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2. Year in Review 2011
- Author:
- J. Jackson Ewing (ed) and Alistair D.B. Cook (ed)
- Publication Date:
- 12-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS)
- Abstract:
- The year 2011 has seen the further prioritisation of nontraditional security (NTS) issues throughout research and policymaking circles in the Asia-Pacific region. Regional trends and events have highlighted the need for strategies that can help people, communities, states and organisations address multifarious security challenges, thus propelling the NTS platform to a higher stratum of political and institutional discourse.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Security, Climate Change, Development, Economics, Health, Poverty, Natural Disasters, and Food
- Political Geography:
- Asia and Australia/Pacific
3. Pacific Asia and the Asia Pacific: The Choices for APEC
- Author:
- C. Fred Bergsten
- Publication Date:
- 07-2009
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics
- Abstract:
- The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum comprises 21 developed and developing economies that surround the Pacific Rim. The organization was created in 1989 and holds annual Leaders' Meetings that bring together its heads of government. In this policy brief, I assess the record of the APEC over the 20 years of its existence and discuss the world environment in which APEC is likely to be operating in the next 20 years, with a particular focus on the major change in global institutional arrangements implied by the replacement of the Group of Seven/Eight (G-7/8) by the Group of Twenty (G-20) as the chief steering committee for the world economy and, within that group and other international economic organizations, the increasingly central role of an informal and de facto Group of Two (G-2) between China and the United States.
- Topic:
- International Relations, International Trade and Finance, Regional Cooperation, and Treaties and Agreements
- Political Geography:
- United States, China, Asia, and Australia/Pacific
4. The politics of post-trauma emotions: Securing community after the Bali bombing
- Author:
- Emma Hutchison
- Publication Date:
- 12-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Australian National University Department of International Relations
- Abstract:
- This paper examines how traumatic events can influence the constitution of identity and community in international relations. It demonstrates that emotions are central to how individuals and societies experience and work through the legacy of catastrophe. Often neglected in scholarly analysis of international relations, emotions can become pivotal sites for the renewal of political stability and social control. Key to this process are practices of representation. They provide individual experiences of trauma with a collective and often international dimension. They often smooth over feelings of shock and terror and unite individuals in a spirit of shared experience and mutual understanding. The paper illustrates the ensuing dynamics by examining the media's portrayal of the Bali bombing of 12 October 2002. Focusing on photographs and the stories that accompany them, the paper shows how representations of trauma may provide a sense of collective solace that can, in turn, underwrite the emotional dynamics of a political community.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Political Violence, and Terrorism
- Political Geography:
- Israel and Australia/Pacific
5. Skilled Emigration and Skill Creation: A quasi-experiment
- Author:
- Satish Chand and Michael Clemens
- Publication Date:
- 09-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Does the emigration of highly-skilled workers deplete local human capital? The answer is not obvious if migration prospects induce human capital formation. We analyze a unique natural quasi-experiment in the Republic of the Fiji Islands, where political shocks have provoked one of the largest recorded exoduses of skilled workers from a developing country. Mass emigration began unexpectedly and has occurred only in a well-defined subset of the population, creating a treatment group that foresaw likely emigration and two different quasi-control groups that did not. We use rich census and administrative micro data to address a range of concerns about experimental validity. This allows plausible causal attribution of post-shock changes in human capital accumulation to changes in emigration patterns. We show that high rates of emigration by tertiary-educated Fiji Islanders not only raised investment in tertiary education in Fiji; they moreover raised the stock of tertiary educated people in Fiji—net of departures.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Education, Markets, and Migration
- Political Geography:
- Asia and Australia/Pacific
6. US public diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific: Opportunities and challenges in a time of transition
- Author:
- Sarah Ellen Graham
- Publication Date:
- 12-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Australian National University Department of International Relations
- Abstract:
- Two key themes stand out within current US government reports and foreign policy commentaries on American public diplomacy. These are: firstly, that US efforts to attract 'hearts and minds' in the Middle East were inadequate before and immediately after the 11 September 2001 attacks on America and must be improved, and secondly that the administration of public diplomacy has required major reform in order to meet the challenge of engaging Arab and Muslim audiences into the future. This paper assesses US public diplomacy in a regional context that has not been subject to significant scrutiny within the post-11 September debates on US public diplomacy: the Asia–Pacific. This oversight is lamentable, given Washington's significant security and economic interests in the Asia–Pacific, and because the Asia–Pacific is a region undergoing significant economic, diplomatic and political shifts that are likely to complicate Washington's ability to bring about desired outcomes in the future. This paper demonstrates, furthermore, that the Asia–Pacific represents an important case study from which to reflect on the administrative and substantive questions raised in recent critiques of US public diplomacy at a general level.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Security, Development, Diplomacy, and Government
- Political Geography:
- America, Middle East, and Australia/Pacific
7. Understanding emotions in world politics: Reflections on method
- Author:
- Roland Bleiker and Emma Hutchison
- Publication Date:
- 12-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Australian National University Department of International Relations
- Abstract:
- Although emotions play a significant role in world politics they have so far received surprisingly little attention by international relations scholars. Numerous authors have emphasised this shortcoming for several years now, but strangely there are still no systematic inquiries into emotions nor even serious methodological discussions about how one would go about doing so. This article explains this gap by the fact that much of international relations scholarship is conducted in the social sciences. Such inquiries can assess emotions up to a certain point, as illustrated by empirical studies on psychology and foreign policy and constructivist engagements with identity and community. But conventional social science methods cannot understand all aspects of phenomena as ephemeral as those of emotions. Doing so would involve conceptualising the influence of emotions even when and where it is not immediately apparent. The ensuing challenges are daunting, but at least some of them could be met by supplementing social scientific methods with modes of inquiry emanating from the humanities. We advance three propositions that would facilitate such cross-disciplinary inquiries: 1) the need to accept that research can be insightful and valid even if it engages unobservable phenomena, and even if the results of such inquiries can neither be measured nor validated empirically; 2) the importance of examining processes of representation and communication, such as visual depictions of emotions and the manner in which they shape political perceptions and dynamics; and 3) a willingness to consider alternative forms of insight, most notably those stemming from aesthetic sources, which, we argue, are particularly suited to capture emotions. Taken together, these propositions highlight the need for a more open-minded and sustained communication across different fields of knowledge.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Diplomacy, and International Cooperation
- Political Geography:
- Australia/Pacific
8. Obstinate or obsolete? The US alliance structure in the Asia-Pacific
- Author:
- William T. Tow and Amitav Acharya
- Publication Date:
- 12-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Australian National University Department of International Relations
- Abstract:
- The longstanding US security network of bilateral alliances in the Asia–Pacific, also known as the 'San Francisco System', has reached a historical crossroads. Its purpose is becoming more questionable as the United States, its allies and friends and other key Asian security actors engage in an increasingly complex set of regional security relationships. This paper argues that while the San Francisco System will not be dissolved over the near-term, it must adapt to rapidly changing structural and politico-economic conditions in the region if its utility is to be sustained and its eventual conversion into a more relevant and effective network of Asia–Pacific order-building. It argues that 'alliance mutuality' is the essential element in any such conversion process.
- Topic:
- International Relations and Diplomacy
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, South Asia, and Australia/Pacific
9. Fighting irrelevance: An economic community 'with ASEAN characteristics'
- Author:
- John Ravenhill
- Publication Date:
- 12-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Australian National University Department of International Relations
- Abstract:
- The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) enters its fifth decade of economic cooperation in more favourable circumstances than those experienced at the time of its thirtieth anniversary. Paradoxically, and contrary to expectations at the time, the financial crises of 1997—98 may have strengthened ASEAN. The backlash against what was perceived as an unsympathetic Western response to East Asian difficulties put ASEAN at centrestage in new regional cooperative arrangements. Moreover, rivalry between China and Japan for regional leadership has led them both to seek to negotiate regional partnerships with ASEAN as a whole. ASEAN, however, faces new challenges—particularly from rapid economic growth in China and India, and from the proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) (including a large number involving individual ASEAN members). ASEAN has made only slow progress in economic cooperation. The complete removal of tariffs has fallen behind schedule and is not due to be realised until 2010. The private sector makes little use of ASEAN's preferential arrangements because they afford little advantage over most-favoured-nation tariffs—certainly not sufficient to offset the costs of complying with paperwork, and the consequent delays experienced. ASEAN has made little progress on 'deeper integration' issues—the removal of 'beyond border' barriers to trade. Some of the bilateral PTAs that ASEAN countries have negotiated with extra-regional partners go further in removing barriers than ASEAN's own arrangements. ASEAN members continue to eschew binding commitments within their own economic collaboration despite making them within the World Trade Organization and in some of their bilateral PTAs. Liberalisation under ASEAN's auspices has not been sufficiently significant to encourage business groups to invest substantial resources in lobbying for deeper integration.
- Topic:
- International Relations and Economics
- Political Geography:
- Japan, China, India, Israel, East Asia, and Australia/Pacific
10. Reinventing 'West Asia': How the 'Middle east' and 'South Asia' Fit into Australia's Strategic Picture
- Author:
- Anthony Bubalo
- Publication Date:
- 02-2007
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Lowy Institute for International Policy
- Abstract:
- Australia's economic, political and strategic interests in the Middle East and South Asia are growing and policymakers are gradually reassessing the place of these regions in Australia's overall strategic calculus. There is a risk, however, that in this reassessment, the two regions will continue to be viewed distinctly - a distinction that is increasingly artificial in strategic terms.
- Topic:
- International Relations
- Political Geography:
- Middle East, Asia, and Australia/Pacific
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