Australia's contribution to Political Studies

Stream convenors(s): Marian Simms (Australian National University) and Joan Rydon
Complete list of papers     

Other streams:       The disciplinary history of political science    Australasian politics    Political sociology    The politics of resistance and class    Health, politics and policy    Women and politics    International politics    Political theory    Environmental policy and politics

Presenters: Senator Andrew Bartlett    Judith Brett    John Cash    David Farrell    David Farrell (panel)    Brian Galligan    Senator John Faulkner    Graeme Gill    Angus McIntyre    Ian McLean    Roger Markwick    Robert F Miller     Andrew Parkin    Christopher Pyne    TH Rigby    Richard Sakwa     James Walter    Stephen Wheatcroft    George Williams

PANELS

Electoral methods    Electoral reform I    Electoral reform II    Psychological politics    Federalism and the High Court    Communism and the Soviet Union I    Communism and the Soviet Union II

Keynote session: Electoral methods (Chair: Joan Rydon)

David Farrell, University of Manchester and Ian McAllister, Australian National University
Preferences, tickets and transfers: The 1983 reform of the electoral system to the Australian Senate and its consequences for preferential voting
Australia is (rightly) proud of its long and distinguished contribution to the development of electoral institutions, and this probably is best represented by the imaginative and bold steps of electoral engineers in designing the country's preferential electoral systems. While a small, rich (and fast growing) literature pays attention to critical junctures in the evolution of the preferential systems at federal level - notably in 1902, 1918/19, and 1949 - at most, only passing reference is made to developments in 1983, when the Senate system of Single Transferable Vote (STV) was amended in a number of important respects, most notably with the introduction of 'ticket voting' and changes to the counting procedures for 'surplus votes'. This paper will explore the background to, and nature of these changes, placing them in the wider context of scholarly debates over the place of preferential voting. A central question to be considered is what such changes mean to our understanding of the principal features of STV: ultimately, were the boundaries of what we understand as 'STV' breached in 1983?
Email: david.farrell@man.ac.uk

Keynote session: Electoral methods

Ian McLean, Politics, Oxford University
Australian electoral reform and two concepts of representation
The most distinctive Australian contribution to institutional design is the construction of electoral systems. Before Federation, remote colonies were an ideal seedbed for radical ideas on representation. Those ideas appealed to a microcosmic concept of representation. Since Federation, politicians have mostly stressed the rival (and partly incompatible) principal-agent concept of representation. I analyse the work of E. J. Nanson (1850--1936; Professor of Mathematics, University of Melbourne, 1875--1922) in this context. Nanson was one of only two anglophones in the 19th century to understand social choice theory (the other being Lewis Carroll). His fundamental papers were written in what was then one of the smallest and most isolated anglophone universities in the world. Nanson's failure to influence Australian institutional design at the foundation of the Commonwealth, and the subsequent adoption of Nanson's recommendations for Senate elections, both throw light on the incompatible conceptions of representation. So does the 1983 amendment of Senate procedures, on which see David Farrell's paper to this conference.
Iain McLean is Professor of Politics, Oxford University, and a fellow of Nuffield College. He has held visiting appointments at Stanford, Yale, and the ANU. He is interested in the properties of electoral systems and the history of social choice. His books include 'Classics of Social Choice' (with A.B. Urken, Michigan, 1995), and 'Rational Choice & British Politics' (OUP, 2001).

Panel: Electoral reform (Chair: Elaine Thopmson)

Christopher Pyne, Liberal MHR Sturt

Senator Andrew Bartlett, Australian Democrats, Queensland

David Farrell, Manchester University

Keynote: Electoral reform

Senator John Faulkner

Panel: Psychological politics (Chair: Jim Walter)

This is intended to be a panel discussion, looking both at questions relating to the history and take up of political psychology in Australian political science, and at current and future prospects. The speakers will be giving short presentations at follows:

Judith Brett, La Trobe University
Revising the agenda for the study of Australian political culture: The Australian state in every day life

John Cash, University of Melbourne
Political passions today

James Walter, Monash University
Reflections on the ‘Melbourne School’

Anthony Moran, La Trobe University, discussant.

Panel: Federalism and the High Court

Brian Galligan

Andrew Parkin

George Williams

Panel: Communism and the Soviet Union I (Chair: Les Holmes)

Graeme Gill, Economics, Sydney University
From the peasants to the bourgeoisie: Dealing with the Soviet collapse
The collapse of the USSR created a major crisis in what had been known as Soviet studies. Not only had the subject seemingly disappeared for political scientists, but the range of methodologies and problems that had been unique to the field of communist studies disappeared as well. Instead of appearing as something very different from that range of countries routinely studied in Western comparative politics, to many the post-Soviet states seemed simply to be new cases to add to the regular comparative politics curriculum. As a result, a large number of people with no background in Soviet studies but a highly developed methodological capacity entered the Russian studies field. The results have not always been fruitful. This paper argues that an understanding of the contemporary Russian scene requires familiarity with the conditions of the Soviet predecessor, and not just of its terminal period. This means not just that the Soviet period remains directly relevant to today, but also that those former Soviet scholars who seemed to despair for the future of their work were far too pessimistic.
Email: G.Gill@econ.usyd.edu.au

Roger Markwick, School of Liberal Arts, University of Newcastle
The market as totalitarianism: The Russian experience
The "totalitarian state" was a key concept in Soviet studies at least up until the 1970s, when it seemed succumb to a revisionist challenge, particularly from social history. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, totalitarianism has resurfaced as an analytical tool, not least among scholars from the former Soviet world. In the name of "democratisation", the thrust of neo-liberal "reform" in Russia and many other Soviet successor states has been to dismantle the all-embracing, totalitarian Soviet-era state in the apparent belief that it would open the way for market forces to flourish. In many respects, this has indeed been the case. But the abrupt embrace of capitalism has cut a swathe through the fabric of established social, political and economic relations. The trauma associated with shock therapy and its aftermath has not only has had devastating social consequences but has also undermined the capacity of a civil society to emerge as a bulwark of democratisation. Private property and the market in Russian civil society, with their capacity to coerce, shape, subordinate and penetrate even into the most intimate aspects of social life and values, has proven to be at least as "totalitarian" in Russia, if more subtle in its modus operandi, as the crudely coercive, Soviet-era, state.
Email: roger.markwick@newcastle.edu.au

TH Rigby, Australian National University
Russian nationhood from its origins to Putin
By 'nationhood' is meant the (often problematic) conjunction of 'national identity' and the socio-politcal order. Post-Soviet Russia has seen constant interplay between competing visions of desirable futures and competing readings of Russia's past. This paper refutes the view that nations are a purely modern phenomenon, adducing evidence from ancient and British history and elsewhere to argue that ethno-national identities have been a constant in human history. But so, too, has been the interplay between such identities and socio-economic change, complicated by often fraught relations with other nations. The paper traces the evolution of Russian national identity from the settlement of the proto-Russians from Central Europe to the late Tsarist period, identifying the critical factors shaping it up to the Bolshevik revolution. Marxism-Leninism, professedly aiming at the 'withering away' of the state following the elimination of all national and exploitative class identities, became in practice a recipe for a greater Russia with a state-enforced system of privilege enforced by a ubiquitous political police. In its post-Stalin version, seeking compliance increasingly from material incentives rather than harsh coercion, while fostering 'peaceful coexistence' along with increased contacts with the West, it became steadily more vulnerable to dissident opinion, fostering a diverse 'shadow culture', which included visions both of Russian and non-Russian 'national identity'. Under Gorbachev's Perestroika, leading to a withering of censorship and an upsurge of non-communist political mobilisation, the Soviet state collapsed, with power passing to the governments of the constituent republics, in each of which a new political reality emerged, shaped by its current circumstances and its ethno-national identity. For Russians this entailed the loss of a common statehood with their Ukrainian and Belorussian 'brothers', and a shrinking of borders to their pre-seventeenth century limits. The impact of this on settled visions of Russian nationhood has been one of the two dominant factors (the other being the impact of socio-economic reform) in the political life of Russia under Yeltsin and Putin.
Email: thrigby@coombs.anu.edu.au

Robert F Miller, Australian National University
Humanitarian intervention and the politics of nationalism in the former Yugoslavia
This paper represents an effort to apply Tony Coady's criteria for armed humanitarian intervention and Aleksandar Pavkovic's recent article (East European Quarterly, 36:2) on foreign interventions in favour of particular nationalist movements in Yugoslavia over the history of that country up to the present - to apply these conceptions to the current situation in what's left of Yugoslavia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. It looks at the distorting impact of foreign interventions and subsequent efforts at nation-building on the political development of the successor states and would-be states (Kosovo). It looks at the current electoral campaigns in Serbia, Bosnia and at efforts to maintain the linkage between Serbia and Montenegro in the face of determined local efforts to split them. It also applies some of the lessons to the current situation in Afghanistan and Iraq and concludes that although armed intervention is on rare occasions unavoidable, it must never be undertaken lightly and without thorough debate and consultation with regional forces who understand better the parameters of the specific conflict situation and the likely problems of a post-intervention period.

Panel: Communism and the Soviet Union II (Chair: Les Holmes)

Richard Sakwa, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent at Canterbury (UK)
The Australasian contribution to Soviet and Russian studies
In a brief analysis it is impossible to do justice to the richness of the contribution made by Australasian scholars to this field. Work by scholars from this region has been characterised by a robust independence, and thus it is impossible to categorise it as either belonging to the 'totalitarian' school or to the 'revisionist' camp. In the field of Soviet politics and government, for example, we have a number of specialists on the communist party and the state (e.g. T. H. Rigby, Lloyd Churchward, Graeme Gill, Stephen Fortescue, John Miller) whose work resists easy categorisation. Some have continued their work to cover the post-Soviet period and have become renowned specialists on post-communist Russian politics (Graeme Gill, Peter Lentini) or analysts of comparative communism and post-communism (Leslie Holmes, T. Harry Rigby, Graeme Gill). There has also been a diversification, with important specialists on Soviet and Russian foreign policy (Peter Shearman, Bob Miller and Bobo Lo). A particular strength has always been historical research, exemplified by the work of Stephen Wheatcroft , David Christian and Roger Markwick. We can also be confident that the potential is far from exhausted, with a number of younger specialists already making their mark (Emma Gilligan, Bobo Lo, David Lockwood, and others) so that we can be assured that the baton is being passed to a new generation. It should not be forgotten that at a crucial moment in the transcendence of the communist order Australia played host to a number of scholars from Eastern Europe. Notably, representatives of the so-called 'Budapest school' found respite for a time here (for example, Agnes Heller and Ferenc Feher). But can we identify something that could be labelled the 'Australian school' of Communist and Russian studies? This paper will argue that we can, and will develop the argument on the basis of a closer examination of the work of some exemplars of this 'school'. We will focus in particular on the work of a 'Sovietologist' (T.H. Rigby), a comparativist (Leslie Holmes), a historian (Roger Markwick) and a post-communist Russianist (Graeme Gill). Although very different in their work and approaches, there are certain elements that bring them together. It is these features that this paper will explore.

Stephen Wheatcroft, History Department, University of Melbourne
Seeing the Soviet experience in historical perspective
Stephen Wheatcroft's research has been aimed at applying social scientific approaches to help improve our understanding of the Soviet system and the Soviet experience. He was trained as an economic historian but has developed an interest in agricultural and demographic history, and more recently in the history of political systems. Much of his work is archival and quantitatively based. He approaches this subject having studied in some detail the history and the politics of the Soviet statistical system, which contrary to popular opinion was an extraordinarily competent system and has generally produced valuable statistical records. It is one of the ironies of the age, that the vast amount of good statistical data for a society undergoing amazing change has been so little studied. The statistical data has often been subject to gross political distortions, but if approached sensitively with an understanding of the circumstances and conditions in which the data was collected and processed, the data can yield remarkably valuable results. Wheatcroft believes that the Soviet archives contain one of the wealthiest untapped sources of significant social science data in the world, and he is actively involved in making these materials more widely available. Wheatcroft's major work includes a) explaining the courses and the significance of the agricultural depression of 1928-33 and the associated famine of 1932-3; b) understanding the nature, scale and chronology of the different type of repression in the Tsarist and Soviet system and explaining their development; and more recently c) understanding the nature of the Stalinist decision-making process through analyzing Stalin's institutional and less formal links with the political elite and how these changed over time. His paper will include prime examples from each of these areas.
Email: stephenw@truck.its.unimelb.edu.au

Top

This site maintained by Phil Griffiths. This page updated 2 September 2002