REFLECTIONS ON THE STATE OF CONSENSUS-BASED DECISION MAKING IN CHILD WELFARE

Consensus approaches to child protection decision making such as mediation and family group conferencing have become increasingly widespread since first initiated about 25 years ago. They address but are also constrained by paradoxes in the child protection system about commitments to protecting children and to family autonomy. In a series of surveys, interviews, and dialogues, mediation and conferencing researchers and practitioners discussed the key issues that face their work: clarity about purpose, system support, family empowerment, professional qualifications, and coordination among different types of consensus-building efforts. Consensus-based decision making in child protection will continue to expand and grow but will also continue to confront these challenges.     

Resistance to Chronic Violence in Informal Workplaces: The Strategies of Domestic Workers in Brazil (2003–2018)

This article analyses the repertoire of individual strategies utilised by domestic workers to resist routinised workplace violence in the cities of São Paulo and Ilhéus, Brazil. Findings suggest that domestic workers favour two strategies of resistance: exit (quitting work without prior notice) and voice (negotiating workplace conditions). The latter strategy is divided into two subtypes: voice-pleading (appealing to decency) and voice-confrontation (warning and rights-claiming). Voice strategies appear more effective than exit in ameliorating patterns of chronic workplace violence, particularly when they incorporate labour rights claims and when emotional ties exist between workers and employers.     

Resisting Hate Crime Discourse: Queer and Intersectional Challenges to Neoliberal Hate Crime Laws

Hate crime laws have reinforced neoliberalism by expanding police and prosecutorial power, adding to the rapid expansion of incarcerated populations. Further, hate crime discourse associates anti-queer violence with notions of “stranger danger,” and thereby reproduces problematic race and social class politics in which an innocent, implicitly middle-class, person is suddenly and randomly attacked by a hateful, implicitly low-income, person. Thus, the author argues that queer and intersectional resistance should reject hate crime discourse and, instead, focus on the experiences of marginalized lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. By doing so, scholarship and activism concerned with reducing anti-queer violence can benefit a wide range of LGBT people without reinforcing inequalities based on race and social class.     

WHISTLEBLOWING WITHOUT TEARS: THE EXPOSURE OF BRISBANE'S KING GEORGE SQUARE CAR PARK FRAUD

Abstract: This is essentially a “now it can be told” account of a massive fraud perpetrated on the Brisbane City Council in the mid-1970s by six attendants in a council car park, who manipulated bundy clocks to falsify departure times on parking tickets surrendered by departing motorists. Because of bitter personal rivalry between two senior council officials, which was complicated by (i) strong support for one official at elected member level, (ii) the subsequently discovered domestic liaison of the latter official with one of the prime suspects, and (iii) bungling in the crown prosecutor's office leading to a judge's decision to throw out the initial conspiracy charge against the car park attendants, it seemed that they might be reinstated and resume stealing on a massive scale. A method of dealing effectively with the issue, involving “blowing the whistle” while protecting the identity of the whistleblowers, was therefore devised. As a result, the thieves were eventually charged and convicted individually. The senior official who advised against police investigation of the suspected fraud while concealing his relationship with a prime suspect was also punished. The paper concludes with a defence of the deception perpetrated by whistleblowers to protect themselves from possible retribution.     

International relations theory and Japanese pacifism: Why didn’t Tokyo go ballistic over North Korean nukes?

Seen from the perspectives of the various Western theories of international relations, Japan’s peculiar armed pacifism can appear very different. Prominent neorealists have predicted that Japan will inevitably develop nuclear weapons; prominent liberals have cited Japan as the model pacifist nation of the future. Over the last five years, it became clear to Japan that North Korea either possessed, or was on the brink of acquiring, nuclear weapons. How would the Japanese government respond to such a critical threat to its security? The case of North Korean nukes suggests that policymakers should be wary of the grim expectations of Western neorealists, at least in regard to Japan.     

Interactive Policy Development: Undermining or Sustaining Democracy?

The question can be raised whether the principal effect of interactive policy development is to shore up a (creaking) democratic system or to destabilize its very foundations. In this article, a framework is presented for assessing the democratic credentials of interactive policy development. It is based on four views on how a democracy should work: instrumental or substantial democracy and direct or indirect democracy. Critics and advocates differ in their confidence that the intended aims can ever be realized. Based on extensive case study material of interactive local policy development projects collected between 1997 and 2001, the validity of the various arguments for or against interactive policy-making is analysed. The analysis indicates that whether interactive policy development undermines or sustains democracy depends principally on the extent to which divergences in the expectations of the various groups are made explicit and unrealistic or mistaken expectations are dispelled.