November

The Politics Discipline invites you to a Symposium discussion on four topics relating to the recent research efforts of members of the Politics staff

Responding to Terrorism in the Era of the Governance State

Dr Jim Jose
Newcastle Business School
University of Newcastle
Jim.Jose@newcastle.edu.au

Abstract

The emergence of non-state centres of military power sanctioned, and indeed legitimised, by the state raises serious questions about the nature of the contemporary state's sovereign political authority and its capacity to enforce that authority. This paper argues that this is an issue that has implications for a state's ability to respond to terrorism. Current shifts/transformations in political authority herald a new form of state, the governance state, in which sovereign political authority can no longer be assumed to rest exclusively with the state and its publicly accountable apparatuses, but increasingly is dispersed along several axes of organised power. These contemporary arrangements involving the sharing or outsourcing of military muscle, public-private partnerships par excellence, are increasingly characteristic of an age of governance. The paper questions to what extent a state can be said to exercise sovereign political authority, and hence respond to terrorist issues, when its capacity to enforce that authority is outsourced in varying degrees to non-state actors.

Political Religion/Political Violence: Reconceptualizing Totalitarianism and Fascism

Dr Robert Imre
Newcastle Business School
University of Newcastle
Robert.Imre@newcastle.edu.au

Abstract

In this paper I begin the discussion on the nexus of religion, politics, and violence through an examination of modern fascism and modern totalitarianism as viewed by Hannah Arendt in her various works including The Origins of Totalitarianism and On Violence. For Arendt, the conflation and equivalency of the Holocaust and the Gulag was fundamental to understanding modern politics. Arendt's view, similar to a later view taken up by a diverse group of thinkers and writers from Zygmunt Bauman to Imre Kertesz, sought to demonstrate the capacity with which modern systems of politics had built, rather than inherited, homo sacer. Here, I am looking for the sacred and the profane in fascism and totalitarianism. I am thinking about how they might be different from or the same as similar occurrences or ideas in liberal democracies. For us, as political scientists thinking about religion and politics, we must deal with at least two large problems. One is that the tension between democracy, that is rule by the people in their own interest through public participation, and liberalism, the principle that all human's have an equal moral worth and are free to exercise their inborn reason as free individuals, remains in liberal democracy. And the other is that political regimes of all kinds around the world have both sacralized politics, as well as employed violent means to enact politics. This paper will attempt to draw out how we might possibly view totalitarian systems and fascist movements as elemental to human interactions sacralizing violence. Further, equating political violence with religious violence, especially in modern totalitarianism and fascism poses a particular problem for our understanding of modern politics as does the understanding of the meaning of the place of religion for imperialism and 'empire' in the modern and contemporary world. We can claim that religion is always political, but not necessarily conservative, certainly not 'civilisational', and not always 'clashing' with other religions and with politics of many kinds. We can also claim that religion and civil society are not at all radically separated. Nor is it the case that modern nation-states seek to develop polities which are separated from religious identities, as evidenced by Indonesia, Russia, Sri Lanka, and the United States.

Liberalism, Rationality and Religion

Dr John Tate
Newcastle Business School
University of Newcastle
John.Tate@newcastle.edu.au

Abstract

Is liberalism "biased" against religion? Do liberal constitutional provisions seeking to separate church from state discriminate unfairly against religion? Are liberals only willing to tolerate that which accords with liberal rational norms, resulting in an epistemic bias against religion? All these issues are considered, including divisions between liberals themselves concerning these questions. Finally, US Supreme Court First Amendment decisions concerning church and state are discussed to determine if such liberal "bias" is evident in these outcomes. These outcomes concern rulings on "creation science" (or what is now known as "intelligent design"), the teaching of evolution in schools, school prayer, and "secular" reading material in school classes. Some religionists have even gone so far as to argue that, in separating church from state under the First Amendment, by removing religion (and religion alone) from the public sphere, the US Supreme Court is in fact advancing its own religion of "secular humanism", and so is itself violating the First Amendment with these outcomes.

Kevin Rudd's Monthly Essay and the Essaying of an Australian Tradition of Political Thought

Dr Tod Moore
Newcastle Business School
University of Newcastle
Tod.Moore@newcastle.edu.au

Abstract

When Michel de Montaigne coined the word essay it was in the context of a series of wide ranging reflections on the Sceptical philosophy which sought to limn the minimal contours of knowledge and wisdom. Kevin Rudd has similarly sought to provide us with a sketch of the minimal contours of an Australian political tradition of what he terms 'social democrat' ideology. How we interpret Rudd's essay hinges on how we understand the Australian tradition which is posited under this rubric, but a brief examination of the history of Australian political ideas quickly introduces a dilemma and this forces us to choose whether to link the essay to the social liberal tradition or the Fabian and democratic tradition, or if to both traditions then which combination of what elements? This paper explores the two main strands of the national political tradition in a search for the conceptual foundations of Rudd's proposed 'social democrat' ideology. The commentary on the Rudd Essay - such as it has been - has mainly dealt with his assessment of the financial meltdown and neo-liberalism with very little discussion of how we might understand the putative alternative to extreme capitalism, Rudd's lightly sketched notion of 'social democratic' ideology. The binary logic of the Rudd Essay, which balances this 'social democratic' idea against the world-destroying market dictates of the neo-liberal agenda, invites consideration of the coming ideology as much as it invites condemnation of the one which is arguably being replaced. While there are many ways this could be done my purpose here is to pursue the notion of an Australian 'social democrat' ideological tradition, partly to see whether the Rudd Essay can be said to mark a return to this policy framework. Also this paper will attempt a brief analysis of the essay itself and some of the responses, and will consider the intention behind it in light of some other similar texts in Australian political history.