ROOM: HAYDON-ALLEN TANK |
STREAM: DISCIPLINARY HISTORY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE |
Joan Rydon
Over forty years in political science
Peter McCarthy, Australian National University
Political science at the ANU's Research School of Social Sciences: The early
years
This paper provides a context for five major publications from
the earlier years of the Political Science Department in the Australian National
University's Research School of Social Sciences. These works, all loosely categorised
as electoral studies, were: Leicester Webb's Communism and Democracy (1954);
Henry Mayer and Joan Rydon's The Gwydir By-Election (1954); Don Rawson and Susan
Holtzinger's Politics in Eden-Monaro (1958); Don Rawson's Australia Votes (1961);
and Don Aitkin's Stability and Change in Australian Politics (first ed., 1977).
Starting from an examination of the character of these works-the specific problems
each set out to address and the methodologies adopted-the context for these
works can be identified by exploring their institutional background and disciplinary
location. The institutional background includes Webb's ambitions for the new
Department and the way in which these ambitions were linked to the larger purposes
of the newly established University. Something can also be learned about the
various authors' educational and professional backgrounds as well as their intellectual
styles, and how these impacted on the works. Examining both Australian and overseas
activities gives an understanding of the wider disciplinary location of these
works. Central to the story of these works is the stated ambition to match existing
British and American approaches, in particular, those found in the Nuffield
Studies and publications of the Survey Research Center at the University of
Michigan. There was also some comparable work being done in other Australian
universities during this period. Finally, critical responses to the five works
can tell us something about what were seen as the needs of political scientists
in Australia and perhaps as well about what the Department achieved in its early
years.
Michael Crozier, Department of Political Science, University
of Melbourne
Political times and intellectual tides: The Australasian Political Studies
Association archive
It is customary in jubilee years to celebrate achievements.
Often mere perseverance emerges as the most notable of these. The Australasian
Political Studies Association has certainly endured though some may ask why
and how. It has not had a strong role in the professional gatekeeping of the
practice of political studies in the academy or beyond. The sense of disciplinary
cohesion has been weak. Many a common research program seems to have developed
with little sense of obligation to the association as a necessary scholarly
conduit. According to these type of criteria, APSA hardly seems to meet the
necessary threshold of a professional disciplinary association. The question
then becomes what has persisted? This paper will pursue this question, surveying
APSA archive materials such as official publications and newsletters, periodical
membership surveys, annual conferences papers and assorted documents. The paper
will situate the archival profile within the wider political-intellectual climate,
exploring the interrelationship between intellectual developments-domestically
and internationally-and political and social shifts and trends. A working hunch
of the paper is that the 'loose ties' of the association may be one of its enduring
strengths in the Antipodean context.
ROOM: G 008 |
STREAM: WOMEN AND POLITICS |
Pat Brewer, School of Management & Policy, University
of Canberra
Has identity politics shifted feminism to the right?
Identity is central in the development of political movements.
It operates at both the level of the individual and the collectivity. Yet the
content of such an identity can be located anywhere within the political spectrum.
It has been argued that the second wave of feminism, women's liberation, emerged
from the left in the late '60s and was located firmly on the left. While not
contesting feminism's left origins, this paper examines the impact of the successes
of feminism as a political movement within a climate that has shifted to the
right. It argues that neo-liberal policies and the growth of fundamentalist
religious groups, along with the collapse of the former socialist states in
Europe and the USSR have created a climate in which the movement, intellectually
and organizationally, has moved in a rightward direction. Central to the intellectual
shift is the conception of the identity 'woman' based on polarized difference.
Such a view has both unified and divided feminism. The content of the politics
of difference has combined with the political attacks and ideological content
used by the forces hostile to feminism. This has organizational consequences
for feminism. It has combined ideological similarity with the consequences of
material and personal insecurity flowing from the policies advocated on the
basis of the feminist analysis of the family. Gains made opening alternatives
for women from the pressures of the family have backfired when many women confront
the insecurities generated by the shift to market driven economic rationalism.
Feminism is portrayed as the cause of such insecurity in attacking the apparent
'security' of the past. At the same time the very success of feminism in overcoming
many of the barriers to access to equality for some, has obscured the ongoing
nature of inequality faced by the majority of women.
Tahnya Barnett Donaghy, Hawke Institute, University of
South Australia
Equality mainstreaming: Lesson learning from Northern Ireland
Mainstreaming has been hailed as the new wonder-drug of equal
opportunities. In the last decade gender mainstreaming has received support
and endorsement from the United Nations, European Union and Council of Europe,
Commonwealth Secretariat, and many governments world-wide and has been _proselytised_
by organisations such as the World Bank, the ILO, and the OECD. At a time when
both practitioners and academics are calling for a greater understanding and
research on mainstreaming this paper develops both a practical case study and
explores some of the deeper conceptual understandings of mainstreaming models,
through the analysis of the Northern Ireland mainstreaming equality approach.
Recently Northern Ireland, a region not traditionally associate with equality
developments, has emerged as one of the world leaders in mainstreaming equality
policy. The policy involves a statutory duty on all public authorities to give
due regard to the promotion of equality of opportunity on nine different counts
(gender, marital status, dependant status, age, sexual orientation, disability,
race, religion and political opinion). Through the Northern Ireland Act 1998
a number of detailed requirements of public authorities are specified in relation
to this duty, and its implementation is overseen by a rigorous and committed
Equality Commission. This paper explores the development, breadth and depth
of this model. It charts its emergence in relation to local political developments,
and preliminary conclusions are drawn regarding the strengths and weakness of
this unique approach. The paper then provides a theoretical analysis of the
methods employed, contributing the conceptual understandings of mainstreaming
models and offering a new dimension to the understanding their development and
application. As Australia has been identified as a country in which early mainstreamed
advancements were made, and later co-opted and manipulated, this paper will
provide an interesting insight into a case study in which Australia could draw
and learn from.
ROOM: G 009 |
STREAM: POLITICAL THEORY |
Problems of liberalism
Aleksandar Pavkovic
Secession from a liberal state: Is it justified?
Unilateral secession breaches the majority principle and the
principle of equal rights to which a liberal democratic state should adhere.
How can one justify such a breach in a case in which the seceding state also
aspires to be a liberal democratic state? I argue that a breach of the majority
rule can be justified in a case in which the parent state refuses to negotiate
over the secession with a secessionist political leadership which had already
won a referendum for a secession. Through the referendum the secessionist group
had petitioned the parent state to change its constitutional order so as to
enable the group to pursue a politically satisfying life in a separate state
'of their own'. If the parent state refuses to negotiate over secession, it
thereby denies the secessionist group the liberty of a pursuing a politically
satisfying life. Secession in such a case becomes the only effective instrument
the secessionist have for the defence of that liberty.
John W Tate, School of Policy, University of Newcastle
Liberalism and its limits
Liberalism is a contested term. While many liberals will agree
on its more central values, its boundaries and limits are open to continual
dispute and negotiation. For instance, the liberal tradition's historic commitment
to plurality and diversity has necessarily entailed limits - that point where
certain types of differences are no longer tolerated. This paper argues that
liberalism has been defined by intrinsic and extrinsic limits - those which
it has imposed on itself and those which have been imposed upon it, not least
by liberalism's institutional context within the wider sphere of state systems
and democratic politics. In the wake of September 11, it is the latter type
of limit which has become more salient within contemporary political practice.
This paper looks at the historical experience of liberalism within Australia
and the United States, and focuses on those periods where liberalism has been
under the most intense pressure to concede extrinsic limits, in favour of state
and democratic concerns about national security. To what extent is liberalism
able to defend its intrinsic limits against such extrinsic demands in these
circumstances?
Jennifer Wilkinson, Cumberland College of Health Sciences,
University of Sydney
Putting privacy before the public: Why liberalism inverts accountability
in journalism ethics
Journalists place great emphasis on the importance of the public
and the validity of democratic principles in explaining the moral value of their
profession. Journalists claim they have a special duty to represent the public.
This duty and the principle of public accountability to which it is attached
is seen to derive from the liberal theories of democracy. Accountability is
often explained by invoking powerful democratic legitimations about the rights
of the public, but in actual journalistic practice, the scope of democracy is
principally confined to considerations about the rights of the individual .
Communitarian theories show us that liberalism is far better at protecting the
rights of the individual, than it is at securing civic obligation in the sense
of a civic community or expanding the terms of public participation. It is because
of the narrow liberal underpinnings of journalism that discussions of media
ethics have traditionally been focussed on the democratic significance of privacy
rather than the democratic importance of public accountability. This paper will
explore these propositions. I take up the issue of public accountability by
moving outside the liberal paradigm to evaluate the notions of public within
the civic traditions of democracy.
ROOM: G 010 |
STREAM: INTERNATIONAL POLITICS |
Constructive
history: Delineating theoretical divides and conquering schisms in IR
Chair: Nicole George
Disc: Leonard Seabrooke
Over the past two decades scholars have deconstructed the dominant claims to
knowledge in the discipline of international relations (IR). Their work has
not only fostered new appreciation of limitations in social scientific analysis.
It has also provided a more acute awareness of the manner in which the contours
of contemporary theoretical enquiry have been produced over time. The papers
in this panel use critical analyses of the construction of knowledge to identify
latent opportunities for new axes of disciplinary dialogue. We focus on the
manner in which divides between various forms of scholarship have been validated
and reified during the historical development of academic IR. We then offer
a range of novel methodological and conceptual devices to assist scholars in
working across and around these problematic schisms. The panel will not only
explore the contested nature of our knowledge, it will outline new ways of mining
the discipline‚s intellectual diversity.
Darshan Vigneswaran
An ahistorical discipline? The conceptual contours of academic IR
Few scholars would dispute that the entrenched representations,
interpretations and classifications that underpin the discursive practices of
academic international relations (IR), have a powerful influence on the ways
in which they ask and answer questions. The mutually constitutive relationship
between the history of international thought and modern IR theory significantly
shapes the collective frame(s) of reference that contemporary scholars employ.
This paper critically evaluates the ways in which histories of international
thought inform collective understanding of the relationship between the intellectual
endeavours of past and present. By analysising how and why orthodox claims and
characterisations structure the ways in which past contributions to the study
of the international realm are interpreted and discussed, we hope to provide
important insights into the epistemic and sociological foundations of academic
IR. The contemporary study of IR is framed by a complex amalgam of tradition,
orthodoxy, mythology and convention. This paper is primarily concerned with
three important aspects of disciplinary orthodoxy - i) the set of ideas that
underpin academic IR's claim to a clearly demarcated conceptual/disciplinary
space; ii) the ways in which the claims, characterisations and classifications
of prominent histories of international thought help to sustain the idea of
a venerable tradition of theoretical enquiry into the Śinternational‚; and iii)
the connections between the constructed context of past works and contemporary
notions of what constitutes legitimate IR scholarship. Since the consideration
of the international realm was not consistently divorced from the study of law,
politics, history, economics and/or religion until the early to mid 20th century,
the development of academic IR involved a complex process of disciplinary construction
and differentiation. Histories of international thought have played a crucial
role in the shaping the way in which the internal and external faultlines of
academic IR have evolved over time.
Joel Quirk
The construction of an edifice: The story of a First Great Debate
A diverse range of conceptual tools and classificatory schemes have been formulated
by a long line of scholars who have attempted to systematise the history of
the study of international relations (IR.) Given this diversity, it is unfortunate
that simplistic classificatory schemes or scripts have acquired a privileged
status within the discursive practices of academic IR. One of the most prominent
and widely accepted of these script claims that the academic discipline of IR
has been shaped by a series of ŚGreat Debates.‚ The story of the debates provides
a ritualised account of how IR scholarship has made disciplinary progress through
a series of seminal debates which challenged a previously entrenched orthodoxy.
The privileged status of the story of the ŚGreat Debates‚ is such that it significantly
shape the key reference points which inform the collective self-understanding(s)
of contemporary IR scholars. This paper explores the ways in which the retrospective
construction and reification of a ŚFirst Debate‚ has misrepresented the intellectual
history of the early decades of academic IR. Disciplinary orthodoxy presents
the triumph of the Realists over the inter-war Idealists in a First Debate in
the late 1930s and 1940s as a catalytical turning point. This Śvictory‚ is presented
as a turning point that radically reoriented a previously naďve discipline towards
hard headed, Śrealistic‚ forms of theoretical analysis. Despite the way in which
decades of theoretical prejudice have been partially justified by Realism‚s
ostensible Śvictory‚ in this debate, its claims and characterisations have rarely
been directly examined or challenged. A number of scholars have provided nuanced
treatments of various aspects of the IR scholarship of this period. While such
works have (often implicitly) problematised the story of a First Debate, they
have not provided an alternate account of the significant and diverse changes
in IR scholarship that occurred in the mid-twentieth century. By problematising
the place of a First Debate within existing orthodoxy, we seek to provide a
more sophisticated account of the series of intellectual shifts which the story
of the debate purports to explain.
Chris Reus-Smit
Imagining society: Constructivism and the English School
This paper critically examines the current relationship between
constructivism and the English school. I begin by arguing that although important
points of convergence have been identified and emphasized, scholars in both
schools have worked largely with stereotypes of the other, and this has greatly
impeded productive dialogue and cross-fertilization. Constructivists have almost
exclusively focused on the 'ontological' aspects of English school theory, ignoring
altogether its crucial 'normative' aspects. For their part, English school scholars
have defined constructivism almost totally in terms of the writings of Alexander
Wendt, thus giving constructivism an unnecessarily statist and positivist profile.
A more fruitful strategy, I suggest, is to treat both schools as bounded fields
of debate, as rich and diverse realms of internally contested thought. Constructivism,
for instance, is characterized by three key axes of debate: between sociological
institutionalists, Habermasian communicative action theorists, and Foucauldian
genealogists; between unit-level, systemic, and holistic theorists; and between
interpretivists and positivists. The English school is also divided between
pluralists and solidarists, between those who identify the school with international
society theory and those who see it as inherently multifaceted, and between
those who emphasize interpretive or eclectic methodologies. Opening up each
approach in this way enables us to identify new, potentially rewarding axes
of dialogue. In particular, acknowledging the English school's normative reflections
on the relationship between order and justice can help constructivists to develop
more secure foundations for the subterranean normativity that motivates much
of their work. And recognizing the communicative and holistic strands of constructivism
can enable English school theorists to move beyond the unsustainable and increasingly
unproductive debate between pluralists and solidarists.
ROOM: G 015 |
CONFERENCE REGISTRATION |
ROOM: G 030 |
STREAM: AUSTRALASIAN POLITICS |
Rachel Gibson, ACSPRI Centre for Social Research, Research
School of Social Sciences, Australian National University; and Stephen Ward
State parties use of the internet in Australia
The World Wide Web (WWW) is used increasingly for communication
by citizens and governments in most advanced democracies. Systematic study of
its uses by, and effects on, traditional political actors such as parties and
their voters, however, have generally been confined to the national level (Margolis
et al, 1998, 1999; Gibson and Ward, 1998, 2000b and 2000c, 2002; Tops et al,
2000; Newell). This paper seeks to address this deficit by investigating the
use of online technologies for parties at the state and territory level in Australia.
Specifically, the goals of the paper are three-fold: first, to profile the overall
levels of web activity by parties at the state level and the ease with which
those sites can be accessed; second, to show how far the sites focus on opening
the parties up to greater democratic scrutiny through information provision
and feedback; and finally, to compare parties' performance online across states
and consider how far other social and political factors are influencing their
uses of the Internet. In doing so, not only will we provide a fuller picture
of the enthusiasm of political actors in Australia for the new media technologies,
but we also begin to build a theoretical understanding of why some are more
enthusiastic than others. Does party outlook drive the move to get wired? Does
federalism play a role at all in the diffusion of new ICTs.? Do certain states
and territories have a greater web activity than others and if so, is this related
to demographic characteristics such as the size of the urban population, or
institutional factors, such as the electoral cycle or which party is in power.
Perhaps none of these are significant and it is party outlook that determines
most often who is online. In order to address these questions we focus on the
federal, state and territory web sites of the two major parties plus those of
the most active online minor party, the Australian Greens.
John Uhr, Political Science Program, Research School of Social
Sciences, Australian National University
Effective versus defective voting: Catherine Helen Spence's novel campaign
for electoral reform
This paper examines Spence's role in advocating proportional
representation (PR). My argument is that Spence saw Federation as her primary
opportunity to spread the practice of PR by targetting the Senate as the national
institution for 'effective' voting and representation. Unfortunately, few commentators
have examined what Spence saw as the 'defective' character of conventional voting
and representation. I present a new account of Spence's political project, based
in part on a reappraisal of her early novels, which dramatise many 'defective'
elements of democratic politics, as well as her more public advocacy of electoral
reform for 'effective' democracy.
Ann Sullivan and Dimitri Margaritis
New Zealand Maori voting behaviour under MMP
This paper will analyse Maori voting behaviour and attitudes
using data from the 1999 and 2002 New Zealand General elections, and survey
data from the New Zealand Electoral Studies Project. It will demonstrate that
there are distinct differences between Maori and non-Maori voting patterns.
An analysis of underlying determinants of such differences will be presented
as well as a discussion of Maori attitudes on a number of socio-economic and
political issues.
ROOM: G 031 |
ROOM: G 053 |
Website maintained by Phil Griffiths. This page updated 30 September 2002