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A conference paper about Australia's participation in both World War I and Vietnam war is presented. It discusses death of 60,000 soldiers of the Australian Imperial Force in the First World War as compared to 494 in Vietnam, role of Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes who was reluctant to push conscription through Parliament and failure of Australian policymakers in reducing the exposure to combat risk. It analyzes the role of Australian Governor-General Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson in war.

The value that electric companies assign to the reliability of their electric power supply is a key factor for efficient decision making, since it is a permanent task they face both in their operations and planning activities. This value depends on variables that are not easily observable; for this reason, the calculation of these costs strictly require the application of methodologies mainly built on proxy estimations with which the economic and the social impact can be reasonably inferred, when segments of users face an outage or interruption of public electric supply service. This impact, expressed in monetary terms, is known as the Cost of Energy Not Supplied (CENS). Besides establishing proxy variables to obtain CENS, the proposed methodology is applied to estimate the impact of programmed interruptions occurrence on the Ecuadorian electric system, on the basis of the Gross Domestic Product by productive sector and on the evaluation of the level of preparation of those sectors. The CENS values found are applied to Ecuador in planning research of the electric sector both on mid and long-range terms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As the American death toll in Iraq rises toward 1,000, some IR scholars may be per-plexed. Only a few years ago foreign policymakers in Western democracies, including the United States, were described as being extremely sensitive to the political cost of military com-bat casualties. I argue that the number of casualties a democracy will experience is influenced by several factors, including its military manpower system. I contend that democracies with conscript armies will experience fewer combat casualties than democracies with volunteer or professional forces, because the societal actors most closely impacted by conscript casualties are more likely to have the political power and access with which to constrain policymakers. Using several selection models I find that democracies with conscripts suffer the fewest casualties and democracies with volunteers experience the most casualties with democracy alone being respon-sible for numbers that lie between the previous two types of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years foreign policymakers in Western democracies, including the United States, have been described as being extremely sensitive to the political cost of military combat casualties. I argue that democracies? casualty tolerance is influenced by the degree of social representation in the military (SRIM), such that democracies with high SRIM are less tolerant of combat casualties than democracies with low SRIM. This theory assumes that democracies with militaries that more closely reflect their social composition in terms of class, race, ethnicity, re-ligion and geography are more inclined to be sensitive to casualties, because of the risk that they will impact a group with political access and power. Using weighted ordered probit analysis I find support for the mediating effect of SRIM on combat casualty tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For centuries students of international conflict have considered variables related to military power in their theories and hypotheses. While this is appropriate, no one in modern times has studied whether and how the social composition of militaries either constrains or frees political leaders to pursue their objectives on the international stage in a manner that is generalizable. In this paper, I begin my attempt to do just that. Specifically, I examine whether the social representativeness of armed forces affects democracies tolerance of fatalities in militarized disputes. Through the use of regression analysis, I find some support for a negative relationship between the social composition of militaries and the apparent willingness of democratic states to incur fatalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explain why IR scholars should devote more study to casualty tolerance. First, I discuss how the study of casualty tolerance is relevant to the study of foreign policy. I argue that a state's casualty tolerance influences whether states take military action in the presence of a threat, the ends they pursue, the military means they employ and the outcomes of those conflicts as well as domestic politics. Second, I illustrate how the casualty tolerance of great powers contributed to three events that transformed international relations during the last century. To make this point, I show how great power casualty tolerance influenced the nature of the Cold War, the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan, and the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. Finally, I discuss the benefits of more fully understanding the variables that affect a great power's casualty tolerance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing data from our surveys of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in 1992-93 and 2003-04, this paper offers an attitudinal portrait of the degree to which MEPs have successfully navigated the contradictions posed by the increasing securitization of immigration after September 11th. We specifically asked to what degree MEPs: view immigration as a salient and multi-dimensional security threat; support greater rights for immigrants; and prefer an EU over a national policy making venue to regulate immigration policy. Our analysis of the data yielded mixed results. On the one hand, a majority of contemporary MEPs concluded that immigration was “very important,” favored increasing economic immigration and rejected the suggestion that immigration poses a cultural threat. On the other hand, and contrary to our expectations, MEP support for the extension of immigrant rights declined from 1993 to 2004 and, most surprising, MEPs were less inclined in 2004 than in 1993 to look to Europe in order to resolve immigration-related dilemmas. Although a robust majority agreed that a European immigration policy is more urgent after September 11th, it is fair to conclude on the basis of the totality of the data that MEPs in 2004, as in 1993, were not especially inclined to view immigration through the prism of national or European security. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]