Senator Andrew Bartlett Judith Brett John Cash David Farrell David Farrell (panel) Brian Galligan Senator John Faulkner Graeme Gill Angus McIntyre Ian McLean Roger Markwick Robert F Miller Andrew Parkin Christopher Pyne TH Rigby Richard Sakwa James Walter Stephen Wheatcroft George Williams
PANELS
Electoral methods Electoral reform I Electoral reform II Psychological politics Federalism and the High Court Communism and the Soviet Union I Communism and the Soviet Union II
Keynote session: Electoral methods (Chair: Joan Rydon)
David Farrell, University of Manchester and Ian McAllister,
Australian National University
Preferences, tickets and transfers: The 1983 reform of the
electoral system to the Australian Senate and its consequences for preferential
voting
Australia is (rightly) proud of its long and distinguished contribution to the
development of electoral institutions, and this probably is best represented
by the imaginative and bold steps of electoral engineers in designing the country's
preferential electoral systems. While a small, rich (and fast growing) literature
pays attention to critical junctures in the evolution of the preferential systems
at federal level - notably in 1902, 1918/19, and 1949 - at most, only passing
reference is made to developments in 1983, when the Senate system of Single
Transferable Vote (STV) was amended in a number of important respects, most
notably with the introduction of 'ticket voting' and changes to the counting
procedures for 'surplus votes'. This paper will explore the background to, and
nature of these changes, placing them in the wider context of scholarly debates
over the place of preferential voting. A central question to be considered is
what such changes mean to our understanding of the principal features of STV:
ultimately, were the boundaries of what we understand as 'STV' breached in 1983?
Email: david.farrell@man.ac.uk
Keynote session: Electoral methods
Ian McLean, Politics, Oxford University
Australian electoral reform and two concepts of representation
The most distinctive Australian contribution to institutional design is the
construction of electoral systems. Before Federation, remote colonies were an
ideal seedbed for radical ideas on representation. Those ideas appealed to a
microcosmic concept of representation. Since Federation, politicians have mostly
stressed the rival (and partly incompatible) principal-agent concept of representation.
I analyse the work of E. J. Nanson (1850--1936; Professor of Mathematics, University
of Melbourne, 1875--1922) in this context. Nanson was one of only two anglophones
in the 19th century to understand social choice theory (the other being Lewis
Carroll). His fundamental papers were written in what was then one of the smallest
and most isolated anglophone universities in the world. Nanson's failure to
influence Australian institutional design at the foundation of the Commonwealth,
and the subsequent adoption of Nanson's recommendations for Senate elections,
both throw light on the incompatible conceptions of representation. So does
the 1983 amendment of Senate procedures, on which see David Farrell's paper
to this conference.
Iain McLean is Professor of Politics, Oxford University, and a fellow of
Nuffield College. He has held visiting appointments at Stanford, Yale, and the
ANU. He is interested in the properties of electoral systems and the history
of social choice. His books include 'Classics of Social Choice' (with A.B. Urken,
Michigan, 1995), and 'Rational Choice & British Politics' (OUP, 2001).
Panel: Electoral reform (Chair: Elaine Thopmson)
Christopher Pyne, Liberal MHR Sturt
Senator Andrew Bartlett, Australian Democrats, Queensland
David Farrell, Manchester University
Panel: Psychological politics (Chair: Jim Walter)
This is intended to be a panel discussion, looking both at questions relating
to the history and take up of political psychology in Australian political science,
and at current and future prospects. The speakers will be giving short presentations
at follows:
Judith Brett, La Trobe University
Revising the agenda for the study of Australian political culture: The Australian
state in every day life
John Cash, University of Melbourne
Political passions today
James Walter, Monash University
Reflections on the ‘Melbourne School’
Anthony Moran, La Trobe University, discussant.
Panel: Federalism and the High Court
Panel: Communism and the Soviet Union I (Chair: Les Holmes)
Graeme Gill, Economics, Sydney University
From the peasants to the bourgeoisie: Dealing with the Soviet
collapse
The collapse of the USSR created a major crisis in what had been known as Soviet
studies. Not only had the subject seemingly disappeared for political scientists,
but the range of methodologies and problems that had been unique to the field
of communist studies disappeared as well. Instead of appearing as something
very different from that range of countries routinely studied in Western comparative
politics, to many the post-Soviet states seemed simply to be new cases to add
to the regular comparative politics curriculum. As a result, a large number
of people with no background in Soviet studies but a highly developed methodological
capacity entered the Russian studies field. The results have not always been
fruitful. This paper argues that an understanding of the contemporary Russian
scene requires familiarity with the conditions of the Soviet predecessor, and
not just of its terminal period. This means not just that the Soviet period
remains directly relevant to today, but also that those former Soviet scholars
who seemed to despair for the future of their work were far too pessimistic.
Email: G.Gill@econ.usyd.edu.au
Roger Markwick, School of Liberal Arts, University of
Newcastle
The market as totalitarianism: The Russian experience
The "totalitarian state" was a key concept in Soviet studies at least up until
the 1970s, when it seemed succumb to a revisionist challenge, particularly from
social history. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, totalitarianism has
resurfaced as an analytical tool, not least among scholars from the former Soviet
world. In the name of "democratisation", the thrust of neo-liberal "reform"
in Russia and many other Soviet successor states has been to dismantle the all-embracing,
totalitarian Soviet-era state in the apparent belief that it would open the
way for market forces to flourish. In many respects, this has indeed been the
case. But the abrupt embrace of capitalism has cut a swathe through the fabric
of established social, political and economic relations. The trauma associated
with shock therapy and its aftermath has not only has had devastating social
consequences but has also undermined the capacity of a civil society to emerge
as a bulwark of democratisation. Private property and the market in Russian
civil society, with their capacity to coerce, shape, subordinate and penetrate
even into the most intimate aspects of social life and values, has proven to
be at least as "totalitarian" in Russia, if more subtle in its modus operandi,
as the crudely coercive, Soviet-era, state.
Email: roger.markwick@newcastle.edu.au
TH Rigby, Australian National University
Russian nationhood from its origins to Putin
By 'nationhood' is meant the (often problematic) conjunction of 'national identity'
and the socio-politcal order. Post-Soviet Russia has seen constant interplay
between competing visions of desirable futures and competing readings of Russia's
past. This paper refutes the view that nations are a purely modern phenomenon,
adducing evidence from ancient and British history and elsewhere to argue that
ethno-national identities have been a constant in human history. But so, too,
has been the interplay between such identities and socio-economic change, complicated
by often fraught relations with other nations. The paper traces the evolution
of Russian national identity from the settlement of the proto-Russians from
Central Europe to the late Tsarist period, identifying the critical factors
shaping it up to the Bolshevik revolution. Marxism-Leninism, professedly aiming
at the 'withering away' of the state following the elimination of all national
and exploitative class identities, became in practice a recipe for a greater
Russia with a state-enforced system of privilege enforced by a ubiquitous political
police. In its post-Stalin version, seeking compliance increasingly from material
incentives rather than harsh coercion, while fostering 'peaceful coexistence'
along with increased contacts with the West, it became steadily more vulnerable
to dissident opinion, fostering a diverse 'shadow culture', which included visions
both of Russian and non-Russian 'national identity'. Under Gorbachev's Perestroika,
leading to a withering of censorship and an upsurge of non-communist political
mobilisation, the Soviet state collapsed, with power passing to the governments
of the constituent republics, in each of which a new political reality emerged,
shaped by its current circumstances and its ethno-national identity. For Russians
this entailed the loss of a common statehood with their Ukrainian and Belorussian
'brothers', and a shrinking of borders to their pre-seventeenth century limits.
The impact of this on settled visions of Russian nationhood has been one of
the two dominant factors (the other being the impact of socio-economic reform)
in the political life of Russia under Yeltsin and Putin.
Email: thrigby@coombs.anu.edu.au
Robert F Miller, Australian National University
Humanitarian intervention and the politics of nationalism
in the former Yugoslavia
This paper represents an effort to apply Tony Coady's criteria for armed humanitarian
intervention and Aleksandar Pavkovic's recent article (East European Quarterly,
36:2) on foreign interventions in favour of particular nationalist movements
in Yugoslavia over the history of that country up to the present - to apply
these conceptions to the current situation in what's left of Yugoslavia and
Bosnia-Herzegovina. It looks at the distorting impact of foreign interventions
and subsequent efforts at nation-building on the political development of the
successor states and would-be states (Kosovo). It looks at the current electoral
campaigns in Serbia, Bosnia and at efforts to maintain the linkage between Serbia
and Montenegro in the face of determined local efforts to split them. It also
applies some of the lessons to the current situation in Afghanistan and Iraq
and concludes that although armed intervention is on rare occasions unavoidable,
it must never be undertaken lightly and without thorough debate and consultation
with regional forces who understand better the parameters of the specific conflict
situation and the likely problems of a post-intervention period.
Panel: Communism and the Soviet Union II (Chair: Les Holmes)
Richard Sakwa, Department
of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent at Canterbury (UK)
The Australasian contribution to Soviet and Russian studies
In a brief analysis it is impossible to do justice to the richness of the contribution
made by Australasian scholars to this field. Work by scholars from this region
has been characterised by a robust independence, and thus it is impossible to
categorise it as either belonging to the 'totalitarian' school or to the 'revisionist'
camp. In the field of Soviet politics and government, for example, we have a
number of specialists on the communist party and the state (e.g. T. H. Rigby,
Lloyd Churchward, Graeme Gill, Stephen Fortescue, John Miller) whose work resists
easy categorisation. Some have continued their work to cover the post-Soviet
period and have become renowned specialists on post-communist Russian politics
(Graeme Gill, Peter Lentini) or analysts of comparative communism and post-communism
(Leslie Holmes, T. Harry Rigby, Graeme Gill). There has also been a diversification,
with important specialists on Soviet and Russian foreign policy (Peter Shearman,
Bob Miller and Bobo Lo). A particular strength has always been historical research,
exemplified by the work of Stephen Wheatcroft , David Christian and Roger Markwick.
We can also be confident that the potential is far from exhausted, with a number
of younger specialists already making their mark (Emma Gilligan, Bobo Lo, David
Lockwood, and others) so that we can be assured that the baton is being passed
to a new generation. It should not be forgotten that at a crucial moment in
the transcendence of the communist order Australia played host to a number of
scholars from Eastern Europe. Notably, representatives of the so-called 'Budapest
school' found respite for a time here (for example, Agnes Heller and Ferenc
Feher). But can we identify something that could be labelled the 'Australian
school' of Communist and Russian studies? This paper will argue that we can,
and will develop the argument on the basis of a closer examination of the work
of some exemplars of this 'school'. We will focus in particular on the work
of a 'Sovietologist' (T.H. Rigby), a comparativist (Leslie Holmes), a historian
(Roger Markwick) and a post-communist Russianist (Graeme Gill). Although very
different in their work and approaches, there are certain elements that bring
them together. It is these features that this paper will explore.
Stephen Wheatcroft, History Department, University
of Melbourne
Seeing the Soviet experience in historical perspective
Stephen Wheatcroft's research has been aimed at applying social scientific approaches
to help improve our understanding of the Soviet system and the Soviet experience.
He was trained as an economic historian but has developed an interest in agricultural
and demographic history, and more recently in the history of political systems.
Much of his work is archival and quantitatively based. He approaches this subject
having studied in some detail the history and the politics of the Soviet statistical
system, which contrary to popular opinion was an extraordinarily competent system
and has generally produced valuable statistical records. It is one of the ironies
of the age, that the vast amount of good statistical data for a society undergoing
amazing change has been so little studied. The statistical data has often been
subject to gross political distortions, but if approached sensitively with an
understanding of the circumstances and conditions in which the data was collected
and processed, the data can yield remarkably valuable results. Wheatcroft believes
that the Soviet archives contain one of the wealthiest untapped sources of significant
social science data in the world, and he is actively involved in making these
materials more widely available. Wheatcroft's major work includes a) explaining
the courses and the significance of the agricultural depression of 1928-33 and
the associated famine of 1932-3; b) understanding the nature, scale and chronology
of the different type of repression in the Tsarist and Soviet system and explaining
their development; and more recently c) understanding the nature of the Stalinist
decision-making process through analyzing Stalin's institutional and less formal
links with the political elite and how these changed over time. His paper will
include prime examples from each of these areas.
Email: stephenw@truck.its.unimelb.edu.au
This site maintained by Phil Griffiths. This page updated 2 September 2002