The Transformation of Labor Party Immigration Policy, 1901–1945

ABSTRACT

The Commonwealth Labor government’s introduction of a program of mass immigration after the Second World War was a pivotal moment in the nation’s history. The program itself and the experiences of those who settled in Australia have been studied closely by historians and social scientists. Less attention has been given to the fact that the postwar policy represented a transformation of Labor’s traditional attitude to immigration. Since its foundation in the 1890s, the Australian Labor Party had been suspicious of immigration and opposed to programs of assisted immigration on the basis that migrant labour threatened the wages and conditions of Australian workers. This article traces Labor’s attitudes to migration before the Second World War and shows how economic and security exigencies compelled the party to repudiate its decades-long opposition to assisted immigration. The article suggests that the reason that the postwar immigration program does not receive greater prominence in histories of the Labor Party is because the policy and its chief architect, Arthur Calwell, are diminished by their association with the White Australia policy.     

MAPAI Committee for Arab Affairs – The Steering Committee for Construction of Establishment Policy towards Israeli Arabs, 1958–68

In 1957, after abandoning hope of any additional transfer of Arabs from Israel, MAPAI (the largest political party at the time) constructed its Committee for Arab Affairs. During the decade of its existence the Committee laid the foundation and the practical implementations that shaped and determined the discriminated status of Arab citizens in the different systems (economy, culture, education, livelihood, infrastructure) of the State of Israel. This policy, which, practically speaking, excluded the Arab citizens from Israeli society, has not yet changed, even after MAPAI's disappearance from the political scene, to be replaced in power by other parties.     

The Israeli–Syrian Disengagement Negotiations of 1973–74

This article discusses the Israeli-Syrian Disengagement negotiations following the October 1973 war. Both sides' intransigence in linking the POW issue to other issues prevented the beginning of negotiations, an impasse skillfully resolved by US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Throughout the negotiations he succeeded in persuading both sides to soften their positions, especially during his May 1974 shuttle between Jerusalem and Damascus. The Disengagement agreement signed on 31 May 1974 was implemented by June 26.     

Britain's Policy in Southern Kurdistan: The Formation and the Termination of the First Kurdish Government, 1918–1919

The end of the First World War and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 signalled the downfall of the old order in the Middle East. The consolidation of Britain's strategic, economic and political position in that region was bound to affect Kurdistan's political future, given its determination to re-construct a new regional order. In the absence of a well-defined British policy towards Kurdistan's future certain British officials on the ground were able to play an important part in influencing the political situation in southern Kurdistan, which came under British political control. Therefore, the examination of Britain's policy on the ground through the concepts of indirect and direct control is central to any understanding of the reasons for the establishment and the subsequent termination of the first Kurdish government in the period 1918-1919.     

A Balancing Pretence: The Johnson Administration’s Policy towards Jordan, 1964–1967

King Hussein of Jordan was often at odds with his less conciliatory counterparts in the Arab world. He was one of the few Arab leaders who engaged and communicated with Israel. The administration of US President Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to ensure the continuation of Hussein’s moderate line towards Israel and sold weapons to Jordan. However, providing military support to an Arab state when the vast majority of Americans favoured Israel involved significant political costs. As the Johnson administration saw it, openly favouring only Israel would negatively affect the USA’s position and interests in the Arab world. Therefore, Johnson pursued a policy of seemingly balancing Israeli and Jordanian interests. This article argues that the USA supported Jordan primarily to ensure Israel’s security, but ultimately, the Johnson administration lacked the will and understanding to properly address Jordan’s concerns and failed to prevent King Hussein from joining the Arab side of the 1967 War against Israel.     

The ‘Revolution’ of 27 May 1960 in Turkey: British Policy towards Turkey

Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union: A Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World by Alexandre A. Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1979. Pp. xxii + 265, illustrations, index, bibliography. $20.00.

Islam, Nationalism and Communism in a Traditional Society: The Case of the Sudan by Gabriel Warburg. London: Frank Cass, 1978. Pp. 253 + xi.

A Textbook on Muslim Law by David Pearl. London: Croom Helm, 1979. Pp. 317, bibliography, legislation, index and glossary. £14.95 (hardback), £6.95 (paperback).     

Democracy Promotion and Civilian Power: The Example of Germany's ‘Value-Oriented’ Foreign Policy

While Germany is generally considered one of the most important democracy promoters, there is still limited work on the German approach to promoting democracy. There is a general understanding that Germany – as a civilian power – should be guided by democratic values in its external affairs, but it is neither theoretically nor empirically very clear what this means for the actual practice of democracy promotion. The present paper contributes to filling this gap by (1) locating democracy promotion as a foreign policy aim and instrument in the role conception of civilian power, (2) summarising the fragmented state of the art on German democracy promotion, (3) presenting results of a qualitative content analysis in order to reconstruct the main features of the official outline of German democracy promotion, and (4) confronting these programmatic findings with a brief comparative view on the practice of German democracy promotion towards Bolivia, Turkey and Russia.     

The New Geo-Economics of a “Rising” India: State Transformation and the Recasting of Foreign Policy

With a focus on India, and drawing on critical scholarship on geo-politics and geo-economics and “relational” state theories, this article examines the ways in which ideational and material processes of state transformation have shaped India’s international engagement in different periods. Prior to 1991, geo-political social forms linked to a national developmentalist state project shaped India’s engagement with global and regional multilateralism and the nature of this engagement fluctuated according to shifts in the legitimacy and viability of this state project. The erosion of the developmentalist state project from the 1970s laid the path for a deeper shift in the national social order in the 1990s with the recasting of statehood wherein India’s future was thought to be best secured through policies of economic openness, growth and competitiveness. This shift in India’s state project has given rise to new forms of global and regional engagement that are distinct to older forms of international engagement and reflect and further processes of state transformation in India. This is illustrated through a case study on energy policy.     

The Indonesian killings of 1965–1966: the case of Central Java

The mass killings of 1965–1966 in Indonesia marked a watershed in its history. The consensus estimate of lives lost is 500,000. In this paper, demographic and geographic methods are used to characterize the violence in Central Java, one of the worst-affected provinces. The findings provide a portrait of the violence and its dynamics. This portrait highlights the likely complicity of a diverse array of political opponents of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). The findings also provide evidence supporting Clifford Geertz's three-aliran (cultural “stream”) model of Javanese society, with the complex interplay of the three aliran and the Indonesian Army in the political realm producing the violent outcomes of 1965–1966. In this manner, this study builds on prior work by Hefner, Jay, Lyon, Mortimer, and Ricklefs on the cultural and social underpinnings of the violence. It also builds on more recent work on the neighboring province of East Java in which the role of two of the three alirans was found to be a significant factor, underlining the importance of the intersection of culture, geography, and politics in understanding this violent episode in Indonesian history.     

Decoding the Evolutionary Path of Chinese Foreign Policy, 1949–2009: Assessments and Inferences

Chinese foreign policy has made a grand transition during the post-Mao reform era. Chinese foreign policy of the 21st century has become much more open and pragmatic in its relations with the outside world, more extensive in its reach and coverage, highly diversified in its functions and partners, more committed to international norms than before, and much more sophisticated in its dealing with the international community. Yet, the precise balance between the changes and continuities is still quite difficult to gauge. Furthermore, despite crucial visible changes, concerns and worries - even some fears - are discernible with regard to the rise of China. In the last 60 years, Beijing has sought hard to sustain consistencies (shizhong ruyi) in its foreign policy. Perhaps, that is the best clue the world has in inferring the future trajectory of Chinese foreign policy.     

The Language of the Nation: The Rise of Arabic among Jews and Christians (1900–1950)

Abstract

This essay explores the ways in which in the period following the First World War, non-Muslim communities participated in the establishment of Modern Standard Arabic as the foremost symbol of the new states that replaced the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. A comparison of the sociolinguistic trajectories of Syriac Christians in North Iraq, Jews in Baghdad and Catholic Christians in Palestine suggests that Arabic’s function of undergirding the ‘Arab states’ thrived on earlier interpretations of Arabic as the language of interregional and interdenominational contacts and as the language of cultural, societal and political modernization rather than on exclusivist nationalist, ethnic or linguistic identifications. Put differently, the increased use of Arabic by those who also had other languages at their disposal resulted from the combination of pragmatism with commitment to societal modernization and inclusive nationalism. The linguistic trajectories of these three groups are analysed against the background of a rereading of George Antonius’ The Arab Awakening (1938) as a contemporary source for the rise of Arab nationalism among non-Muslim minorities.     

Positioning Norm, Principle and Interest in Chinese Foreign Policy —— The Case of the Myanmar Issue

There are different driving forces behind Chinese foreign policy decision-making. Norms, principles, and interests and the subtle combinations of them, I argue in this paper, are the major driving forces on the input side, while the domestic situation of a specific country and international pressure undercut China’s policy deliberations. By contrast, the form of government of a specific country under discussion is not an important variable. In this paper, I use China’s policy toward Myanmar as a case study. The findings prove that the integration of norms, principle and practical interests has formed the powerful impetus that drives China’s policies toward Myanmar. Among these factors, the interests China has identified in general and stability on its “doorstep” in particular play a dominant role, while the norm of human security and the principle of non-interference are embedded in its policy deliberations.     

Administering the Inherited ‘Employment Miracle’: The Labour Market Policy of the Second Merkel Government

Contrary to most other OECD countries, the German labour market remained almost unaffected by the consequences of the global financial crisis and experienced a strong and steady recovery. Thus, after their victory in the elections of 2009, the economic conditions for the bourgeois parties to shape labour market policy according to their preferences were rather favourable. After exploring the causes of the German ‘employment miracle’, this article summarises the relevant labour market policies introduced by the black–yellow coalition. We argue that, apart from some important exceptions, the second Merkel government did not pursue a decidedly market–liberal policy agenda. Instead, primarily due to the low problem load, the government mainly readjusted some of the existing policy instruments. Therefore, German labour market policy between 2009 and 2013 can rather be described as an administration of the inherited ‘employment miracle’ than an active pursuit of a discrete policy agenda.     

The Origins of the Soviet Oil Crisis, 1970–1985

Soviet oil production peaked in 1983 and declined in 1984, chiefly because the growth of West Siberian output has nearly stopped. The root of the problem is two decades of unbalanced policy favoring near-term payoff over long-term preparation. Exploration has been systematically neglected in favor of development, and the West Siberian oil industry has been built on too narrow a base. Despite warnings from local officials as early as 1970, this led to a first crisis in 1976-1977. Moscow responded with an emergency increase in development drilling. This approach prevented output from dropping between 1978 and 1983 but only aggravated the deep-seated imbalance, preparing the way for a new crisis in 1983-1985. The underlying causes of this near-sighted approach are analyzed and the implications for a deeper understanding of Soviet decision-making spelled out. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: 052, 124, 721.