Australian External Policy and the End of Britain's Empire1

The winding down of Britain's colonial empire in the 1950s and 1960s impacted upon Australian external policy in several ways. Australia had to build diplomatic capacity in order to manage relationships with numerous newly independent states. As many of these states were non-aligned in the Cold War context, Australia had to think afresh about the problems of regional security. Decolonisation also meant the transformation of the Commonwealth into a "nest of republics", a development that hastened the demise of the older sense of organic empire and, for Robert Menzies, compromised the quality of the Anglo-Australian relationship. The effect on Australia of Britain's post-colonial restrictive immigration policy compounded this process. So too did Britain's move towards Europe. In addition there were implications for Australia's policy towards the United Nations and towards its own dependent territories.     

Consensus decision-making in CCAMLR: Achilles’ heel or fundamental to its success?

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - The Commission for the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources is the body responsible for the...     

‘What did the winning candidate have that I don’t have?’: gender,politics and elections in Solomon Islands

Women’s political under-representation is a concern for both emerging and established democracies. In Solomon Islands, only four women were elected to Parliament in the 40 years from independence in 1978 to 2018. This article analyses the barriers to success for female candidates in Solomon Islands elections, focusing on the impact of informal institutions related to kinship, clientelism and leadership. It argues that in a context such as Solomon Islands, an emerging democracy with a weakly institutionalised party system, informal institutions play a highly influential, and highly gendered, role.     

Raz on Constitutional Interpretation

Law and Philosophy -     

Some scepticism about moral realism

Conclusion The lesson is that while externalists avoid devastating objections to internalist moral realism, they thereby sacrifice most of thepractical significance of moral realism as an alternative to noncognitivism. They defend the objectivity of moral beliefs, but are forced to concede that the practical relevance and appeal of those beliefs depends on subjective desires. It is because they correctly reject internalism that they succumb to the non-cognitivists'tu quoque.