IPGRC: Seminar Series 2013

Seminars are held on Fridays in the Stretton Room (420) on the 4th floor of the Napier building between 3:30-5:00 (unless otherwise specified).

2012 Archive

2011 Archive

If you are interested in presenting a paper in the seminar series, please do contact us as we are now scheduling the meetings for next semester.

2012 Archive

Prof. Jacqui True (Monash University) "The United Nations and Violence Against Women"

Prof. Richard Robison (Murdoch University) Responses from Prof. Carol Johnson, Prof. Christopher Findlay & Prof. Greg McCarthy (University of Adelaide) "The Political Economy of the Patchwork Economy: who wins and who loses?"

Dr Alexandra Guaqueta (Flinders University) "United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and Polycentric Governance: Assumptions and Challenges"

Dr Chengxin Pan (Deakin University) “Fears and Fantasies: A Bifocal Lens in Western Representations of China’s Rise”

Prof. Jason Sharman (Griffith University) "Shell Games, International Corruption and Money Laundering: A Field Experiment in Violating International Law"

Prof. Taggart Murphy (Chair of the MBA Program in International Business at the Tokyo campus of the University of Tsukuba) "The Dollar-Centered Floating Rate System in the Light of the Euroland Crisis"

Dr Shahar Hameiri (Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University) "Securitisation and the Governance of H5N1 Avian Influenza in Southeast Asia"

Prof. David Arase (Pomona College & Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies) "North Korea-China-Russia Economic Cooperation"

2011 Archive

Dr Toby Carroll (National University of Singapore) "Delusions of Development: the World Bank, Participation and the  post-Washington Consensus in  Southeast Asia", 4 March 2011.

Dr John Barry (Queen’s University Belfast) "Life in a climate changed, carbon constrained world:
towards a just transition, resilience and well-being beyond economic growth", 6 May 2011.

Prof Clem Macintyre (University of Adelaide) "The Opposition in South Australia (or why Labor keeps winning)", 6 May 2011.

Dr Juanita Elias (Griffith University | Associate Member of the IPGRC) "The Gender Politics of Economic Competitiveness in Malaysia's Transition to a Knowledge-Economy", 5 August 2011.

Dr Carlo Tognato (University of Adelaide) "Stability Cultures: The Cultural Logic of Independent Central Banking", 19 August 2011.

Erin Zimmerman (University of Adelaide) "Think Tanks and the Governance of Non-Traditional Security Issues in Southeast Asia", 2 September 2011.

Assoc. Prof. Andrew Rosser (University of Adelaide) "Operationalising Political Economy Analysis for Development" , 14 October 2011.

Prof Swaran Singh (Jawaharlal Nehru University) "Multilateralizing China-India relations", 19 October 2011.

Dr Melissa Nursey-Bray (University of Adelaide) "Partnerships and Ports: Negotiating novel urban climate governance regimes", 28 October 2011.

Abstracts

Prof. Jacqui True (Monash University)

"The United Nations and Violence Against Women"

Violence against women is a major problem in all countries, affecting women in every socio-economic group and at every life stage.  Nowhere in the world do women share equal social and economic rights with men or the same access as men to productive resources. From a political economy perspective, sexual violence in recent armed conflicts is an integral part of this pattern of pervasive violence.  Yet the United Nations Security Council frames wartime sexual violence as “exceptional”. UN security interventions to protect against mass sexual violence in armed conflict, fail to conceptualize sexual violence during war as part of the continuum of gender-based violence that transgresses familiar soldier-civilian, male-female, state-non-state perpetrator, war-peace boundaries that thrives under conditions of globalized conflict significantly hampering any violence protection efforts.  Using the example of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the paper shows how economic and political mechanisms linked to global processes including the UN’s own presence, competition over resources, struggle for economic and political power, and the reproduction of militarised masculinities through war and profit, contribute to sexual violence against women in this conflict-affected society.  The paper draws implications from political economy analysis for international peace operations that seek not only to protect against and prosecute perpetrators of this violence but to prevent it in the long run.

Dr Alexandra Guaqueta (Flinders University)

"United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and Polycentric Governance: Assumptions and Challenges"

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), unanimously endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011, are known by many as the latest and possibly most important global standard for corporations that spells out ground rules on how businesses, domestic and multinational, should manage their negative impacts on people.  The UNGPs came about after several decades of failed attempts by the international community, within the confines of the UN, to regulate multinationals. So the fact that the Human Rights Council, with the support of several multinational enterprises and civil society organizations, would have agreed to the UNGPs is an historic moment for global governance. Policy debates within the international "community of practice" on business and human rights are now centred on how to take the UNGPs forward and identifying where the strategic focus should be. But some audiences are mistaking the UNGPs for another voluntary business ethics code among the vast Corporate Social Responsibility market, leading to unhelpful discussions. This lecture seeks to unpack key conceptual and political foundations of the UNGPs in order to inform better the next steps.

Roundtable Discussion

Prof. Richard Robison (Murdoch University)

"The Political Economy of the Patchwork economy: who wins and who loses?"

'...the questions and conflicts that are part of the Two Speed debate are not simply the consequence of the resources boom and the strength of the Australian dollar. They are embedded in deeper processes of structural change that have been transforming economic and social life in Australia and in other formerly industrial Western economies...The problem of growing economic disparities and fractures at both regional and class levels and the difficulties of transforming investment and work from manufacture into services and technology sectors has been at the heart of debate and conflict in these economies whether there is a resources boom or not' (Prof Richard Robison).

Responses from Prof. Carol Johnson (School of History and Politics), Prof. Christopher Findlay (Exec Dean, Faculty of The Professions) and Prof. Greg McCarthy (Head, School of Social Sciences).

Dr Carlo Tognato (University of Adelaide)

"The Full Monti: The Cultural Performance of Fiscal Consolidation in Italy"

Various European countries have recently carried out Draconian fiscal adjustments to avert the prospect of a default over their sovereign debt. Particularly in the case of Greece, the slashing of the welfare state has resulted into an accelerating process of social decomposition. In November the spread between the interest rates paid by German Treasury bonds and by Italian bonds nearly approached a point of no return. Italy stood at the edge of a fiscal crisis. To gain credibility before the international markets and tame the spread, Prime Minister Berlusconi decided to step down. A new technocratic government made up by unelected officials stepped in under the leadership of Mario Monti, former Chancellor of Bocconi University, the technocratic temple of Italian economics, and former EU Commissioner for the Internal Market. Since then, Monti has introduced the most restrictive pension system in the European Union, has increased tax pressure to a world record, even higher than in Scandinavian countries, has passed a labour reform to flexibilize the Italian labour market, has taken measures on market liberalization, and has announced spending cuts that dramatically break with long-standing fiscal practices in Italy. What Monti’s government did, surely played a role in addressing the crisis. How he did it, though, mattered as well to convey the seriousness of his effort. Fiscal consolidation, after all, is not only a repertoire of policy measures but also a cultural performance that seeks to both tease the market and elicit support on the part of society.

Dr Chengxin Pan

"Fears and Fantasies: A Bifocal Lens in Western Representations of China’s Rise"

The rise of China and its international implications have been subject to constant debate in the Western ‘China-watching’ community. Integral to this debate are two seemingly contrasting paradigms: the China threat and the China opportunity. Both paradigms reflect some contingent truth about China’s rise, yet ultimately neither can be seen as an objective description of a China ‘out there’. Rather, they are two particular, interrelated ways of constructing the Western self in terms of the modern knowing subject. With this appealing modern ‘self-discovery’, the West feels both an entitlement and a duty to know the world ‘as it is’. The ongoing quest for scientific certainty, which in turn is central to the continuation of the modern Western self-identity, is now increasingly frustrated by the uncertainty of China’s rise. To grapple with the China difference and uncertainty, many China observers resort, perhaps subconsciously, to some ‘emotional substitutes’ for certainty, such as fears and fantasies. Whereas fears help underpin the ‘China threat’ paradigm, fantasies give rise to various ‘China opportunity’ imageries. Together this powerful bifocal lens enables the West to be epistemologically reassured with the certain knowledge of either a threatening or a soothing scenario (or both) about China’s trajectory. With its profound scholarly and practical implications for China knowledge and Sino-Western relations, it is necessary to subject this dominant conceptual lens to critical analysis, not in primarily empirical and methodological terms, but on epistemological and ontological grounds.

Prof Jason Sharman

"Shell Games, International Corruption and Money Laundering: A Field Experiment in Violating International Law"

With two field experiments we probe the efficacy of international rules mandating that incorporation services establish their customers’ true identities. At issue are anonymous “shell” corporations central to money laundering, corruption, and terrorist financing. Posing as consultants seeking confidential incorporation, we randomly assigned six experimental conditions in emails varying information about monetary reward, international and domestic law, and customer risk to 1,259 incorporation services in 182 countries and 1,405 firms in the United States. We find that firms in tax havens obey the rules significantly more often than in OECD countries, while services in poor nations sometimes prove more compliant than in rich countries. Offers to “pay a premium” induce non-compliance. Risks of corruption and terrorism decrease response rates but, alarmingly, also decrease compliance rates. Treatments raising relevant international and domestic law have no significant effect, suggesting that self-interested calculation explains non-compliance better than ignorance or incapacity.

Prof. Taggart Murphy

"The Dollar-Centered Floating Rate System in the Light of the Euroland Crisis'

With the crisis of the Euro, the most ambitious attempt to construct an alternative to the US dollar as the lynchpin of the global financial order appears to be in ruins.  The architects of the floating rate system expected that it would reduce both volatility in foreign exchange markets and the frequency and severity of financial crises.  The reverse has happened.  Yet despite the swollen imbalances the system has fostered -- the external surpluses of China and Japan, the external deficit of the United States, the public sector debts of the United States and Japan, not to mention the imbalances in the Euro bloc -- the system continues to defy doomsayers with US and Japanese government bond prices at historical highs and the US dollar firmly ensconsed as the world's "safe haven" currency .  The Euroland crisis may shed new light on some of the anomalies and contradictions of the system; discussing these will be R. Taggart Murphy, professor and chair of the MBA Program in International Business at the Tokyo campus of the University of Tsukuba.  A former investment banker and senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, Murphy is the author of the award winning books _The Weight of the Yen_ and, with Akio Mikuni, _Japan's Policy Trap_ and is a contributor to the forthcoming _The New Normal: International Political Economy Yearbook._

Dr Shahar Hameiri

"Securitisation and the Governance of H5N1 Avian Influenza in Southeast Asia"

Southeast Asia has been at the epicentre of international efforts to contain the spread of infectious diseases, such as SARS and H5N1 avian influenza. Yet, to many observers response to these infectious diseases has been perplexing. On the one hand, efforts of the World Health Organization and other important governments and intergovernmental organisations to securitise infectious diseases in the region have been remarkably successful, at least to the extent that such pronouncements have been reiterated by the main regional organisation – the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – and by regional governments. On the other hand, for the most part, securitisation has not led to concerted regional action to tackle what are undoubtedly transnational problems. Nor has it necessarily led to the elevation of such issues to the top of the political agenda within regional states. From the perspective of the Copenhagen School’s securitisation approach, such discrepancy is impossible to explain, because of the School’s neglect of governance, while other perspectives that focus on the role of experts in shaping the governance of security issues also have limited purchase in the Southeast Asian context. This paper examines the management of H5N1 in Southeast Asia as a case study of the politics associated with the securitisation of non-traditional security issues. It is argued that crucial to the complex governance terrain that has emerged to manage H5N1 in Southeast Asia are struggles between dynamic coalitions of experts, transnational and domestic business and governments, which take place simultaneously at several scales.

Dr Melissa Nursey-Bray

"Partnerships and Ports: Negotiating novel urban climate governance regimes"

Climate change is anticipated to have a major impact on ports. In 2005, an international study by the OECD of 136 cities with over 1 million people into the vulnerability of ports indicated that large populations are already exposed to coastal flooding in port cities, and that across all cities approximately 40 million people (0.6% of the global population, or roughly 1 in 10 of the total port city population in the cities (within the project study) will be exposed to a 1 in 100-year coastal flood event. The top ten cities that have the most exposed populations include: Mumbai, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Miami, Ho Chi Minh City, Kolkata, Greater New York, Osaka-Kobe, Alexandria and New Orleans. Ports and related transport industries are also major emitters of greenhouse gases, so are also under scrutiny in relation to their internal governance about this issue.

While often overlooked, ports are a key driver of change in local urban contexts. Associated with ports, are a multiplicity of medium to small businesses that play an integral role in facilitating the flow of information, goods and services and finance between the port and the cities they belong to. This paper considers the roles played by SMEs in ports, and what the implications are for institutional climate governance of those cities. The paper will provide insights into how partnerships might be brokered to engage the private sector with the idea of governing for climate change. Specifically, this paper uses case studies of partnerships between SMEs in Australian ports to provide an analysis of how they work and extend vertically into regional, national and transnational networks, and the implications of these partnerships for urban climate governance. The paper will conclude with consideration of the applicability of this case study to emerging climate governance strategies in other major port cities and regions.

Erin Zimmerman

"Think Tanks and the Governance of Non-Traditional Security Issues in Southeast Asia"

The Asia Security Initiative (ASI) was established by the MacArthur Foundation in 2009 and provides funding to think tanks in the Asia-Pacific.  This funding is provided to assist think tanks in facilitating regional cooperation on security issues, especially issues defined as non-traditional security (NTS).

Think tanks already play an active role in the NTS security dialogue of the region, a role increasing with the assistance of the ASI. The growing responsibility of think tanks, and consequently the ASI, in the development of regional security policy raises questions about the governance of these issues in the Asia-Pacific. Exactly how important is the role of think tanks in the development of NTS policy? This question is even more pertinent given that think tanks have gone from solely participating in security dialogues to actively creating them. By creating institutionalised forums for policy dissemination and analysis, think tanks no longer act solely as policy analysts but instead have taken on the mantle of policy actor. This paper will examine how think tanks in the region are acting as ‘brokers’ of the NTS agenda and address the implications of this development to the governance of NTS in the Asia-Pacific.

Dr Carlo Tognato

"Stability cultures: The cultural logic of independent central banking"

Scholars and practitioners have intuitively perceived that culture may have something to do with the link between legitimacy, public support and central bank independence,  and have even coined a concept – that of stability culture – to refer to that link. Their understanding of stability cultures, however, is still too shallow and often merely tautological. Stability cultures, in other words, are simply described as cultures conducive to macroeconomic stability. When it is not, it boils stability cultures down to a special case of inflation cultures in which public values and attitudes support low inflation. Independent central banks, as a result, find it easier to keep inflation under check because their societies more willingly accept the sacrifices that come along with tight monetary policy. This presentation will show that there is more to stability cultures than just values and attitudes.

Dr Juanita Elias

"The Gender Politics of Economic Competitiveness in Malaysia's Transition to a Knowledge-Economy"

Many academic commentators have pointed to how the widening and deepening of a neoliberal reform agenda in Southeast Asia has brought about the end of developmental forms of state governance and the emergence of less directly market-interventionist states pursuing economic ‘competitiveness’. In this paper I note how notions of competitiveness are increasingly fused with ideas regarding the contribution of gender equity and women’s empowerment to national economic success. However, drawing upon a case study of Malaysia, this paper highlights how government policies stressing both the marketization of social reproduction and the need to expand women’s productive roles are constantly brought into tension with embedded social structures. Such an emphasis is essential to any understanding of the role of the Malaysian state in economic development—a role that has been fundamentally shaped by a localised politics of ethnicity. The paper draws upon examples from government policy making that conceptualise women as key workers in the emerging knowledge driven economy and microentreprenurs driving pro-poor economic growth and illustrates how such policies are brought into tension with traditionalist discourses concerning the appropriate role of women in society.