Collegiate Executives and Direct Democracy in Switzerland and Uruguay: Similar Institutions,Opposite Political Goals,Distinct Results

Uruguay, defining itself as the “Switzerland of Latin America”, took the Swiss model (collegial executives and direct democracy) as an example when building its own political institutions. Despite the similarities of these institutions, the results were quite different due to the different context. The comparison between the institutions in these two isolated countries highlights the ways in which the same institutions may produce different results and evolve in distinctive ways. This is important to recognize as foreign models and experiences continue to inspire policies. Contrary to common arguments presented in the literature, even in such a “most likely case”, institutions cannot simply be copied. Institutional effects are context‐dependent and we need to pay attention to this interaction. This article provides new evidence showing that universalist institutional arguments can be misleading.     

Central bank independence and the commitment to monetary stability: The case of the German Bundesbank

It is generally accepted that a legally mandated independent central bank will pursue an anti‐inflationary monetary policy, even in the face of pressure from those politicians who appointed the central bank's decision makers. But are politically minded appointees to a central bank really transformed into die‐hard defenders of monetary stability? And, if so, why? This article seeks to answer these questions by exploring the case of the German Bundesbank. Hypotheses for explaining the anti‐inflation orientation of the central bank are explored and supporting evidence for each of the hypotheses is sought, using interviews with Bundesbank council members.     

Xenophobia,ethnicity and national identity in eastern Germany

This article offers an explanation of the latent xenophobia in post‐unification eastern Germany from the perspective of national identity. Easterners over‐emphasised ethnicity as the one remaining identity pillar that was still not threatened by the transition processes of unification. However, instead of focusing on the ‘self — on pride in tradition, history and culture, easterners concentrated on the ‘other’ — on ethnic exclusion and ethnic chauvinism. The united Germany therefore faces the challenge of filling the empty shell of German ethnicity with a positive meaning.     

A Paradise Lost? The Rise and Fall of the Palestinian Community in Kuwait

The article discusses the evolution of the Palestinian community in Kuwait in the wake of the 1948 War. The demand for skilled labour facilitated the gradual integration of the Palestinians into Kuwaiti society, especially in the education system and state institutions. In this regard the article examines the role of education and students in creating personal and political socio-economic networks. The relatively liberal political atmosphere in Kuwait during its years of development transformed it into a hotbed for Palestinian political activism. This trend continued up to the 1991 Gulf War, when Yasir Arafat's support of Saddam Husayn in that wa, caused the fall from grace of the Palestinians in Kuwait. This ended the central role that the Palestinians played in the historical process of Kuwait state building. Following the death of Arafat the PLO began to seek reconciliation with Kuwait. At this timely moment in the history of relations between these two communities, the article sheds light on these efforts.     

Government Enterprises & Industrial Relations in Late Qing China

This study examines the development of labour organisation and industrial action among workers in government enterprises in the late Qing (1860-1912). Because these were the largest industrial enterprises using the most advanced machinery, one expects that the workers in them would play the leading role in labour organisation. Further, during the centuries-long gestation period, the period of embryonic capitalism, workers in traditional enterprises had already developed a tradition of industrial action. Yet this tradition of protest did not appear to have contributed much to labour activism in the modern government works. Quite the contrary, it was in private industries, whether Chinese- or foreign-owned, that we find a higher level of labour organisation and activism. This is an unexpected discovery, for which an explanation is attempted.     

“And Poland is filed away with Samothrace”: Australian Responses to Poland's June 1956 Crisis

The suppression of Poznan June 1956 workers’ rebellion (Poznanski Czerwiec) by Polish authorities prompted immediate Australia‐wide demonstrations and protests by Polish émigrés who were supported by friends and allies in the Catholic Church and the Australian anti‐communist movement. Nation‐wide demonstrations in Australia and subsequent approaches by émigré Poles and supporters required a disinterested Australian government to develop a position on Poznan June events. Pressure on the Australian government for a response, potentially disruptive to its foreign policies, was applied only by elements within the Australian political scene that posed little threat to its future. Poznan June ‘56's effect on Australia takes place within the particular nature of Australian domestic politics where the June events were used to fan the flames of bitter rivalry within the labour movement by a strident anti‐communist faction seeking to restructure the Australian Labor Party in a manner consistent with its ideological predilections. In taking up the anti‐communist cause of the Polish émigrés, the Australian anti‐communist leadership claimed a moral high‐ground, but lacked sufficient commitment to use their considerable parliamentary advantage to pressure the Australian government to adopt a more muscular position towards Poland's government.     

Anxious Neighbour: Australian Opposition to Japanese Labour in New Caledonia, 1945 to 1960

In the late 1940s and the 1950s, in the context of the White Australia policy and strong anti‐Japanese sentiment, Australia mounted a successful diplomatic campaign against the use of Japanese contract labour in New Caledonia. Australia also campaigned, but with only partial success, against the use of Japanese labour in the nearby New Hebrides. These initiatives further illustrate Australia's traditional assertiveness, when it saw its interests threatened, in the South Pacific. Blocking the use of Japanese labour probably contributed, as Alan Ward has argued, to increased permanent migration to New Caledonia from the other French South Pacific territories and France, shifting the population and voting balance against the indigenous Melanesian nationalist movement which later emerged. But Ward overstates his case: immigration of this kind would have happened anyway, especially from resource‐poor and over‐populated Wallis and Futuna. In its campaign on the Japanese labour issue Australia profited from its strong relationship with France, which resulted from comradeship in the two world wars, and from the lack of contentious bilateral issues.     

Production Politics and Migrant Labour Advocacy in Singapore

Since 2005, NGO activism, calling for greater legal protection for contract migrant workers has been the most concerted challenge to Singapore’s migrant labour regime. Despite a severely restricted civil society space, migrant labour advocacy has delivered small but significant reforms to laws covering migrant labour. The existing literature on migrant labour advocacy focuses on the importance of civil society space in determining the outcomes of organised contention. In the Singapore context, the limitations of advocacy are emphasised and explained in terms of the illiberal nature of the People’s Action Party-state and the strategies deployed by non-governmental organisations. Such an approach is limited in its explanatory potential as it only states what political spaces are not available without examining how spaces for contention are created. In contrast, this article identifies the production politics between migrant workers and their employers as crucial in influencing the extent to which spaces for non-governmental organisation contention can be carved out. Accordingly, this article argues that forms of production politics leading to worker desertion from the workplace, rather than tactical accommodation, have provided non-governmental organisations with the impetus to push forward reform agendas within an authoritarian political environment.     

The Migrant Workers' Movement in the Democratic Consolidation of Korea

This paper traces the rise of the migrant workers' movement in Korea and the conditions of their collective actions in the militant tradition of Korean democratisation. It does this with a focus on the causes of militancy and its similarities to and differences from the characteristics of Korean democratisation. This paper argues that some defects of the political system, the role of oppressive government policy, and intervention of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are the combined reason for migrant worker militancy. However, this militant trend faces the challenge of the judicialisation of politics as democratic consolidation has been deepened and the legal order of society is emphasised. Judicialisation requires reconsideration on how to maximise one's interest through legal procedure rather than militant struggle. Such a legal approach, however, again confronts a dilemma in which simply following legal procedure will not generate any change in existing laws. Furthermore, according to various cleavage lines such as labour vs. capital, national vs. non-national, and native vs. foreign cultures, the priority of struggles in migrant workers and support groups has been differentiated into labour rights, political rights, and cultural rights. In this situation, the migrant workers' movement should be sensitive to locate its future agenda considering the needs of migrants as well as the changing context of Korean society.     

Women of protest,men of applause: political activism,gender and tradition in Kyrgyzstan

ABSTRACT

Tradition has come to play an important role throughout Central Asia in a number of new ways since independence, but has been predominantly investigated regarding nation building. In this article, we show how tradition is being used operationally in the context of activism and political conflict. We expose the various motivations and tactics pursued by aksakals (lit., whitebeards) and by a movement of mature women called OBON (lit., Women Units for Special Purposes) as they participate in politics, and the role tradition plays in these activities. We argue that aksakals actively draw on tradition even in the political realm to avoid being derogatorily labelled ‘elders on duty’, whereas OBON women position themselves as economic and political actors but are subjected to discourses and practices of tradition by others. While both aksakals and OBON women have been central to political action in Kyrgyzstan in the last two decades, this article is the first to compare and contrast these two categories of unusual activists. The comparison reveals a perpetuation of culturally recognized gender roles even when these actors go beyond their ‘traditional’ realms of competence.     

The Politics of the Minimum Wage in Hong Kong

This article provides an account of the recent introduction of a minimum wage in Hong Kong in 2011. Traditional welfare state theories had their origins in rich democracies. We refine the theoretical arguments in accordance with the semi-democratic nature of Hong Kong. We argue that the legislation was initiated reluctantly by the business-friendly government under unfavourable economic conditions. Any subsequent concessions to labour were not attributable to labour strength or political oppositions, which were very weak. Instead, multiple miscalculations by the politically dominant business side allowed the labour movement to gain limited grounds throughout the struggle. We also apply our arguments to the case of Singapore, illustrating how welfare state theories can be adapted to less democratic systems.     

Liberal Democracy and the Politics of Criminal Justice in Australia

Liberal democratic states like Australia manage criminal justice issues in ways which reflect an inbuilt tension between liberal and democratic values. Liberal democracies are responsive both to liberal claims and to democratic claims. As a result, policy debates and strategies can oscillate between (on the one hand) liberal sensitivity to individual rights and opposition to enhanced state capacity and (on the other hand) democratically legitimised community norms and collective values. Four crime-related policy debates — about the creation and operation of the National Crime Authority, about strategies for combating drug-related crime, about gun control legislation and about identity systems to counter money laundering, tax evasion and public benefit fraud — illustrate the characteristic liberal democratic mode of politics in operation. The spectrum of policy responses to crime issues within liberal democratic political systems corresponds to an analogous spectrum within criminology which encompasses individualistic and structuralist conceptions of the nature and causes of crime.     

John Howard,Economic Liberalism,Social Conservatism,and Australian Federalism

The Howard era saw a further accumulation of power in Canberra and continued the marginalisation of the States. This essay locates John Howard within Liberal Party tradition and examines the way in which his own values shaped his approach to federalism. Howard identified himself as an economic liberal and as a social conservative (although he might be better thought of as a social liberal.) His commitment to small government and a single market unimpeded by state borders together with his lack of sympathy with regional identity had important consequences for the evolution of the Australian federation after 1996.     

A Travesty of British Justice? Appealing against Internment during the Second World War

In late 1940, the Australian government established Aliens Tribunals and Advisory Committees to ensure that local internees could, if they desired, protest against their internment. Most historians argue that this system of appeals was fundamentally flawed. This general explanation has much to commend it. Even so, the widely‐condemned appeals system requires some contextualisation. This article examines the appeal against internment of one man, Henry Brose, but it also seeks to place the appeals system in the broader context of the Australian government's attempt to balance personal liberty and national security over the course of the Second World War. The purpose of such an approach is not to offer a revision so much as a re‐contextualisation of an appeals system that historians have correctly described as flawed. This article demonstrates that the initial appeals system was certainly undermined by a government motivated by concerns for national security rather than personal liberty. But it also argues that the ongoing attempts of the Australian government to improve and overhaul the appeals system, in the midst of prosecuting an extraordinarily complex global war, suggests a more nuanced story than the one — of hapless victims and travesties of British justice — that has traditionally been told.     

Japanese Labour Unions and Nuclear Energy: A Historical Analysis of Their Ideologies and Worldviews

This article analyses how diverse stances toward nuclear energy were produced and reproduced among Japanese labour unions from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, and how these stances of the formative period influenced the subsequent development of inter-union politics before and after the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in 2011, based on content analysis of union bulletins and other materials of pro- and anti-nuclear energy unions. This article asks three research questions: (i) what factors contributed to pro- or anti-nuclear energy stances of labour unions?; (ii) what elements constituted or framed unions’ arguments on the issue of nuclear energy?; and (iii) what impact did these stances and arguments formed in the early period have on the subsequent development of inter-union politics over nuclear energy, especially in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster? The paper shows union ideologies and institutional integration were the factors influencing unions’ stances on nuclear energy. It also analyses the worldviews of pro- and anti-nuclear energy unions based on the three policy styles of technological enthusiasts, moralists and cost-benefiters. The Fukushima disaster reinforced the previously formed division of union ideologies, but considerably weakened the discourse of technological enthusiasm stressed by pro-nuclear energy unions.     

Coercive Powers and the Australian National Crime Authority: A Practitioner's Defence

This paper considers the rationale for the use of coercive powers, such as investigative hearings and requirements to produce information, in the context of investigating serious criminal behaviour. It examines the extent to which such powers are used both in criminal and civil contexts and explores the principles which should be applied in deciding when such powers should be used. It argues that a balance must be struck between the degree of intrusiveness of such powers and the seriousness of the matters under investigation. It will suggest that in a liberal democratic framework such powers should only be used to investigate serious criminal behaviour or other conduct which has a serious impact on society. It is inconsistent with a liberal democratic tradition for such powers to be used without supervision by the courts. Finally, it will be argued that public debate about the use of such powers needs to be more informed. There needs to be greater understanding of the nature of these powers, and how they are used, and the checks and balances which should apply if the community is to make a considered decision on when such powers are appropriate.