The Economic Consequences of Soviet Disintegration

A noted British economist and specialist in the affairs of the former USSR discusses the economic consequences of the disintegration that followed the coup d'etat in August 1991. The assessment begins with a look at inter-republican economic flows in an attempt to indicate the benefits, if any, derived by the individual republics from membership in a unified state. It follows with a brief overview of the “invisible” components of the balance of payments, deals with the gains and losses traced to the so-called common economic space, and sketches implications for the rest of the world. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: P20, F3, O1.     

Rights,Duties and Aboriginal People

In this paper I reconsider debates in the Australian colonies in the 1830s and 1840s about Aboriginal people and rights in land. I contend that Aboriginal rights of property in land were seldom the matter at stake in these debates. Further, I argue that a notion of duties rather than rights was invoked by Christian humanitarians as they pleaded that Aboriginal people should be provided with protection as well as compensation for the loss of their lands. I suggest that the position that they adopted was determined not so much by the moral, political or legal principles they sought to uphold but by their acknowledgement of material forces at work in the colonies. I also point out that the debate that occurred about rights in land was an intra-British one that concerned the rights of settlers vis-à-vis the Crown. Finally, I suggest that the principal ways in which pastoral leaseholders tried to legitimise their claims to land were rather different to that suggested by historians in recent decades.     

The Societal Consequences of Market Reform in Peru

This article analyzes how market reform policies already in place affect social interests, and the feedback effects of those interests on reform processes. The variety of societal responses includes the creation of new societal organizations, reflecting the variable content and asymmetrical distribution of costs and benefits of the policies implemented. Because of this variety even in Peru, where the disorganizing effects of neoliberal reform appear to be strongest, it would seem that the societal impact of economic reform elsewhere in Latin America would also warrant more careful examination.     

Just Relations: The Story of Mary Bennett's Crusade for Aboriginal Rights

Just Relations: The Story of Mary Bennett's Crusade for Aboriginal Rights. By Alison Holland (Perth: UWA Publishing, 2015), pp. xv + 453. AU$45.00 (pb).     

How Many Separated Aboriginal Children?

Acknowledging the difficulty in arriving at an accurate estimate of the number of Aboriginal children removed from their families during the twentieth century, I argue that the greatest accuracy will flow from working with specialist scholars of small areas. Their studies, many of which already exist, draw on archival, documentary, oral and community sources. Such locally specialised knowledge is necessary to unravel official population figures and shifting definitions of Aboriginality, sometimes deliberately intended to deceive. Community-based knowledge is needed to expand upon the files of removed children, at least half of which, in Wiradjuri country, are missing or inaccessible. Lastly I consider some of the implications of the discussion in relation to a "Stolen Generations Tribunal".     

White Australia,Settler Nationalism and Aboriginal Assimilation*

This article examines policies of Aboriginal assimilation between the 1930s and the 1960s, highlights how different forms of settler nationalism shaped understandings of the Aboriginal future, and explores the impact of the shift from biological notions of Australian nationhood (white Australia) to culturalist understandings of national cohesion and belonging. Assimilation policies were underpinned by racist assumptions and settler nationalist imperatives. Aborigines of mixed descent were a special focus for governments and others concerned with Aboriginal welfare, “uplift” and assimilation. This is most evident in the discourse of biological absorption of the 1930s, but lived on in notions of cultural assimilation after the Second World War. One of the ongoing motivations for assimilation drew upon the nationalist message within “white Australia”: the need to avoid the development of ethnic or cultural difference within the nation‐state. The article highlights an ideological split among the advocates of individual assimilation and group assimilation, and uses the writings of Sir Paul Hasluck and A. P. Elkin to illustrate these two views.     

The Electoral Consequences of Direct Political Action: Evidence from Brazil

Democracy affords citizens the ability to influence policy through participation in elections and through direct political action. Though previous scholarship evaluates the impact each strategy has on outcomes, little if any work exists that examines how one strategy, direct action, affects success in the other, elections. This study analyzes the relationship between land occupations and the electoral success of the Workers' Party in Brazil between 1996 and 2006. It finds that the relationship varies in presidential and mayoral elections depending on income inequality and incumbency. Once the PT captures the presidential office in 2002, these effects disappear, suggesting that the effect of political protest also depends on who is in office.     

Living Under Aboriginal Exemption: Negotiating State Governments' Policies and Practices

This volume of the Australian Journal of Politics and History presents an edited collection of papers delivered by emerging and established researchers at the Second Rethinking & Researching 20th Century Aboriginal Exemption Symposium, co-hosted by the University of the Sunshine Coast with La Trobe University in October 2021. The papers reveal the human costs, hardships and legacies of the state policies of Aboriginal Exemption last century which supposedly offered the promise of freedom to Indigenous Australians confined to reserves and missions. Equally, the papers explore innovative and culturally safe ways to investigate and further understand Aboriginal exemption that ensure Ancestors and Elders, who actively negotiated, resisted and subverted its use, are recognised and honoured.