State–Chaebol relations in the post-crisis period

This article examines contemporary Korean capitalism via an analysis of state-chaebol relations in the post-crisis period. The Korean state played a prominent role in industrial and financial restructuring after the crisis. Some scholars argue that a 'new' state has emerged in Korea, with the activism during the financial crisis representing only a temporary diversion from the shift towards a 'competition state'. Others claim that the Korean state still seeks to directly shape economic outcomes: some policy instruments have changed, but strategic intent, defined here as the will to directly manage investment flows and shape economic structures, has not. The transition of Korean capitalism from the developmental state system towards neo-liberalism, this article argues, is far from complete. Emphasizing the situated choices of state elites and the challenging political context in which they find themselves, we presume a condition of mutual dependence between the state and chaebols. Given incidences of conflict in the post-crisis context, we argue that the state has not fully reasserted its will over the chaebols. The restructuring of chaebols ('Big Deals') are best understood as symbolic measures intended to garner external support for the Korean state rather than unfettered exercise of strategic intent. At the same time, we go beyond existing accounts of 'state decline' by highlighting the place of economic performance by the chaebols as the preeminent criteria for state support. The state and chaebols remain central to Korean capitalism, even in its current hybrid and somewhat dysfunctional form.

The influence seekers : political lobbying in Australia

In this book specialists and professionals reflect on political lobbying in Australia, examining its history and growth and recent changes in its practice and regulation. The changing relationship between lobbying and the media and the role of lobbying in the business of government are closely analysed. Case studies of powerful lobby groups, such as the Pharmacy Guild of Australia and Business Council of Australia, are included. The authors’ view of the lobbyist is fresh and informative, and may serve to correct common misconceptions.

Contentious Activism and Inter-Korean Relations

In South Korea, the contentious debate over relations with the North transcends traditional considerations of physical and economic security, and political activists play a critical role in shaping the discussion of these issues as they pursue the separate yet connected agendas of democracy, human rights, and unification.

Providing international observers with a better understanding of policymakers’ management of inter-Korean relations, Danielle L. Chubb traces the development of various policy disputes and perspectives from the 1970s through South Korea’s democratic transition. Focusing on four case studies—the 1980 Kwangju uprising, the June 1987 uprising, the move toward democracy in the 1990s, and the decade of “progressive” government that began with the election of Kim Dae Jung in 1997—she tracks activists’ complex views on reunification along with the rise and fall of more radical voices encouraging the adoption of a North Korean–style form of socialism. While these specific arguments have dissipated over the years, their vestiges can still be found in recent discussions over how to engage with North Korea and bring security and peace to the peninsula.

Extending beyond the South Korean example, this examination shows how the historical trajectory of norms and beliefs can have a significant effect on a state’s threat perception and security policy. It also reveals how political activists, in their role as discursive agents, play an important part in the creation of the norms and beliefs directing public debate over a state’s approach to the ethical and practical demands of its foreign policy.

Financialisation of official development assistance

Official Development Assistance is a significant global enterprise. Organsiations engaged in funding and implementing ODA (the bilateral donors, multilateral organsiations such as the World Bank and IMF) have unprecedented political and economic influence over a large number of sovereign developing countries. This paper analyses if, and how financialisation impacts on development aid, and implications for effective aid policy agendas, drawing on and linking critical debate on finacialisation, and ODA. Subsequent to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the persistence of the European Monitory Crisis (EMC), specific needs of developing countries became increasingly sub-ordinated to political and ideological power relations between ‘real’ economics and financial economics otherwise known as financialisation. The paper finds ‘financialisation’ as the ideological, political and economic catalyst for economic growth potentially confusing long-term development to combat poverty, and a short term need to overcome the lack of financial capacity in developing recipient countries. Sustainable economic development requires developing countries to forsake the pursuit of financialisation and to re-delineate their national finance, trade and investment regimes, and re-state it in a balanced manner as to take into account their unique economic development needs rather that the donor agencies’ demands and to advance their own ‘real’ economies.

Inclusion in political and public life: the experiences of people with intellectual disability on government disability advisory bodies in Australia

BACKGROUND: Civil and political participation lies at the core of citizenship. Increasingly, people with intellectual disability are members of disability advisory bodies. This study investigated the political orientations of advisory body members with intellectual disability, their participatory experiences, and the types of support they received. METHOD: The 9 people with intellectual disability who in 2005 were members of disability advisory bodies at a state, national, and Victorian local government level were interviewed, together with 12 other members or secretariat staff of these bodies. Observations were also conducted of advisory body meetings. RESULTS: The political perspective of members with intellectual disability varied, but all had a background in self-advocacy. They found the work hard but rewarding and encountered both practical and intangible obstacles to participation. Members received varying types of practical support, but a supportive collegial milieu was characteristic among members who felt most confident about their participation. CONCLUSIONS: The milieu, structures, and processes of advisory bodies must all be adjusted to accommodate people with intellectual disability if they are to participate meaningfully.

Gender and public relations: critical perspectives on voice, image and identity

Although there is a small body of feminist scholarship that problematizes gender in public relations, gender is a relatively undefined area of thinking in the field and there have been few serious studies of the socially constructed roles defining women and men in public relations. This book is positioned within the critical public relations stream. Through the prism of 'gender and public relations', it examines not only the manipulatory, but also the emancipatory, subversive and transformatory potential of public relations for the construction of meaning. Its focus is on the dynamic interrelationships arising from public relations activities in society and the gendered, lived experiences of people working in the occupation of public relations. There are many previously unexplored areas within and through public relations which the book examines. These include: • the production of social meaning and power relations. • advocacy and activist campaigns for social and political change. • the negotiation of identity, diversity and cultural practice. • celebrity, bodies, fashion and harassment in the workplace. • notions of managing reputation and communicating policy. In extending the field of inquiry, this edited collection highlights how gender is accomplished and transformed, and, thus how power is exercised and inequality (re)produced or challenged in public relations. The book will expand thinking about power relations and privilege for both women and men and how these are affected by the interplay of social, cultural and institutional practices. Winner of the Outstanding Book PRide Award, awarded by the National Communication Association (NCA).

The passage of authority: imagining the political transformation of Australia’s Christmas Island, from sovereignty to governance

In 2012, Australia’s Christmas Island is best known as an island of immigration detention, a key component of Australia’s growing offshore border security apparatus, where interdicted boat arrivals seeking asylum are detained and processed. This article offers one account of how the Island came to be what it is, by providing two snapshots of the operable set of power relations on Christmas Island, then and now: ‘Island in the Sun’, and ‘Tropics of Governance’. Side by side, their stark contrast reveals the passage of authority through time and place, from the embodied, unified voice of the sovereignty of the British Empire to the palliative communication and bureaucratic sincerity that characterise governance. By disclosing shifting patterns of emergence and decay and showing border security’s intimate relation to governance, this article seeks to offer a deepened understanding of the current detention situation in its immanence. What can now be seen as Christmas Island’s past follies also reveals the restless work of successive political imaginations, the shifting ways and means by which an island can be translated into a solution to a political problem, and how successive solutions tend toward wreck and ruin.

Hindu and Muslim women's everyday relations and agency: Gender and the Ganga-Jamni tehzib in Jaipur

Multireligious syncretism in cities is chiefly upheld by the engagements of everyday life where enduring bonds are formed and sustained. This article studies the feminised dimensions of the 'everyday' in the home and neighbourhood of Jaipur city in India, which it sees as spaces of everyday activities and encounters between communities in multireligious Indian cities. Women's mutual engagements and agency in these spaces are vital to support cohesive multireligious community development in Indian cities. However, patriarchal political Hindu injunctions against Hindu women engaging with the 'Muslim other' are strong, and they consciously and/or subconsciously influence the degree to which Hindu women allow themselves to engage with Muslim women in everyday interactions. It concludes that feminised multi-faith engagement is vital for communal peace and stability, and must be consciously invoked for community development in Indian cities.

Persona - an old public relations problem?

This essay uses the neologism citizen public relations to express a view of the phenomena examined by persona studies implying that public relations studies might be regarded as an antecedent discipline to the former. It goes on to suggest potentially intriguing differences and similarities to do with political and epistemological problematics. The central theme is that the term identity is simultaneously the key link and the key contrast between the two disciplines. This is because the term identity is usually deployed at the internal, psychological, subjective level by scholars of persona while it is usually applied to external, material objects and events by the public relations industry and its academia. The essay also makes the point that both areas of study can be unified as different species of the genera rhetoric in the traditional sense of that still older field. This coincidence and dissonance may invoke a debate which can lead to theory development in all three fields. The fields are not comprehensively surveyed – a process which would be lengthy and might bring up many contrasting perspectives. Instead the work of representative leading authors is presented to make a prima facie case.

Neojihadism and Muslim–Christian relations in the Mindanao Resistance Movement: a study of Facebook digital narratives

Religion is surely not the most important factor in explaining the conflict in the Southern Philippines. Economic, political and criminal issues also contribute to explaining the violence in the country. Yet the religious narrative influences the narration of the conflict, impacting on its frame of understanding both within the country and from the perspective of global audiences. This study presents the results of field research on three Facebook pages in English (and therefore addressed to global audiences) related to resistance movements in Southern Philippines, notably BIFF and MNLF, which openly include neojihadist symbols and contents in their narratives. How do these narratives depict and affect Christian–Muslim relations within the local movement and the local society in Mindanao? And how does the local version of the global neojihadist narrative contribute to shaping Christian–Muslim relations in the global Muslim public sphere? This article shows the potential impact of the neojihadist ideology on the narration of the resistance movement, highlighting the consequences for the negotiation of Christian and Muslim identities.

Local political subcultures and party activism in Italy: The case of the Democratic Party

While there are relevant studies on both local political subcultures and party activism in Italy, the literature misses the relations between these two social and political phenomena. This article aims at bridging the lacuna by presenting a typology of the local branches of the Italian PD (Democratic Party) based on the relationship between the features of party activism and the local political subcultures. Four types of local PD branch emerge: the ‘showcase’ branch, the ‘administrative’ branch, the ‘company’ branch and the ‘committee’ branch. The article discusses each type, while drawing on 40 in-depth interviews collected during field research. Insights into the relationship between local political subcultures and party activism in Italy are offered.

Students' understandings of religious identities and relations: issues of social cohesion and citizenship

The focus in this article is on issues of social cohesion and citizenship as they relate to students' understandings of religion and religious identity. The article draws on data gathered from a study conducted at a highly diverse English comprehensive school and is set amid broader anxieties about religion, community disharmony and national identity in the United Kingdom. The high levels of religious diversity at the school were seen as supporting social cohesion - enabled in this context through students' understandings of religion and religious identities as socially contingent and supportive of a sense of agency. These understandings are aligned with a sophisticated and inclusive citizenship - one that is productive of democratic alliances and political agency and necessary in disrupting the narrow and problematic understandings of religion that can lead to social disharmony and conflict.