Beyond Stereotypes: An Exploratory Profile of Australian Women Mayors

Women continue to be under-represented in senior positions in local government. This study draws on interviews with 19 women mayors who held office in the Australian state of Queensland during the period 2000–2004. The paper finds that the profiles of women in these positions has markedly changed over the last decade, and concludes that if the local government sector is to remain robust and viable in these changing social and economic times there is a need to focus on dismantling the stereotypes and implement well-designed and considered strategies to develop women leaders.     

Where from,where to? New and old configurations in Poland's foreign and security policy priorities

The past 20 years have seen profound shifts in Polish foreign and security policy. Like other states in Central Europe Poland became part of the Euro-Atlantic sphere upon gaining first NATO and then EU membership. Despite such broad similarities, Poland's trajectory since 1989 has been marked by some specific and defining features. Poland has become the most significant player in Central Europe and tends to be viewed in the region as a leader, twinned with this, due to its size and relative strength, Poland is taken seriously at the EU table. At the same time, there has been a palpable shift in Polish Atlanticism and a more skeptical view of the US has emerged. This article explores the sources of these reconfigurations and considers their potential implications.     

A complicity continuum of state crime∗

State crime scholars and radical criminologists have struggled to draw distinctions between state-initiated and statefacilitated state crimes and state-corporate crimes. The first of these, a less contentious concept, denotes an explicit and distinct action by a state for the furtherance of its organizational goals which violates law or produces social injury. State-facilitated and state-corporate crimes have been defined as implicit actions or inactions by the state which facilitate social injury, harm, or violations of law. Here we seek to establish more clearly the parameters of the phenomenon of state crime by creating a multidimensional continuum of state crime complicity. A sample of cases found in the radical-state and state-corporate crime literature are placed on or between the two extremes of the continuum: commission-omission behavior and implicit-explicit policy.     

The Future of European Security

The transformation of transatlantic security relations after 9/11 remains the subject of extensive scrutiny. Academics and practitioners alike continue to seek an explanation for the stark divergences in national security policies that transpired in the period between 2001 and 2003. This paper argues that the existence of national strategic cultures in shaping states security policies and perspectives towards the use of force in particular is crucial to any comprehensive understanding of recent developments in transatlantic security. Furthermore, only when the perspectives of states from Central and Eastern Europe are brought more centrally into analysis can a clearer prognosis of the longer term consequences for both transatlantic security and Europe’s own ambitions to become a secruity actor be reached.     

DAMNED IF YOU DO AND DAMNED IF YOU DON'T

In contemporary Western societies women are often thought to have overcome inequality, become autonomous and resistant to social pressures, and in so doing gained the freedoms to make their own choices. However, this ‘post-feminist sensibility’ can arguably be seen as a double-bind as some types of ‘choices’ cannot always be recognised as freely chosen if they are taken as an indication of failing to resist social (appearance) pressures. We argue that one such example is the ‘choice’ to have cosmetic breast surgery, a practice that has received both criticism and celebration from different feminist angles. In this paper we analyse how women who have had breast augmentation are constructed by readers of an internet blog in which they are largely vilified and pathologised for not valuing their ‘natural’ (yet ‘deficient’) breasts. We demonstrate how the same discursive constructions that appear to value women's ‘natural’ bodies simultaneously (re)produce the conditions in which women may feel the need to have breast augmentation.     

THE KEY NARRATIVE

<正>China seeks better relations with the world through integrated development By Kerry BrownThe Silk Road Economic Belt and 21 stCentury Maritime Silk Road(Belt and Road)Initiative is the most important of the key narratives by which China is managing its relations with the wider world and,in particular,within its region.     

AN ERA OF IMPLEMENTATION

<正>The Communist Party of China leads the nation’s development with a people-centered approach The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China(CPC)has concluded in Beijing and the new CPC leadership was elected.What are the core objectives that the Party with its new leadership after     

RESTORING FAITH IN GLOBALIZATION

<正>Can China push against the tide of anti-globalization?2016 was a bad year for globalization.No one can doubt that much now.The decision in the UK to exit the European Union—the outcome of a referendum vote on June 23—was the first major shock.The fact that former British Prime Minister David Cameron,the chief architect of the event,resigned immediately after the vote and