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The issue of the unequal participation of women in parliament and public decision-making is a global problem and of particular concern in the Pacific region. Various international conventions and national frameworks have been established to address this problem, alongside initiatives by non-government organisations. However, in Samoa, the question of women’s political participation is a complex one. According to deeply held Samoan cultural principles (faasamoa), both men and women have equal rights to family resources, including rights to land and the right to become a family chief (matai). As different scholars have noted, there is also a wide cultural belief that women are equal to men and that there is no inequality between the genders. Nonetheless, of the fifty parliamentary seats in the Samoan Parliament, only five are held by women of which one was created simply in order to meet the 10% quota. This thesis examines the contradiction between this ideology of equality in Samoa and the reality of women’s low participation rates in politics. To date, there has been no thorough investigation of this contradiction in the Samoan context. By interviewing cabinet ministers, parliamentarians, village chiefs (matais), leaders in the non-government and private sectors and women in the community and church, this thesis provides a unique insight into current perceptions about the status of women in Samoa. It looks at the negative impact of colonialism and Christianity. Policy analysis and feminist and ethnographic approaches, such as participant observation, have also been employed to identify factors either constraining or encouraging women’s participation in parliament and the public domain in Samoa. The thesis argues that, in order to understand and improve the contradictory status of women in Samoa today, more attention needs to be paid to the faasamoa and the traditional beliefs that could be used to enhance women’s participation, particularly the value of women as the sister (feagaiga) and sacred child (tamasa). This requires a genuinely collaborative, long-term process that acknowledges local and micro political settings, not just the establishment of universal goals and targets.

Intergovernmental financial transfers from central to local governments provide a vital source of income to support local development of public services and infrastructure. However, most local governments in developing countries, such as Indonesia, fail to meet the transfer objectives due to misuse of the funds by local elites. Although financial transfers increased significantly with increased local autonomy since 2001, local development has not been commensurate with the larger budgets, with unfair wealth distribution denying equitable outcomes. Previous studies have addressed the involvement of political rulers in the misuse of intergovernmental financial transfers, but there has been limited investigation into the role of other elites. Working with theories of the politics of patronage derived from Eisendtat (1980) and Bearfield (2009), this study examines the role of a much wider range of formal and informal elites—from bureaucrats and politicians to businessmen and religious and ethnic leaders—in intergovernmental financial transfer within the Indonesian province of East Kalimantan. The aims of the study are twofold: to provide insight into how local elites exercise their power and influence to structure and allocate financial resources, and to help local governments curb the misuse of financial resources.

The literature on the performance of Australia’s centre-right government led by John Howard (1996-2007) has tended to underplay the role of September 11 in his electoral success. To win four terms of continuous government in the contemporary political scene is, however, no mean feat, ensuring Howard a place in the pantheon of celebrated conservative leaders in the English-speaking world. Our framework is the celebrated gestalt developed by Fred I. Greenstein to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of each American President. Based on a series of interviews with Howard, the inner sanctum around him, other players in the political scene, and expert commentators, this thesis interrogates the leadership of John Howard in Greenstein’s terms. Each of the six skills and attributes in the Greenstein typology is viewed in specific ways from the standpoint of the two dozen interviewees. In areas where Howard was in some sense or other deficient or lacking, his experience in government, notably September 11, had a positive effect on his capacity for leadership. This analysis serves to help us approach the central question of this thesis, namely, what is the role of leader in the formation of a nation’s foreign policy? This question has been debated in the International Relations (IR) field for several generations of scholarship, and is most closely associated with the name of James N. Rosenau. The case of John Howard in the reformulation of Australian foreign policy in the aftermath of September 11 is an example on the ‘yes’ side of the ledger in that important debate. Where the Greenstein framework is important is to help us to see that these epochal events in IR can shape leaders as well as be shaped by them.

This study analyses the impact of electoral systems and electoral mechanics on political parties and party systems, 1999–2009. Throughout this period, Indonesia conducted nearly 500 elections. These elections have their own systems (proportional representation, SNTV (Single Non-Transferable Vote) and majoritarian systems) and each has different mechanics (ballot structure, electoral threshold, electoral formula and district magnitude). They are conducted in the same political, social and cultural environment and are participated in by the same parties and voters. This study was conducted as qualitative research and involved elite interviews with 75 informants during fieldwork in the provinces of DKI-Jakarta, West Java, East Java, South Sulawesi and Riau Islands. This study shows that institutions do matter and electoral systems and electoral mechanics are powerful instruments for institutional engineering with far-reaching impacts for parties and party systems. However, institutionalism has difficulty in explaining the various different processes, unforeseen problems and unexpected impacts. It finds that the changes to electoral systems and electoral mechanics since reformasi 1998 have restored the importance of elections, whereby the ruling elite are no longer able to legitimise themselves through methods other than elections. The importance of political parties has been reinstated by granting them exclusive authority in determining who will control the government and dominate the political system. However, this study finds that practices, such as money politics, vote buying and abuse of authority remained; older figures, such as former members of Golkar, senior government officials and retired military officers, dominated electoral results. Moreover, this study also finds that parties tend to focus more on activities related directly to the conduct of elections rather than representing different ideologies and diversity in society. Even though elections and political parties are crucial determinants of Indonesia’s politics, they are not sufficient in and of themselves for building Indonesian representative democracy.

This thesis in political communication details a qualitative investigation into how citizens receive and make sense of political discourse in a twenty-first century democracy. Recognising criticism of the national discourse as ‘dumbed down’, it explores with a cohort of Australian citizens what meaning they receive from contemporary discourse and how it affects their engagement with democracy. The project employs an innovative method of recruiting participants at a polling booth in Australia’s most typical suburb, followed a month later by same day data collection from three wide-scope groups in facilitated discussion. Analysis of the data finds citizens diagnose the discourse as negative and of poor quality, for which they first blame the media. There is an expressed fear that the shallowness of discourse is dumbing them down. In contradiction to their expectations of democratic citizenship, they are powerless to make themselves heard within a discourse which neither recognises nor respects them. They find the discourse alienating, although overwhelming support for compulsory voting militates against democratic dis-engagement. Digital age communications are used to support unstructured democratic engagement and circumvent the banality of local political discourse.

In this creative‐writing research project, I set out to create a narrative nonfiction manuscript that investigates the contemporary politics surrounding abortion. The fundamental question driving the creative manuscript was, ‘Why is abortion largely invisible in Australia?’ Abortion is the second‐most common therapeutic surgical procedure in Australia, yet the history, the politics and the practice of abortion remain hidden from view. This invisibility allows us to avoid grappling with and confronting the complicated issues abortion raises. Using techniques commonly associated with fiction writing, such as narrative arc, characterisation, dialogue and scenes, the 69,000‐word manuscript investigates the factors, tiers and characters involved with abortion in Australia. The narrative nonfiction manuscript should be read first. The manuscript is accompanied by a 31,500‐word exegesis analysing the production, lineage and ethical implications of consciously political narrative nonfiction, a term that refers to works that make deliberate political interventions. Similarly to Hartsock (2000), I argue that when writing a consciously political narrative nonfiction work, the writer does not objectify the world as something different or alien from the reader, and instead strives to render characters as complex human beings. The exegesis reviews theories of ethics, objectivity and narrative within a form that is fundamentally journalism, yet can never fit within this narrow definition as it is primarily about mapping the cultural other (Sanderson 2004). The exegesis also scrutinises the usefulness and complexity of immersion as a research methodology. While I initially attempted to immerse myself as a limited participant‐observer in the world of pro‐choice and pro‐life politics, over the course of the research, my methodology resulted in a kind of radicalisation prompted by my fieldwork. For example, after witnessing the ongoing harassment of clinic patients and staff, I found myself openly hostile to the position and tactics of pro‐life activists. While I felt I remained capable of transcribing and depicting the worlds of these subjects, a seditious need grew to challenge their authority and worldview outside the text. This led me to make a political intervention inside and outside the text, and I thus crossed the precipice from observation to active participation. While I acknowledge that this is an unconventional narrative position, one that rejects ideals of journalistic objectivity, I argue that this subject position was born of the research and practice of this project – that is, of actually participating in the world of my subject, abortion. Moreover, this level of participation in the world of the textual subject is a direct result of writing a consciously political narrative nonfiction work, a subgenre that allows for the practitioner’s politics and reactions to situations to help shape the text, and the consequences beyond.

The objective of this thesis is to investigate how China’s country-specific context influences climate-change reporting by Chinese companies. Specifically, the thesis theoretically and empirically examines factors that influence climate-change reporting in China’s changing political and economic institutional environment. The thesis addresses how the political ideology of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) has driven the changing institutions in the field of climate-change reporting, and the impact on Chinese company characteristics and reporting practice. The thesis includes Chinese literature in evaluating the adaptability of theories originating in the West to the Chinese context. It identifies institutional theory as the preferred basis for developing an extended model to explain the homogeneity and heterogeneity of climate-change reporting by Chinese companies. The model developed, which incorporates multiple levels of institutional analysis, was then tested empirically. From 100 leading listed Chinese companies, 471 reports (Annual Reports and Corporate Sustainability Reports) were examined across three key reporting years between 2006 and 2010, using content analysis. Multivariate regression and logit analyses were then used for further analysis.

The Australian-American alliance, since World War II, has served as Australia’s most important bilateral relationship, particularly in the field of security. Two decades later, the Australian government entered the war in Vietnam to secure an American military presence on the Asian mainland. This thesis examines the Australian-American alliance during the prime ministership of Harold Holt in relation to Australia’s role in Vietnam, and growing concerns over Britain’s planned withdrawal from Southeast Asia.

East Kalimantan is a province of paradox. It has considerable economic potential, measured in terms of abundant endowments of natural resources. And yet it lacks infrastructure and has poor human resources, factors which condemn much of the population to live in poverty. Regional autonomy, implemented since 2001, has provided more political power and fiscal capacity to the region, and therefore it has been expected to give more opportunity for regional governments to accelerate regional development and bring their people to greater prosperity. However, East Kalimantan still harbors high levels of poverty. This study examines the extent to which regional governments use their authority, greatly expanded under regional autonomy laws, to address poverty issues in the province.

The deregistration and dismemberment of the Builders Labourers’ Federation (BLF), which was executed by Federal and State Labor Governments, was one of the most significant events in Australian industrial relations history. The union and its general secretary, Norm Gallagher, continue to excite passionate debate whenever their names are invoked. Portrayed as the ugly face of trade unionism, Gallagher and the BLF provided national and state Labor Party reformers with a timely mechanism through which they could both assert their dominance over the Party and broaden its electoral appeal. This thesis incorporates BLF activities into the larger story of Labor Party transmutation that occurred between the 1960s and 1980s. By examining these shifts in the Labor Party through the prisms of Gallagher and the BLF, we can better understand Labor’s decision to deregister and ultimately destroy the union. The thesis argues that the trajectories taken by the BLF and the ALP were sufficiently divergent that conflict was inevitable. Drawing on a range of key sources, this thesis provides a new assessment of BLF deregistration, the schisms it opened up within both the Labor Party and Conservative interests, and the way in which destruction of a union represented a critical moment in Australian political and industrial history.

This thesis examines the political activity of the Communist party of Australia (CPA) in the trade union movement between 1945 and 1960. It represents the first systematic scholarly analysis of this activity. The historiography of the CPA has generally focused on the industrial activity of CPA trade union members and has neglected this dimension. The thesis draws on CPA newspapers and journals, Congress resolutions, the publications of Communist-led unions and numerous secondary sources to argue that explicit political activity in the unions was often central to CPA activity in this period. The approach was consistent with orthodox Marxism, which regarded trade unions as a preparatory school for increasing the political consciousness of workers as a prelude to an anti-capitalist revolution. This political trade unionism distinguished the CPA from other political currents in the labour movement which may have accepted its militant unionism, but not its advocacy of political trade unionism. This thesis examines three areas of this political unionism: the attempt to build trade union support for the peace movement, the attitudes towards the post-war mass immigration programme and the emerging Aboriginal civil rights movement.

This thesis examines the Menzies Government's response to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. This is the first historical investigation of the Crisis in the context of Australian-American relations. Its primary objective, therefore, is to fill a historiographical gap in Australia's Cold War history.

The aim of local governments to increase community engagement is an emergent global phenomenon. Ideally, community engagement initiatives connect the community with their government so that citizens can have a say in the things that really matter to them. Mounting internal or external pressure for more citizen participation moves the focus from 'local government' to 'local governance',. And presents professional practices with the challenge of determining the ends for participation, and responding with the appropriate means - given the local economic, social, political and technological context. The purpose of this study is to provide a descriptive analysis of community engagement initiatives by local governments in order to inform professional practice in a growing but under researched asrea of activity. The research aims to conceptualise and articulate factors and characteristics that consititute the 'form' (means) and 'function' (ends) of individual community engagement initiatives; identify the shape of these attributes in practice, and provide a management model to fuel debate and inform the planning, implementation and evaluation of community engagement initiatives.

The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of war-related psychological trauma on refugees from the former Yugoslavia who came to Australia in the last 20 years, and to examine how their process of recovery from trauma was assisted by the power of healing relationships, family strength and resilience. The aim was to explore the entire family unit in the context of whole-family interaction.

This research investigates the process of political reform in Saudi Arabia. Central to the study is an examination of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia‘s constitutional reforms implemented between 1990 and 2010, focusing on the Consultative Council (Majlis al-shūrā) and municipal councils as case studies. The research analyses the objectives, values and concerns that have informed the Kingdom‘s policies of political reform. Also, the study examines the extent to which Saudi Government reforms have responded to internal and external pressures for more far reaching reform and democratization. The study investigates how the events of the 1990-1991 Gulf War, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Global Financial Crisis have influenced the direction of the Saudi Government‘s political reforms. Furthermore, the study examines how the Saudi Government dealt with various key stakeholders, co-opting some and excluding others from the reform process.

Over the course of the twentieth century and into the new millennium, critical analysis of imperialism has been a feature of Marxist thought. One of the salient concerns of Marxist theorising of imperialism has been the uncovering of the connections between the capitalist accumulation process and the political and economic domination of the world by advanced capitalist countries. The conceptualising and theorising of imperialism by Marxists has evolved in response to developments in the global capitalist economy and in international politics.

The influence of the Anglican Church within Australia during the 1950s has received insufficient historical analysis, especially given its predominant numerical strength amongst Australian churches at that time. This thesis will rectify that oversight. The Anglican Communion worldwide exerted a singular ability to sway its adherents to follow the resolutions of the Lambeth Conferences, which were attended by the international hierarchy. Australian archbishops and bishops closely adhered to the deliberations of the Lambeth Conference in 1948. Subsequently, the Communion, under the leadership of Archbishop Fisher, adopted a decidedly conservative and anti-communist stance. The visits of Dean Hewlett Johnson, Queen Elizabeth II and Dr Billy Graham throughout the 1950s saw the reinforcement of that stance. The next Lambeth Conference, in 1958, displayed a realisation that some form of negotiation with the communist nations was necessary to circumvent nuclear war. It will be demonstrated that the hierarchy of the Anglican Church in Australia, and that of some laity, did not support this understanding. The thesis also traces, through church papers and observations of clergy, the increasingly close relationship between the Episcopal Church in America and the Australian church. By the end of the 1950s, the significant challenges faced by the Anglican Church had resulted in a diminution of its influence and numerical superiority, and a need to re-evaluate its position in Australian society.

This thesis focuses on a generation of Timorese who were educated during the Indonesian occupation. Conceptual frameworks of community development, participation, civil society and citizenship, are drawn upon to analyse the processes of development taking place in the first years of nationhood of Timor Leste. Within this context, three themes are developed. First, a generational divide related to education and the language policy which leaves the Indonesian educated young people marginalised within the new national development framework; second, the limitations that customary practices place upon the ability of young women to participate in political and social activities; third, an analysis of the centralised processes of development that have resulted in young men leaving the rural areas for opportunities in the urban areas and consequent implications for social organisation. These three themes are analysed in the context of a civil society largely run by young Timorese. I investigate the roles of power holders in contemporary Timor Leste – the government, the traditional leaders and international development agencies and analyse the place that civil society has in this new nation. I argue that Timorese activists are able to bridge the traditional Timorese world with international values of development and human rights, but their roles and contributions have to date been inadequately supported.

B.A. Santamaria is perhaps Australia's best-known thinker who happens to be of an Italian descent and culture. While much has been written about this important thinker, very little of this writing has focused on his background and the Italian descent and culture from which he originated. This doctorate is an historical exploration into the person of B.A. Santamaria, with a strong focus on his Italian descent and culture. This thesis looks at the question of Social Exclusion that applied to Italians in general, and in particular to B.A. Santamaria. While mentioning the Australian Labor Party split of 1954-1955, this doctorate is more concerned with episodes pertaining to Santamaria's background: Italian migrants, the Aeolian Community, fascism, anti-fascism, the internment of Italian migrants, the land settlement schemes of the National Catholic Rural Movement and Santamaria's own admission later in life that his ideas were a product of his Italian background. When looking at the ideas and organizations in Australia started by B.A. Santamaria, this doctorate looks closely at this connection to his Italian background. Finally the question is asked if B.A. Santamaria was our Italian-Australian hero. Overall, this doctorate hopes to portray a more complete picture of B.A. Santamaria by including and emphasizing his Italian background and the problems he may have encountered in his work because of this background. It also highlights the social exclusion of Italians in Australia by focusing on B.A. Santamaria.

The research aims to provide an understanding of local governance in an outer metropolitan area of Melbourne. Through the examination of the policy framework that has established and maintained community governance in Victoria by the State Government from the period of local government amalgamations in 1994 to the present day and the use of a case study, Hume City Council, the thesis has descriptive and analytical elements drawing on empirical inquiry using case study methodology. The case study method has been chosen because it is most suitable for discovering how the community participants perceive their level of governance and their desires for future governance structures. Since the dramatic reforms of local government in Victoria, there have only been two governance reviews; at Hume City Council in 2000 and at Delatite Shire in 2002. In addition, minor boundary realignments were made to the Cities of Melbourne and Moonee Valley in 2007. These are the only attempts at a review of the structure of local Understanding Outer-Urban Governance: A case study of local government in Victoria since the Kennett Government reforms. This thesis reaches the conclusion that the concept of wicked problems is applicable to the management of the case study and other complex problems created as a result of amalgamation. The wicked problem context of this thesis cites decision making as the major focus. Through decisions about authority, governance, identity and community consultation the key concept of trust is questioned which has led to the inherent unsatisfactory resolution of the selected local government wicked problems.

This thesis examines the development of Australian Army jungle warfare doctrine and training during the Second World War. The Australian Army transformed itself from a military force ill-prepared for conflict of any type in 1939 into one of the most professional, experienced and highly trained forces in jungle warfare in the world by 1945. The thesis analyses how this transformation occurred and, in doing so, provides a case study in institutional learning. Attempting to discover how an organisation learns is vital: unless these processes of adaptation are identified, it is extremely difficult for an organisation to apply successfully the lessons in the future. For no institution is this more pertinent than for the military. Armed forces unable to adapt to unforeseen challenges were frequently defeated with often profound consequences. The thesis identifies this process of development and adaptation by the Australian Army from 1941 to 1945.

This thesis traces the economic and socio-political changes in Australia over the final three decades of the twentieth century from the perspective of 25 women engaged in social work and welfare education. A period of significant change in its social, economic and political history, Australia moved from Keynesian inspired trends to social democracy under Whitlam, through the corporatist experiment of the Hawke/Keating regime to an embrace of free market economics under the current Howard coalition government. Utilising a narrative approach and framing the research within feminist historical materialist standpoint, after Smith (1991) and Naples (2003), I explore the ways in which this group of women experienced changes to the policy context, theories as they informed their education and practice and, of particular interest, changes to feminist theory and the impact of the women's movement on social policy, service delivery and in each woman's personal lives. Participants reported general feelings of frustration at the erosion of hard won gains, especially for women and living the adage 'the personal is political ', and increased pressures in their work and private lives over time. There was a sense of distancing of social work from social policy alongside increasing alienation from a women's movement that they saw as largely out of touch with an increasingly diverse and globalised world. In this context however, the women generally remained positive for the future, providing clear strategies as to the contribution a reinvigorated feminism and women's movement could make to social work and social policy of the future.

The rise of the Monash University Labor Club to the most prominent radical student group in Australia by 1967 was the result of those radicalising events and ideologies that had been emerging internationally, nationally and locally during 1965-67. Events such as the escalation of the Vietnam War and the emergence of the Cultural Revolution in China were particularly influential upon the student movement in Australia during this period. Arguably the most influential ideological force upon the Monash Labor Club during this period was the idea of Marxism-Leninism, or Maoism, articulated by the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao TseTung. It is this radicalising role of Maoism upon the 1960's student movement in Melbourne that will be the core concern of this thesis. Past studies concerned with the Monash Labor Club in 1965-67 have tended to downplay the role of Maoist ideas at Monash during this period. However, this thesis will attempt to show that it was the Maoist ideas of Labor Club leaders like Albert Langer that allowed the club to rise to such prominence in 1967. Furthermore this thesis will show how the connections achieved by Langer with the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), and certain Maoist-led Unions in Melbourne, played a significant role in the successful aims, actions and campaigns carried out by the Labor Club in 1967.

The formation of the Austrahan Peace Council (APC) in July 1949 was a direct challenge to the Cold War ideology that was dominant in Australia at this time. Its advocacy of peace and its support for international agreements between the major powers drew a hostile reaction from almost every sector of Australian society. This thesis will examine the political and historical context for the formation of the APC and the holding of its first National Peace Congress, in Melbourne, in 1950. In particular, it will focus on the involvement of the three key groups that were involved in the APC: the religious activists, the independent activists, and the communist intellectuals. It will argue that those involved in the APC were motivated by idealistic views, were not Stalin's 'stooges', and were genuinely committed to ending the very real threat of a nuclear war.

America's war in Afghanistan and on Iraq classified as part of the war on terror have come in the aftermath of the atrocities of September 11, 2001 when America was attacked by Islamist terrorists. America's response to these attacks, especially the war on Iraq, has been criticized heavily throughout the world. The U.S. has been criticized on the basis of morality, in terms of increasing the danger of further attacks on American soil and by its lack of understanding of the Islamic world. Criticism of U.S. foreign policy will continue long into the fixture, especially if the U.S. maintains its status as the only superpower in the world, which is unlikely in the long term, however we need to understand why America is criticized. The purpose of this thesis is to better understand American foreign policy and why the U.S. embarks on the policies that it does. This understanding will come by way of analysing America's stance towards both Afghanistan and Iraq in the last quarter of a century to see how it has changed in correlation with American needs at the time. Since the events of 9/11 America has become more aggressive in its foreign policy stance toward both Afghanistan and Iraq. It has ousted both the Taliban and the Saddam Hussein regime, with the help of allies, from these respective nations. This thesis will argue that this is natural given the tenets of political realism. Political realism is a theory based upon self-interest, power and opportunity. America's policy towards Afghanistan and Iraq will be intimately tied with these notions, as these notions have been called upon throughout history. The thesis should be viewed as a microcosm of the realities of international relations. The essay will discuss different aspects of International Relations political theory and draw the conclusion that political realism provides the more relevant and stronger theories. I use the word theories because there exists differing approaches within the nexus of realism, although core assumptions are maintained. The thesis will explore America's role in Afghanistan and Iraq in the 1980s as well as in its post 9/11 context. Placed in its proper context American foreign policy should be seen as something that is natural, rather than something unique to America.

This thesis is intended to contribute to the understanding of h o w the People's Action Party (PAP) has been able to maintain political power in Singapore since before the nation became independent in 1965. Steven Lukes' framework of understanding how power opérâtes from his 1974 book Power: A Radical View will be employed. This thesis will deal with two Parliamentary schemes introduced by the PAP. The Non-Constituency Member of Parliament ( N C M P ) scheme was intended to raise the number of Opposition members in the unicameral Parliament which was dominated by the PAP. The Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) scheme was intended to bring non-partisan individuals with alternative ideas into Parliament. The intention ofthis thesis is to illustrate that the real motivation behind thèse schemes was to maintain the PAP's political power in Singapore. It will argue that the schemes were intended to 'informally' co-opt individuals. This thesis will examine the success of the schemes' real motivation and also examine the possibility that they could actually work towards weakening the PAP's political power.

This thesis is on exploration of the anti-globalisation, or as it is more accurately called by participants, the global justice movement. It explores the relationship between activists in the North and South. The project uses extensive interviews and participant observation techniques as a method of exploring the lived experiences of global justice activists and how they have interpreted and resisted neoliberal forms of globalisation. The thesis is organised around and argues against the following dominant representations of the global justice movement: that it purportedly locks a theoretical base; that it is devoid of vision and strategy; that the movement is 'new'; that it is primarily a 'white middle class student constituency; and finally that the movement collapsed after September 11, 2001.

This thesis examines the Communist Party of Australia's (CPA) period of illegality between 1940 and 1942. This thesis also examines the CPA's relationship to the Comintern during, and before, World War II. A grasp of that relationship is essential for understanding the causes of the CPA's proscription.

This thesis seeks to outline the paradoxical relationship that Australia's former Attorney General and Minister for External Affairs, Herbert Vere Evatt had with the preservation of civil Liberties within Australia during his long and fruitful career.

This study provided empirical evidence to support the point of view that selective models of local govemance as endorsed by multilateral donor agencies such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the IMF, can be applied in the specific situation of a developing country if they are careful designed with a full participation of potential stakeholders including the beneficiaries. Furthermore, it showed a participatory method for collecting and widening the views and perspectives of the citizen in shaping a political future of a country in transition, which is a unique experience in the history of all public administrations.

This thesis examines the relationship between the various left groupings that constituted the opposition to the war in Vietnam in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The focus is on how the newer radical groups of this period interacted with and influenced the established Left and peace movement. The work concentrates on opposition to the war within the Australian State of Victoria, drawing upon interviews with participants as well as written material from primary and secondary sources.

In this era of globalization, can the Internet be used to facilitate or restrict greater democracy in Malaysia?

The thesis examines the question of how democracy might be deepened, particular so that it becomes more inclusive of currently marginalised groups and can thus meet their needs more fully. It focuses on India, drawing on interviews and visits to organisations, as well as on secondary sources, but it also utilises empirical and theoretical material from outside India, and it is suggested that the conclusions of the thesis may be applicable beyond India. From the 1960s, across the world, the 'new politics' - the politics of protest, local level action, new questions, new participants and specific-issue campaigns - has also sought to deepen democracy. It is argued, however, that while this kind of politics is a necessary component of effective democracy, it is not in itself sufficient to achieve the transformational goals to which it aspires. In rejecting or underemphasising the possibility of achieving change through more conventional political institutions, especially through governments and political parties, the new politics risks political ineffectiveness, for reasons that are identified in the thesis. It is argued that what is required is a combination of the old and new politics, and a particular model that embodies this is advanced. Major political change - such as the attainment of independence or formal democracy or the deepening of democracy - has often been achieved through broad alliances of organisations, termed 'aggregated civil bases', in the thesis, and examples of these are cited. The thesis focuses on the scope for change through what are termed 'democratic-deepening aggregated civil bases' - alliances of organisations that come to an electoral arrangement with a party or coalition willing to implement a particular political program in exchange for electoral support.