The Rise and Fall of the Australian Women's Bureau

Policy textbooks often overlook the importance of international borrowing in their accounts of the policy process. Analysis of feminist policy influence also tends to neglect the international dimension of the opportunity structure and the leverage provided by international agendas. In this article we tell the story of how the Women's Bureau, the first women's unit in Australian government, came into being in the 1960s. This story encompasses the overseas modelling of such bureaux and the promotion of such models through international women's organisations and their national affiliates. The international dimension has been inseparable from the development of women's policy machinery in Australian government; the current disengagement from international standard setting coincides with the dismantling of domestic machinery, including the Women's Bureau.     

从X到Z:西方"苏联学"的兴与衰

西方的"苏联学"是一个庞大和繁杂的体系.在西方/美国的"苏联学"、西方国际关系理论、以及美国对苏政策三者之间寻找交叉点和互动处,有助于为进一步研究冷战以后西方的俄罗斯/欧亚研究和对俄政策奠定基础.乔治·凯南和马丁·马里亚分别于1947年和1990年以"X"和"Z"为笔名发表的长文,不仅代表了战后西方苏联研究的起点和终结,也构成了学界与政策界、地区研究与国际关系理论研究之间的交叉和互动点.在前苏联问题上,学界与政策界的互动不一定合拍,有时甚至南辕北辙.43年间,美国的对苏政策一直具有极其强烈的意识形态色彩,信奉现实主义的凯南被边化,美情报界也因此对苏屡屡误判.相比之下,西方苏联学界的主流却日益学术化,多以"正常"眼光看待前苏联,其中不乏马里亚认为的"亲苏"倾向;Z文对前苏联的笔伐和近乎完美的预测,其实也是对西方和美国苏联学的大批判,尽管这一批判在一定程度上不甚公平.     

The Rise and Fall of Capital: Corporate Malaysia in Historical Perspective

This article argues that better informed insights into the benefits and repercussions of the form of development of East Asian economies could be obtained when the theoretical perspectives from two different bodies of literature are employed collectively. If the concepts from the discipline of political economy – specifically the body of literature dealing with the developmental state now commonly deployed in analyses of East Asian economies – are used in combination with concepts from the literature on business history based on the work of Alfred Chandler, the reasons for the rise and fall of major enterprises in East Asia can be better understood. A case study of enterprise and economic development in Malaysia is presented to substantiate this argument.     

The Rise and Fall of the Jewish/Left Alliance: An Historical and Political Analysis

The disproportionate historical involvement of Jews in the political Left is well known. However, far less attention has been paid to the political and ideological factors which attracted Jews to the Left. This article attributes Jewish support for the Left to both class and ethnic considerations. Poverty and anti-Semitism influenced Jews to join a movement which promised to end capitalist and racial oppression. However, following the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel, many Jews lost their faith in universalisticsolutions, and switched their commitment from international to nationalist force. Nevertheless, lingering links between Jews and the Left continue to exist to this day.     

El Ejercicio de Pensar: The Rise and Fall of Pensamiento Crítico

In 'El ejercicio de pensar'(the exercise of thinking), Fernando Martínez Heredia ( El Caimán Barbudo 1967: 2–5) made reference to the words of Enrique Varona to describe what, in his view, was the appropriate role of the intellectual in the Cuban Revolution. Varona had argued that thinking was a rare human trait as it went against basic desires that preferred dogmas to ideas. Martínez Heredia's position on the role of the intellectual would have a prophetic character, for, soon after, given responsibility for the direction of the newly created Department of Philosophy at the University of Havana, he led a young group of academics gathered around the journal Pensamiento Crítico . In their heyday, both the group and their publication came to be identified with the concept of the revolutionary (and the Revolution's) intellectual. This article examines the formative process of this new, politically committed, intellectual in the Revolution and explores the role played by this group in the intervening years, including the special relationship it established with the European New Left.     

The Rise of the Insider: Memoirs and Diaries in Recent Australian Political History

The memoirs and diaries composed by politicians represent an increasingly important form of history. This article provides a comprehensive survey of such writings in Australia. It suggests that they have become more popular, diffuse, confessional, immediate, ambitious, interventionist and cynical over recent decades. The significance of these developments is considered and some tentative explanations advanced.     

The Rise and Fall of Paid Maternity Leave Policy in the Years of the Keating Government

In 2010, Australia finally introduced maternity leave, making it one of the last OECD nations to do so. Yet this policy had been announced by the Keating Government some sixteen years earlier, only to be watered down and then ultimately scuppered by subsequent governments. How, then, do we make sense of the rise and fall of this policy in the 1990s? This paper examines this question, arguing that while effective mobilisation by women in the labour movement was crucial to placing this issue on the Keating Government's policy agenda, the continued dominance of a male breadwinner model ultimately served to provide powerful impediments to policy implementation. The paper draws on interviews with key actors and analysis of policy debate to make this case, employing the concepts of policy windows and path dependency to make sense of the opportunities and impediments to policy change respectively. While an important and neglected story of maternity leave policy in Australia, this analysis has important implications for understanding policy‐making, policy trajectory and even gender roles in Australian politics and society.     

The Rise (and Frequent Fall) of Evangelical Politicians: Organization,Theology, and Church Politics

Latin American evangelicals have become a common presence in legislative politics. Brazil exemplifies the potential clout of evangelical legislators and a troubling tendency toward political corruption. This article explains the quality of evangelical interest representation by focusing on church organization and theology, arguing that evangelicals approach electoral politics via three different modes: rejection; participation as individual, politically engaged believers; and engagement as church corporate project. While individual participation is unrelated to political corruption, the corporate model fosters machine politics, characterized in Brazil by resource‐based politics, narrow voter bases, and frequent party switching. We link these characteristics to evangelical involvement in two corruption scandals that occurred during the administration of President Lula da Silva. The analysis shows the central role of evangelical organization and theology in shaping interest representation and suggests future duplication of the church‐as‐political‐machine model, particularly where the “Prosperity Theology” variant of pentecostalism is strong.