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Item Open Access “I do not consent”: political legitimacy, misinformation, and the compliance challenge in Australia’s Covid-19 policy response(Oxford University Press (OUP), 2023) Dowling, M.-E.; Legrand, T.This paper examines the relationship between policy compliance, the emergence of alternate epistemes and authorities in online spaces, and the decline of trust and legitimacy in democratic institutions. Drawing on insights from public policy, regulation theory, and political theory, the paper critically engages with scholarship on “policy-takers” to illuminate the tensions of compliance and legitimacy in liberal states. It proposes a compliance–legitimacy matrix that identifies the features of policy compliance—including consent, legitimacy, expertise, and trust—and their relationship to the disaggregation of policy knowledge. The article applies this framework to a case study of social media posts that respond to policy information during the management of the Covid-19 pandemic in Australia. Through analysis of these posts, the study reveals the distrust in “the science” and experts advocated by government and the calls from skeptic groups for noncompliance with public health measures. The paper argues that public policy faces an epistemic crisis of public confidence, with significant downstream consequences for compliance with public policy initiatives that has been brought on both by the failures of states to cultivate trust in science and the government. The compliance–legitimacy matrix offers a useful tool for policymakers to anticipate and address objections from policy-takers and to preempt and diffuse their fears.Item Open Access The enclosure and exclusion of Australia's ‘Pacific family’(Elsevier, 2023) Wallis, J.Since 2018 the Australian government has displayed anxiety about its apparently declining influence in the Pacific Islands region due to the growing presence of China, a power with potentially inimical interests. The government has long been anxious about threats to its physical security that may arise from the Pacific Islands region. But reports in April 2018 that China was in talks to build a military base in Vanuatu were a wake-up call that its ability to influence the actions of Pacific Island countries (PICs) was limited. In response to its anxiety, the government has engaged in ‘worldmaking’ by seeking physical and ontological security through a discursive and practical ‘geopolitical project’. This project has tried to enclose PICs through a ‘domestication strategy’ that has aimed at normalising Australia’s presence in the Pacific Islands region. Yet despite these efforts at worldmaking through enclosure, the government has simultaneously made a parallel world that excludes Pacific peoples from Australia. To unpack this apparent contradiction, this article draws on ontological security scholarship and uses discourse analysis techniques to analyse the government’s discursive efforts at enclosure by framing the Pacific as its ‘family’ and ‘home’, and practical efforts at enclosure through two schemes within which bordering practices are evident: labour mobility and scholarships. Drawing on criticisms of the exclusionary consequences of those schemes, this article then analyses how the government’s migration rules seek to exclude Pacific peoples from Australia. Based on this analysis, it argues that the contradiction between the two worlds made by the government’s foreign and security discourse and policy represent its longstanding ambivalence about its proximity to, and relationship with, PICs and Pacific peoples.Item Open Access Variants of Populism(ANU Press, 2023) Johnson, C.; Gauja, A.; Sawer, M.; Shappard, J.Item Open Access An emotions agenda for peace: Connections beyond feelings, power beyond violence(SAGE Publications, 2024) Travouillon, K.; Lemay-Hébert, N.; Wallis, J.While the ‘emotion turn’ has emerged as an influential analytical lens in International Relations (IR), there is not yet a well-developed understanding of the role that emotions play in facilitating or inhibiting peace. This special issue of Cooperation and Conflict engages with the analytical potential of emotions and the promise this perspective holds for innovative analyses of peace processes and peacebuilding. To demonstrate the political significance of emotions to peace, the contributors explore how emotions shape the bounds and boundaries of actors and alliances committed to fostering peaceful societies. This introductory article offers possible avenues to leverage the analytical potential of IR’s emotions agenda to engage with peace and peacebuilding. First, we discuss how the emotions agenda contributes to the conversation about what peace is and should look like. Second, we argue that emotions can help us to articulate peace as an embodied knowledge of complex socio-political relations and power dynamics. To visualize ‘peace’ without the permanent contrast of violence, we mobilize this perspective to illuminate actors’ practices and the constraints they face in the pursuit of a peaceful political order. Third, we discuss what an emotions agenda for peace might entail for critical and constructive peacebuilding studies.Item Open Access How do the emotional and embodied experiences of international interveners influence their understanding and practice of peacebuilding?(SAGE Publications, 2024) Wallis, J.What happens if international interveners feel emotions that they consider unsanctioned, unwanted and unprofessional? What if they enact and manage their emotions in ways that they – or others – deem unacceptable? If international interveners face anxiety about being ‘too emotional’ or not feeling or expressing the ‘right’ emotions, does this challenge their sense of identity? And what consequences could this have for peacebuilding and the conflict-affected population in which they were working? Building on the growing body of critical peace and conflict scholarship that has analysed international interveners at the micro-scale, this article analyses how individual interveners’ emotional and embodied experiences influence their understanding and practice of peacebuilding. Based on a discourse analysis of the memoirs of 10 international interveners, this article identifies two primary interpretive repertoires that the interveners employed and argues that they generated two ideal-type subject positions: the intervener as objective, rational, technocratic ‘expert’ and the intervener as irrational, fallible, vulnerable ‘human’. These subject positions determined the feeling rules that the interveners followed and the dilemmas they faced. This, in turn, affected how the interveners perceived the conflict-affected societies in which they were working, and how they understood and practised peacebuilding.Item Open Access The pacifist and the hypophysical: A cosmological reading of Gandhi(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2023) Sreekumar, A.Amidst the resurgence of scholarship on pacifism, this essay seeks to critically interrogate certain influential sections within pacifism which characterise Gandhi as a pacifist, and his philosophy as pacifism. After pointing out the shortcomings of existing attempts to problematise the pacifist connotations of Gandhi, I adopt a cosmological approach to reading Gandhi. I argue that such an approach enables us to view the uncritical equation of both strands of thought as symptomatic of the deep-rooted ontological, epistemological, and other biases informing Western cosmology. This is demonstrated by the channels through which Gandhian discourses are framed as pacifism (especially in their diffusion into the American context), via a distinct set of interactions with both the religious and secular cosmological background assumptions underpinning pacifism. In the subsequent section, I continue this approach by highlighting how an alternate relational cosmology – Gandhian hypophysics – with a radically different set of background assumptions results in an idiosyncratic notion of Gandhian ideas which are quite inimical to pacifism. Besides reconciling contradictory characterisations of the same man and his philosophy, as well as contributing to a dialogic, pluriversal approach, I argue that this work also seeks to extend the scholarship on the interrelated themes of agency and cosmology.Item Metadata only Contradictions in Australia's Pacific Islands discourse(Taylor & Francis, 2021) Wallis, J.The Australian government demonstrates strategic anxiety about the ‘crowded and complex’ geopolitics of the Pacific Islands region. This reflects its broader concerns about geostrategic competition in the ‘Indo-Pacific’, and its perception that Pacific states are ‘small’ and ‘weak’ and therefore vulnerable to influence from potentially hostile powers. Simultaneously, the government has vowed to ‘step-up’ its engagement with its ‘Pacific family’, emphasising that its relationships with Pacific states will be characterised by respect for, and listening to them, as equals. But while the government has articulated its intention to improve its relationships with Pacific states, puzzlingly, it adopts policies that undermine this goal. This article analyses how and why this occurs. It outlines what this analysis demonstrates about how leaders and officials perceive the Pacific, what assumptions and habits inform those beliefs, and as the ‘step-up’ moves from announcement to implementation, how they are translated into behaviour via government policy. It concludes by arguing that Australian leaders and officials should seek consistency in their discourse about, and policies toward, the Pacific, guided by the discourse of the ‘Blue Pacific’.Item Metadata only Bringing a ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ approach to music education: a national plan for music education 2022(Informa UK Limited, 2023) Bacchi, C.This article introduces an analytic strategy or thinking tool called the ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ (WPR) approach and suggests its usefulness for reflecting on important debates in music education. First developed as a mode of policy analysis, WPR has since been adopted in many fields and topic areas. The WPR approach consists of seven forms of questioning and analysis that target modes of governing and governing knowledges, their presuppositions, their genealogies and their effects. It is best described as a problematisation approach that studies how issues are problematised or conceptualized. The article explores what this description means and the implications that flow from applying this thinking tool. The recent (June 2022) National Plan for Music Education, titled The Power of Music to Change Lives, provides a focus for illustrating how to deploy WPR. The task involves seeking out ‘proposals’ in the Plan and indicating how these proposed solutions represent (or produce or constitute) the ‘problem’ of ‘music education’. The goal is to make available a novel approach to a range of issues that have engaged the field for decades.Item Metadata only Mediating the power imbalances of development: A paradox for partnership brokers(Partnership Brokers Association, 2023) Middleby, S.The western development industry operates on significant, complex, and historical power imbalances that favor the perspectives and interests of donors. This paper examines these imbalances through a brokering lens, exploring how they undermine local agency and partnerships. It also looks at how brokers and other development professionals disrupt, but ultimately, and sometimes unconciously, reproduce these imbalances through their work. The paper concludes that there is a paradox in trying to transform power imbalances while also maintaining the identities, institutions, and interests that reproduce them. The author hopes to explore new ways of addressing this paradox in order to support meaningful change and a radical rethinking of development.Item Open Access All containment and no engagement: Australia's contemporary policy towards the Democratic People's Republic of Korea(Wiley, 2024) Butcher, J.Australia’s interactions with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), henceforth known as North Korea, have ebbed and flowed throughout their 75-year history. In times of détente on the Korean Peninsula, Australia actively engaged North Korea and sought to facilitate its integration into the international system. However, during the recent détente in 2018-2019, Canberra broke with tradition and watched on as Trump, Moon, and Kim sought to negotiate a deal towards Pyongyang’s denuclearisation. Why has Australia not followed its security partners and engaged, despite being an Indo-Pacific middle power and an advocate for non-proliferation? Answers to this question remain unknown in the international relations (IR) literature. Therefore, I conducted process tracing and identified seven “critical junctures” in Australia’s relationship with North Korea while analysing its responses using middle power theory. Australia’s preference for non-engagement is due to a shift towards a “maximum pressure” policy reliant on sanctions, reducing incentives to engage. This stems from a normative objection to Pyongyang’s violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and limited material capabilities to persuade North Korea to denuclearise unilaterally. I aim to give an up-to-date account of Australia-North Korea relations and draw attention to a neglected area in Australia’s non-proliferation policy.Item Metadata only Maybe More Than Mates, Maybe Not? The Modern Meaning of a Modern Alliance(UWA Defence and Security Institute, 2022) Cherry-Smith, B.; Cremer, R.; Currie, M.; Jaensch, J.; U.S. - Australia Alliance Next Generation Leaders; Lee-Brown, T.; Dean, P.; Considine, F.Item Metadata only Minzhu in the People’s Congress: Understanding the Chinese Way of Understanding Representative Democracy(Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) Xie, B.; Gao, M.; O'Connor, J.; Xie, B.; Butcher, J.Simplistic democracy-autocracy dichotomies can poison the Australia-China relationship because they lend space to suspicion and fear, and shut down dialogues and interactions. To debunk value narratives that have led to increasingly polarised and oversimplified perceptions about China, this chapter examines how minzhu—the Chinese equivalent to democracy that consists of two characters (min meaning “people” and zhu “rule”)—is practised in the PRC through its parliamentary system, the People’s Congress, and argues that minzhu is not understood and practised as a particular type of government but a conceptual aspiration for realisation of such ideas as minquan (sovereignty of the people), minyi (public opinion) and minsheng (people’s livelihood). All these ideas are pre-fixed by min—the people, demanding much space allowing for dynamics of democracy at local levels, which in turn feeds into democratic satisfaction and popular support. The author believes that a healthy Australia-China relationship can benefit from mutual understanding and engagement, and calls for wisdom and creativity in negotiating differences.Item Open Access The neoliberal roots of authoritarian protectionism(Palgrave Macmillan (part of Springer Nature), 2023) Chacko, P.Luke Cooper’s Authoritarian Contagion draws attention to the politics of protection proffered by contemporary ethno-nationalist authoritarian rulers. This article argues that the origins of this protectionist politics lies in neoliberal projects, which promoted conservative social hierarchies, such as those associated with gender, race and class, to further capital accumulation. These neoliberal projects led to anti-democratic governance and the concentration of wealth and power, trends that contemporary authoritarian leaders claim to challenge but, in fact, consolidate and intensify in the name of protecting an ethnically-defined people.Item Open Access Disciplining India: paternalism, neo-liberalism and Hindutva civilizationalism(Oxford University Press (OUP), 2023) Chacko, P.Abstract not availableItem Metadata only AUKUS adds ambiguity to the Australia-New Zealand alliance(Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2022) Middleby, S.; Powles, A.; Wallis, J.Item Metadata only More of the same is not the answer to building influence in the Pacific(9Dashline, 2022) Taylor, M.; Middleby, S.Item Metadata only 2050: A Pacific geostrategic vision for the world’s only Blue Continent(Griffith University, 2022) Aumua, A.; Middleby, S.Item Metadata only Disease and Democracy: Which Way does the Arrow of Causality Point in India?(The New Zealand Asian Studies Society, 2022) Mayer, P.Political scientists and historians have identified many different antecedent conditions necessary for the emergence of democratic government. Thornhill, Fincher and Aran (2009) have proposed that a heavy historical burden of disease results in values and behaviours that favour authoritarian forms of government. In this paper I use historical evidence and statistical data from India to test whether the causal relationship between disease and democracy they propose is valid. The paper finds no direct connection between pre-Independence disease levels and the degree of democratic mobilisation. On the contrary, the causal arrow points from democratisation to better health.Item Open Access Will India Implement a Uniform Civil Code?(Australian Institute of International Affairs, 2022) Mayer, P.; Chacko, P.The introduction of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) would standardise family law across India. But as religious tensions grow, a UCC may only further divide the nation.Item Metadata only Anglosphere Approaches to Counter-terrorism in Cyberspace(IOS Press BV, 2017) Legrand, T.; Conway, M.; Jarvis, L.; Lehane, O.; MacDonald, S.; Nouri, L.The ease, speed and sophistication with which extremist groups have exploited cyberspace for operational coordination and ideological proselytising have taken Western governments by surprise. From brazen digital advocacy of extreme and violent ideology to deft recruitment and fundraising, the Internet has proven to be a remarkably useful medium for non-state actors and hostile terrain for states seeking to curtail the growing global influence of violent extremism. This chapter charts the trajectories of policy frameworks of one distinct cluster of states confronting similar challenges in this respect: the “Anglosphere” states of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The apparent challenge for these Anglosphere states is that policy officials recognise that transnational counter-terrorism challenges cannot be resolved unilaterally but require collaboration in two crucial dimensions. First, to achieve meaningful sovereignty over cyberspaces requires government to acquire the cooperation of private sector actors – including large multi-national digital technology firms. For these companies, relinquishing commercial data or giving up encryption to authorities is anathema. Second, as extremist operational and proselytising activities can transfer across jurisdictions effectively instantly, states have sought to build multi-jurisdictional coalitions, pooling expertise, intelligence and, most importantly, resources. This chapter articulates how these imperatives have played out in domestic institutional settings and goes on to describe how Anglosphere states have forged robust though low-profile networks of security collaboration that facilitate policy and operational interchange. The Anglosphere transgovernmental alliance, it is contended, operates as a persistent and influential mode of policy-making for all partners, cognitively framing the “problem” of extremism in cyberspace and underpinning significant technical and strategic collaboration.