Reclaiming Community? From Welfare Society to Welfare State in Australian Catholic Social Thought

Influenced by both conservative and left wing communitarian thinking, current debate about welfare governance in Australia reflects an inflated evaluation of the potential role of the third sector or civil society organisations in the production of welfare. This paper gives an overview of twentieth century Australian Catholic social thinking about state, market and civil society relations in the production of welfare. It highlights the neglected, historical role of the Catholic Church in promoting a "welfare society" over a "welfare state" in Australia. It points to the reasons for the Church's later embrace of the welfare state and suggests that these reasons should make us deeply sceptical of the current communitarian fad.     

Beyond the Deficit Model: Social Welfare in Post-Soviet Georgia

Two researchers examine several crucial features of the transformation of Soviet welfare provision in post-Soviet Georgia. Institutional analysis and household surveys in two industrial cities in Georgia are used to identify determinants of distribution and access to three sectors of social welfare: water, heat, and education. The data are used to develop a multidimensional conceptional framework for change.     

The Welfare Agenda of the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe: Combining Welfare Chauvinism,Producerism and Populism*

Recent scholarship on the populist radical right tends to imprecisely describe the welfare agenda of this party family with reference to its key ideological characteristics of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. We propose an alternative analytical framework that considers the multidimensionality of welfare state positions and the “deservingness criteria” that underlie ideas about welfare entitlement. Applying this framework to a sample of four European populist radical right parties, we conclude that three interrelated frames inform their welfare agenda. These parties, we argue, advocate social closure not only on the basis of the deservingness criterion of identity (welfare chauvinism), but also on criteria of control, attitude, and reciprocity (welfare producerism) and on an antagonism between the people and the establishment (welfare populism). Understanding the welfare agenda of the populist radical right requires us to move beyond welfare chauvinism and to reconsider the concept of welfare producerism and its interaction with welfare chauvinism.     

Changing Emphases in the Activities of the Australian State

Paul Patton and Dianne Austin, eds, Transformations in Australian Society
Paul James, ed., The State in Question
Liz Young, Minor Parties … Minor Players: The Senate, the Minor Parties and the 1993 Budget
Gianni Zappala, Four Weddings, A Funeral and A Family Reunion: Ethnicity and Representation in Australian Federal Politics     

Scholars and Radicals: Writing and Re-thinking Class Structure in Australian History

We wrote Class Structure in Australian History in a period of heightened social struggle. It grew out of collaborative research projects at Sydney's Free U in the late 1960s. The book was distinctive in both emphasising the socialist tradition of class analysis and trying to find new paths for it. Its first edition was ignored by mass media, and often mis-interpreted in professional journals. Nevertheless it circulated widely and has continued to be a point of reference for progressive scholarship. Its method tried to carry forward the Free U project of democratic knowledge making, linking documents with analysis and inviting shared interpretation. Its theory emphasised the reality of classes as historical formations, and the importance of understanding class structure as a whole, on both points reacting against influential frameworks of the time. Looking back, CSAH appears uncertain in its approach to race and gender, and inadequate in its handling of coloniality; it was written in isolation from similar projects in other parts of the postcolonial world. Yet its approach still has value in understanding the changing dynamics of class on a world scale, the class relations of the neoliberal era in Australia, and the current configuration of power in Australia.     

Political Consequences of Welfare Regimes: Social Assistance and Support for Presidentialism in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Tackling redistributive expansion in developing countries, this paper explores broader political consequences of social assistance programmes. Drawing from the Turkish case, where social welfare expanded since the 2000s, it examines attitudes of social assistance beneficiaries towards transition to presidentialism, which was approved in a referendum in 2017, and took effect in 2018. Using the results of an original survey, it indicates that social assistance benefits played a significant role in increasing support for presidentialism, by garnering votes from opposition voters, especially those with high-risk perceptions, in return for benefits. Given the character of Turkish presidentialism, devoid of vital checks and balances, the findings reveal that incumbents can mobilise support by using redistributive instruments in the context of democratic backsliding.     

The “ANRC has Withdrawn its Offer”: Paul Kirchhoff,Academic Freedom and the Australian Academic Establishment*

The main focus of examinations of intellectual suppression and censorship of scholars and academics in Australia has been on the post‐1945 period, particularly the Cold War. The interwar years have, in comparison, received little attention, resulting in a lack of historical understanding of the development of censorious structures and traditions in Australia. In this paper I discuss the exclusion of Paul Kirchhoff, a German anthropologist, a member of the German Communist Party and a Jew, from undertaking anthropological research in Australia, including its external territories, between 1931 and 1932. Kirchhoff applied for a research grant from the Australian National Research Council (ANRC) which, although awarded, was withdrawn once the Executive Committee was informed by the Australian government that the British MI5 considered him a security risk. His membership of the Communist Party was the reason put forward. This case also underlines the transnational aspect of security services and the international reach of academic anthropology. Kirchhoff was a victim of the ANRC's sympathetic collaboration with the Commonwealth Attorney‐General's office to stifle academic and civil freedom.     

Social Class in Contemporary Japan: Structures,Sorting and Strategy

This article accounts for why and how democratisation in Korea, although facilitated by social forces from below, has contributed to deepening social polarisation by accelerating economic liberalisation. In assessing this seemingly paradoxical dynamic of democratisation in Korea, this article offers an analysis of contemporary Korean politics and political economy alternative to currently prevailing approaches. Prevailing approaches tend to frame recent socio-economic and political changes in Korea brought about by democratisation and the financial crisis of 1997-98 as the encroachment of the market over the state, and of the external (the global) over the internal (the national), as if these bipolarised categories assume zero-sum relations. This article posits democratisation processes as class and social struggles and such factors as the global economy, the positioning of Korea in the world-system and the history of US intervention, that are typically perceived as external constituents, as active social and class forces. Informed by this framework, this article explores contemporary Korean politics and political economy as a set of contradictory processes of political and economic liberalisation, democratisation and “de-democratisation.”     

From Secessionist Conflict Toward a Functioning State: Processes of State- and Nation-Building in Transnistria

How have the Transnistrian authorities sought to consolidate de facto statehood in the absence of international recognition? Starting from the idea that the time factor will eventually transform secessionists into state-builders, this article traces how the processes of state- and nation-building promoted by the Transnistrian de facto authorities have evolved since the early 1990s. Drawing on official sources, interviews, journalism, and the political science literature, the domestic dimensions of state- and nation-building in de facto state conflicts are examined. These include fulfillment of basic requirements of state-building, development of economic viability, and nation-building processes that attempt to create a unifying identity.