (paper); and Ilkka Heiskanen and Sakari Hanninen (eds), Exploring the Basis of Politics, Helsinki, Finnish Political Science Association, 1983, pp.132, US$10 (paper).

Brian W. Head, Ideology and Social Science: Destutt de Tracy and French Liberalism (International Archives of the History of Ideas: 112), Boston & Dordrecht, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1985, pp.229. US$45.00 (cloth)

Z.A. Pelczynski (ed.), The State and Civil Society: Studies in Hegel's Political Philosophy, London, Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 300. £8.95 (paper)

Michael J. Shapiro (ed.), Language and Politics, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1984, pp.261. $17.95 (paper)

James M. Enelow & Melvin J. Hinich, The Spatial Theory of Voting : An Introduction, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 238. $59.50 (cloth), $21.00 (paper)

Jocelyn Clarke and Kate White, Women in Australian Politics, Sydney, Fontana Books, 1983, pp.216. $8.95 (paper)

Marian Sawer and Marian Simms, A Woman's Place: Women and Politics in Australia, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1984, pp.235. $11.95 (paper)

Marian Simms (ed.), Australian Women and the Political System, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 1984, pp.222. $11.95 (paper)

Race Mathews, David Bennett — a Memoir, Melbourne, Australian Fabian Society (Pamphlet 44), 1985, pp. v + 59. $3.00 (paper)     

A fatal flaw: Nairn's flight from theory

Bede Nairn, Civilising Capitalism: The Labor Movement in New South Wales, 1870–1900, ANU Press, Canberra, 1973, pp. 260 + xii, $8.95.     

Themes and Variations: Taking Stock of the Advocacy Coalition Framework

A policy process framework that has been developed to simplify the complexity of public policy is the advocacy coalition framework (ACF). This essay reports on an analysis of 80 applications of the ACF spanning nearly 20 years. The review shows that the ACF is applicable to various substantive topics, across various geographical areas, and with other policy process theories and frameworks, including the stages heuristic. The most commonly tested hypotheses involve policy change, learning, and coalition stability. Although the hypotheses tend to be confirmed, questions remain about the membership, stability, and defection of coalition members; about the causal mechanisms linking external events and policy change; and about the conditions that facilitate cross-coalition learning. Emerging areas of research include policy subsystem interdependencies and coordination within, and between, coalitions.