Search

Begin New Search Publishing Institution Australian National University Department of International Relations Publication Year within 25 Years

21. What security makes possible: Some thoughts on critical security studies

Author:
Anthony Burke
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract:
It has become commonplace to accept that security is a 'contested concept'. How contested, however, seems to be what is at stake for critical approaches to security. With the US Congress poised to ask for a National Intelligence Estimate on the security impacts of human-induced climate change; with terrorism, people movements and disease the focus of national security policy; and with various conceptualisations of human security informing national policy and new global norms, we are well into the 'broadening and deepening' phase once seen as revolutionary. At the same time, state-centric discourses of security remain very powerful, and global patterns of insecurity, violence and conflict are getting more destructive and uncontrollable.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Defense Policy, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States

22. Religion, faith and global politics

Author:
Mark Beeson, Stuart Harris, Lorraine Elliott, Shahram Azbarzadeh, and Greg Fealy
Publication Date:
07-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract:
Since the end of the Cold War, a number of scholars have speculated that religious differences have come to replace the ideological differences of that earlier period, giving some resonance to Samuel Huntington's clash of civilisations and a new twist to Francis Fukuyama's end of history thesis. The empirical base for claims about a resurgence of religion-based inspiration for and justification of foreign policy actions, and the diplomatic challenges that this inspires, can be found in a number of quarters. This includes the proclaimed role of faith in the personal and public politics of a number of contemporary leaders; the growth in what seems to be faith-based non-state actors whose actions often link religion with rebellion, violence and resistance; internal politics in a number of countries in which religion or faith are increasingly tied up with matters of state and disputes over public policy (ranging from the debate over religious symbols in schools in France to electoral competition over the value of a secular versus Islamic state in Turkey); and provocations of various kinds that seem designed to demonise rather than respect religious difference, such as the recent confrontations over the so-called Muhammad cartoons first published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005.
Topic:
International Relations, Cold War, Government, Politics, and Religion
Political Geography:
Turkey

23. APEC and the search for relevance: 2007 and beyond

Author:
John Ravenhill, Lorraine Elliott, Helen E.S. Nesadurai, and Nick Bisley
Publication Date:
11-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract:
In September 2007, Australia will host the annual Economic Leaders' Meeting of the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. This will be the culmination of over 100 days of ministerial, official and business group meetings, working groups and dialogues that will be held in various Australian cities from January to August. Fifteen federal government departments will be involved along with a range of other interested actors, predominantly in the private sector. The Australian government will spend considerable sums of money on the leaders' meeting itself, not least to ensure the security of those attending. This will include, if all goes according to plan, the heads of government of 21 countries—member economies in APEC-speak—including the United States, Russia, Japan and China. Security may well be the least of the government's worries. Few would argue that APEC is 'going strong' as a regional economic forum and recent reviews have suggested that at best it faces an uncertain future and that at worst it could be in a state of terminal decline. The forum is argued to have lost its relevance and to have generally been unsuccessful in attaining any of its more ambitious goals such as regional trade liberalisation.
Topic:
Security, Development, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Japan, China, Australia, and Australia/Pacific

24. Russia and Europe: National identity, national interest, pragmatism, or delusions of empire?

Author:
Robert F. Miller
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract:
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Moscow's weight in international relations underwent a tremendous decline. To appreciate the extent of change in the Russian Federation's (RF) foreign policy since the end of Soviet communism it is worth taking a brief look at the international relations of its predecessor, the USSR. An essential feature of Soviet foreign policy was that it was ideologically driven. Western commentators tended to play down this feature or treat it as mere window dressing for what was really just imperialism 'with a socialist face'. But it was more than that. It gave Soviet policy-makers a sure sense of identity and a guide, however faulty, to national ('international proletarian') interest.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Development, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

25. American hegemony: A dangerous aspiration?

Author:
James L. Richardson
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract:
The Bush administration's foreign policies have sparked off a round of new debates on America's power and its international role. At the core of these debates are ideas of empire and hegemony, but these terms are used in many senses and often interchangeably. The paper first distinguishes among these usages and spells out its own concepts. As understood here, a hegemonic power is one that plays a leading role in shaping and maintaining a certain international order, exercising its dominant power in such a way as to win broad acceptance and legitimacy. It is argued that the discussion of hegemony can best be advanced by distinguishing among the various domains of power: military, economic, ideological and political, to follow Michael Mann's breakdown. The US is closest to hegemony in the international economic domain, but in each domain its hegemony is at best partial and qualified. Nonetheless, it remains the preponderant power, with aspirations to hegemony and empire. The benefits of American preponderance are widely acclaimed in the West and infrequently questioned in the international relations discipline, but its dangers merit far greater attention than they normally receive. In particular, beyond the short-term context, the specifically American version of liberal ideology renders the US ill-suited to respond to some of the foreseeable challenges of the twenty-first century. Consequently there is a need for others to engage a great deal more actively than heretofore with the construction of a more viable international order.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Development
Political Geography:
United States and America

26. Blair, Brown and the Gleneagles agenda: Making poverty history, or confronting the global politics of unequal development?

Author:
Anthony Payne
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract:
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the United Kingdom Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer respectively, set out a highly ambitious 'development' agenda for 2005 when it was the UK's turn to hold the Presidency of the Group of 8 and thus host than annual summit, held on this occasion in Gleneagles in Scotland. This agenda embraced issues of aid and debt, trade and climate change. It was given additional prominence by the activities of the Making Poverty History campaign. However, the G8 could never have worked to 'make poverty history' because such an achievement was not remotely within its compass. The details of the agreements reached at Gleneagles and at subsequent international meetings reveal a much less impressive record than the initial hyperbole suggested. The global politics of development is not animated any longer—if indeed it ever was—by what the 'North' is willing to do for the 'South'. It is driven instead by a complex 'global politics of unequal development' into which Blair and Brown's Gleneagles agenda has been swept up. The outcome may represent significant change in some of the patterns of global politics, but it will not mark the ending of poverty.
Topic:
International Relations, Globalization, Human Rights, and Poverty
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Scotland

27. Is China an economic threat to Southeast Asia?

Author:
John Ravenhill
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract:
China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) caused widespread concern that it would gain market share at the expense of other economies in East Asia, especially the lower-income ASEAN economies. Economic modelling done by the World Bank and others appeared to substantiate these fears; the conclusions of these studies caused further consternation among politicians and academic commentators in Southeast Asia who believed that China's success in the 1990s in attracting foreign direct investment had come at ASEAN's expense.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and World Bank
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Southeast Asia

28. Transnational feminism: Political strategies and theoretical resources

Author:
Brooke A. Ackerly and Bina D'Costa
Publication Date:
03-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract:
Despite sharing many successes at promoting international collaboration, enabling effective responses to politically powerful states, increasing awareness of formerly invisible violations of the human rights of women, and gaining ground in many countries and in international law, women's human rights activists have many differences among them—in resources, location, issue-focus and strategies. It is appropriate to pay attention to these differences, particularly as they create challenges to the movement for women's rights. However, we argue that the women's human rights discourse—as developed and deployed by women's human rights activists—can be a resource for addressing these challenges internal to the movement while facing current challenges from outside the movement. Attentive to the politics of defining a movement and its spokespeople, the article includes an extensive methodological discussion. We arrive at our conclusions after observing a broad range of women's activism and interpreting the reflections of a wide range of activists. Taken together, they offer a view of human rights as indivisible and of the rights of all humans as interrelated. This view is useful for self-reflection within women's movements and for the ability of participants of various women's movements to use the women's human rights framework for meeting contemporary challenges.
Topic:
Development, Gender Issues, Human Rights, and Politics

29. The challenge of United Nations reform

Author:
Christian Reus-Sumit, Marianne Hanson, Hilary Charlesworth, and William Maley
Publication Date:
11-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract:
The first half of the twentieth century saw multiple crises in the expanding international system, characterised most tragically and dramatically by two world wars, the Great Depression, and the Holocaust. In response, the international community engaged in history's most ambitious program of international institution building, a program that centred on the creation of the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions, and a plethora of functional regimes governing everything from arms control to the prohibition of genocide. Despite the impediments imposed by four decades of Cold War, these institutions have evolved into a complex global architecture of institutions which can claim partial yet significant credit for the decline in traditional interstate warfare, the containment of nuclear proliferation to a handful of states, management of the world economy, and the prosecution of an ever more comprehensive humanitarian agenda.
Topic:
Security, Development, Economics, and United Nations

30. Whose Oceania? Contending Visions of Community in Pacific Region-building

Author:
Greg Fry
Publication Date:
10-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract:
In the past year the 'war against terror' and perceptions of state failure within the post-colonial Pacific have sparked an Australian-led initiative to deepen and widen regional integration in Oceania. This paper argues that behind the seeming unanimity of the 2004 Auckland Declaration and agreement by Pacific Islands Forum leaders on a 'Pacific vision' and a 'Pacific plan' are several contending visions of regional community, and of community-building. The political and moral legitimacy of each vision depends significantly on how these visions answer the question of who is Oceania for, and who has the right to speak for it? The seemingly dominant vision (that of the Australian government) is problematic in this regard. Past practice of Pacific region-building suggests that it may therefore not receive the legitimacy it requires for sustainability. This therefore is in danger of producing an unintended consequence: the replication at a regional level of the legitimacy problem associated with the so-called failing state.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
Australia/Pacific