Shielding the Republic: Barack Obama and the Jeffersonian Tradition of American Foreign Policy

President Barack Obama’s foreign policy has confounded critics from both the left and right in American politics. This analysis argues that this is because Obama’s foreign policy exhibits affinities with the least prominent of the four traditions of American foreign policy identified by Walter Russell Mead: the Jeffersonian tradition. In contrast to the more prominent Wilsonian and Hamiltonian traditions, the Jeffersonian tradition exhibits more introverted tendencies that seek to perfect and protect rather than export the virtues of the Republic. The Jeffersonian understanding of foreign policy is, in Walter Lippman’s phrase, primarily the “shield of the republic.” This analysis tracks the influence and implications of this perspective through examination of the Obama Administration’s approach to two prominent foreign policy challenges after 2008: intervention in Libya and the ongoing Syrian crisis.     

Typologies of Violence Exposure and Cognitive Processing in Incarcerated Male Adolescents

Incarcerated youth experience high rates of violence exposure (VE), cognitive processing (CP) deficits, and mental health (MH) problems. It is not clear whether VE combined with CP deficits are particularly salient risk factors for MH dysfunction. Male incarcerated youth offenders (n?=?115) completed standardized self-reports of MH and VE. CP was measured with executive functioning tasks and academic assessments. Person-centered Ward’s Squared Euclidian Distance cluster analysis was used to examine unique patterns of CP and VE. Cluster analysis defined five distinct profiles of MH functioning, CP, and VE rates within incarcerated adolescents. Two groups, with high rates of VE and CP deficits, showed high rates of MH problems. Linear techniques may obscure important differences within this population.     

Reading in Community,Reading for Community: A Survey of Book Clubs in Regional Australia

Worries about weakening community are central to assessments of modern Australia, yet it is easy to overlook the everyday ways we “do” and participate in community life. Book clubs are one area of community participation largely ignored by researchers despite the local and national proliferation of such clubs. Surveying twenty-two book groups and ninety-seven book club members, this study investigates the roles that book clubs play in the cultural and community life of a regional area of Tasmania. The results show that book clubs promote regular intellectual engagement and provide for a distinct female sociality that consolidates and creates new social connections and function as everyday “escape attempts” from the obligations of work and family. We suggest that the support and development of local book club programs may have considerable potential as a strategy for Australian governments and communities to foster a sense of community.     

Visa liberalization processes in the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood: understanding policy outcomes

Focusing on EU visa liberalization policy with Russia and Eastern Partnership countries as a case study, this article seeks to investigate the drivers of EU external migration policy in regards to its neighbourhood. In doing so, the article seeks to understand whether policy objectives and instruments employed by the EU emphasize security or normative considerations, or both. It also scrutinizes the factors behind this emphasis. In particular, it examines the degree to which EU external migration policy is framed by intra-EU bargaining and interaction with partner countries. The hybrid nature of EU visa policy towards its neighbourhood stems first and foremost from persisting differences in the prioritization of security and values among the major EU actors involved in the policy process. Yet as the article argues, interaction with partner countries crucially shapes the outcomes of the visa liberalization policy, thereby altering the balance between normative and security considerations that results from negotiations between EU actors.     

Australia and the Emergence of the Modern Two-Party System

Although the Australian party system is accepted in some literature as a "classic" example of a two-party system, information about how this system came about does not feature prominently in international studies on political parties. It is here argued that Australia indeed blazed the trail for the two-party model by being the first to link parliamentary organisation directly to a mass electorate.