Generational change: regional security and Australian engagement with Asia

The rhetoric of US foreign policy since the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York on 11 September 2001, would suggest that there has been a fundamental shift in US foreign relations. This is often summarised as a shift from multilateralism to unilateralism and, in the context of the war on terrorism, concomitantly a shift from geo-economic to geopolitical priorities. The rhetoric of the fight against the ‘axis of evil’, however, may simply cloud underlying continuities in US relations with Asia. Nevertheless the process of coalition-building by the Bush administration in the ‘War on Terrorism’ has impacted on the distance Asian countries have been able to maintain in relation to the United States. The case studies presented in this special issue raise a number of important issues concerning perceptions and the practice of US hegemony and the complex links between leadership and ‘followership’ at the inter-state level. They also draw out the impacts engendered by US–Asia relations on the wider phenomenon of regionalisation in the Asia-Pacific region.     

Policy feedback and pathways: when change leads to endurance and continuity to change

Policy Sciences - The policy feedback literature was initially concerned with explaining how positive feedback could lead to self-reinforcing policy trajectories. More recently, policy scholars...     

Between continuity and change: The EU's mechanism of differentiated value integration

How does the European Union integrate new values into the text of its treaties? A growing body of literature indicates that, in the past three decades, new norms and values have entered the EU's discourse, resulting in what is usually termed ‘normative power Europe’. Yet the research and knowledge to‐date about the EU's discursive assimilation of new values and norms is surprisingly poor. As any institutional change, such integration has the potential to undermine the coherence of the EU's identity and thus also its objective to ‘speak with one voice’. This article explores the EU's discursive management of the continuity‐versus‐change imperative by analysing the integration of new values into the text of its treaties. This issue is addressed based on a quantitative content analysis on the full texts of European founding treaties between the 1950s and 2009. Findings show that the distribution of the EU's values in the text is not uniform: while the language of market economy and democracy is pervasive, the values of peace, European identity, rights and social justice are mentioned less frequently and in restricted linguistic environments. To account for the differences in the integration of values into the EU's treaty discourse, the article develops the notion of a discursive mechanism of differentiated value integration (MDVI). This rationale echoes the logic of differentiation in policy implementation employed by the EU. It is claimed here that, applied in the European discursive arena, MDVI allows radically different readings of the same text. This helps the EU to maintain a coherent value identity while at the same time enabling change.     

A community of practice: explaining change and continuity in ASEAN's diplomatic environment

Despite change in the aims, institutions and informal diplomacy of ASEAN since 1997, the formal diplomatic code of conduct remains locked in a traditionalist mode first outlined in the 1970s. Existing approaches from mainstream International Relations theorising are unable to adequately explain this continuity and change. The recent ‘practice turn’ in theorising offers distinct explanatory advantage, which this article illustrates by arguing that the formation of an ‘ASEAN rationality’ between 1967 and 1997 fundamentally curtailed the ability of regional diplomats to revise ASEAN post 1997, resulting in the coexistence of new and old norms in ASEAN's organisation design.     

Generational changes and party identification

The party identification of nonblack voters, separated by region, is examined within three broadly bounded cohorts or political generations consisting of those whose first votes were cast prior to 1932, those of the New Deal era whose first votes were cast between 1932 and 1964, and the post-New Deal generation who have come of voting age since 1964. Inter- and intragenerational comparisons are presented for three political eras reflected in NES data: 1952–60, 1964–76, and 1980–88. Outside the South, the post-New Deal generation was more pro-Democratic in the period 1964–76 than was the older New Deal generation. However, they also led the surge away from the Democrats and to the Republican party between 1980 and 1988. Nevertheless, in the latter period they were less dominantly Republican than were the members of the New Deal generation. In the South the better educated voters of the post-New Deal generation led the realignment that largely eroded the Democratic plurality between 1960 and 1988. Nationally, the policy preferences of the post-New Deal generation in the 1980s further polarized party differences between Democrats and Republicans. This occurred largely because of the substantially greater liberal cast of post-New Deal Democrats' preferences. On other issues, party differences were maintained, but Republicans as well as Independents and Democrats in the post-New Deal generation exhibited visibly more liberal preferences than did their older partisan counterparts in the New Deal generation.     

Generational accounting and intergenerational welfare

We investigate the intergenerational welfare implications of Generational Accounting when it is used as the basis for intertemporal fiscal policy decisions. In particular, we consider an economy with a PAYGO social security system out of steady state due to a permanent fall in fertility. In a highly stylized CGE overlapping generations model we illustrate that policy recommendations based on a standard application of Generational Accounting may not be compatible with intertemporal welfare maximization. Our model provides an example where such policies are either time inconsistent or welfare-decreasing.     

Spatial continuity and individual variability: A review of recent work on the geography of electoral change

Analyses have shown that the results of a series of general elections display considerable stability in the geography of voting patterns over time. Further, it has been suggested that the change between two electrons is similar in all places. This paper challenges the latter findings, using data from Great Britain and New Zealand. It is shown that even if there were a pattern of uniform swing, this would be produced by spatial variations in voter transition matrices. A review of analyses of those variations suggests the important roles of the neighbourhood effect, campaign spending, tactical voting, sectional effects, and migration as influences on voter behaviour.     

Islamophobia and postcolonialism: continuity,Orientalism and Muslim consciousness

ABSTRACT

In this article, Meer tentatively delineates three ways in which he understands that the concept of Islamophobia is being informed by postcolonial scholarship. The first functions as continuity, in so far as it is claimed that historical colonial dynamics are reproduced in contemporary postcolonial environments, broadly conceived. The second involves translation. This is related to the first but different in that it focuses in particular on the utility of Orientalist critique for the concept of Islamophobia. The third concerns an account of Muslim consciousness, in so far as it is argued that ‘the making of Muslims’ is signalled by the emergence of the concept of Islamophobia, part, as one view has it, of a wider ‘decentring’ of the West. Meer argues that this third framing rests on terrain that is also populated by scholarship beyond the postcolonial tradition. This is because it expresses a story of how Muslims have contested and sought revisions to existing citizenship settlements, not least the ways in which approaches to anti-discrimination are configured. This is a story that is observable within imperfect liberal democratic frameworks that contain some institutional levers through which to challenge Islamophobia.     

Generational replacement and Green party support in Western Europe

Over the past decades, electoral support for Green parties has gradually increased in Western Europe, especially among young people. This begs the question whether there are systematic differences between generations in support for Green parties, and whether there are also life-cycle effects. We answer this question by separating age, period and cohort effects on Green party support using CSES data covering 40 elections in 11 Western European countries. We find that when controlling for period and age, each new generation is more supportive of the Greens than the generation before. We also find negative age effects. While Green parties can expect to benefit in the future from generational replacement, the consequences of aging societies are to their disadvantage.     

Changing Agendas in Australian Indigenous Policy: Federalism,Competing Principles and Generational Dynamics

This paper identifies two periods of punctuated change in the content and style of Australian Indigenous policy in the last fifty years. It also identifies a third period in which attention to Indigenous policy was heightened through the nationalisation of land issues already well‐established on the agendas of sub‐national jurisdictions. The paper relates all three periods to the changing federal institutions of Australian Indigenous policy, with the Commonwealth slowly exploring its post‐1967 role as a national government in Indigenous affairs. In later sections, the paper identifies some more conceptual bases of changing policy agendas, through ideas of the competing principles of equality, choice and guardianship and the generational moral dynamics of Indigenous affairs.     

Generational equity or privatization of social security?

He is primary author of Ties That Bind: The Interdependence of Generations,a study that examines the framing of the generational equity debate. He is currently doing research for a book concerning the planning of retirement of the baby boom generation.     

The Characteristics of Countries with Generational Account Imbalances

This article empirically tests competing explanations for intergenerational policy differences using a cross section of generational accounts from Kotlikoff and Leibfritz (1999). Generational imbalance rises when a public transfer program is created that benefits living generations and harms future generations. Generational imbalance is greatest in countries with a large elderly population, high income growth rate, greater income inequality, and dispersed political parties. The results are consistent with successful rent seeking by the elderly and poor, and suggest that countries with a high income growth rate and coalition government are less able to resist intergenerational redistribution.     

Continuity and catastrophe: business continuity management and the security of financial operations

This paper discusses business continuity management (BCM) and its role in contemporary financial institutions. BCM is a nascent disaster preparedness and recovery strategy that seeks to protect vital business operations from disruptions. The paper traces contemporary BCM back to Cold War continuity of government planning, and shows how BCM came to comprehend security as continuity of processes rather than integrity of goods. BCM is prominent in finance because it promises to mitigate operational risks, and it focuses on risks stemming from interdependencies in financial infrastructures. By engaging with two events that triggered continuity management in banks, Hurricane Sandy in New York City and the ‘Blockupy’ demonstrations in Frankfurt, the paper highlights how BCM is challenged by large-scale disasters as well as acts of public criticism.     

Introduction: Regulation and deregulation

Abstract. 'Deregulation' is best conceived as covering two separate sets of processes: changes to the structure of rules embodied in regulatory systems; and disturbances to the stability of those systems due to the inability of system 'governors' to function effectively. The most striking feature of deregulation is variety - in incidence, form and extent. This variety is a function of three broad sets of variables: place, notably national setting; time, notably the historical epoch and the stage in a regulatory cycle when deregulation happens; and arena, notably the economic arena and policy networks where deregulation takes place.