INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY GOVERNANCE: UNDERSTANDING, BUILDING AND SUSTAINING EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE IN RURAL, REMOTE AND URBAN INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN COMMUNITIES. This project investigates Indigenous community governance - its structures, processes, institutions, leadership, powers and capacities - across rural, remote and urban settings. It will longitudinally assess the effectiveness of different forms of governance, and their consequences for socioeconomic development. It applies an innovative, multi ....INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY GOVERNANCE: UNDERSTANDING, BUILDING AND SUSTAINING EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE IN RURAL, REMOTE AND URBAN INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN COMMUNITIES. This project investigates Indigenous community governance - its structures, processes, institutions, leadership, powers and capacities - across rural, remote and urban settings. It will longitudinally assess the effectiveness of different forms of governance, and their consequences for socioeconomic development. It applies an innovative, multi-disciplinary focus on community governing bodies, mapping their cultural, local and regional governance environments, and analysing the role of State and national-level policy networks and objectives. The project will refine theoretical models of Indigenous governance; develop recommendations for improving governance capacity; and design options for sustainable arrangements that address inter-cultural matters of scale, autonomy, representation, and accountability.Read moreRead less
Australian welfare policy, 1950 to 2007: continuity and disruption. This project aims to analyse Australian welfare policy from the end of the Chifley government in 1949 to the end of the Howard government in 2007. The project intends to generate new understandings about the challenges facing the income support system, the key dynamics of policy reforms such as Medicare and Superannuation, and the “exceptionalism” of the Australian model. Expected outcomes include a new database based on time-se ....Australian welfare policy, 1950 to 2007: continuity and disruption. This project aims to analyse Australian welfare policy from the end of the Chifley government in 1949 to the end of the Howard government in 2007. The project intends to generate new understandings about the challenges facing the income support system, the key dynamics of policy reforms such as Medicare and Superannuation, and the “exceptionalism” of the Australian model. Expected outcomes include a new database based on time-series data concerning the core income support systems from 1950 to 2020. Intended benefits include a better understanding of the sort of welfare reform needed to pay for major social risks of unemployment, poverty, aged care, disability and the needs of children.Read moreRead less
Revitalising Indigenous-state relations in Australia . This project aims to investigate the complexity of Indigenous affairs governance and the ongoing tensions in the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the Australian state. The project expects to generate new data on contemporary Indigenous governance arrangements and analyse them using an original conceptual framework to inform knowledge-exchange workshops designed to advance proposed new approaches. Expecte ....Revitalising Indigenous-state relations in Australia . This project aims to investigate the complexity of Indigenous affairs governance and the ongoing tensions in the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the Australian state. The project expects to generate new data on contemporary Indigenous governance arrangements and analyse them using an original conceptual framework to inform knowledge-exchange workshops designed to advance proposed new approaches. Expected outcomes of this project include concrete proposals for re-setting Indigenous-settler relations and Indigenous affairs policy. This should provide significant benefits in the field of Indigenous governance including plans for more genuine transformation in Australian Indigenous-settler relations.Read moreRead less
The effect of unconventional advocates on public support for climate policy. This project aims to discover whether the presence of unconventional climate advocates in public debate can foster broad-based support for climate policy in Australia. Unconventional advocates include political conservatives, farmers, resource industry workers, and businesspeople. The project expects to generate new knowledge about the role of intersectional social identities in contentious policy debates. Expected outc ....The effect of unconventional advocates on public support for climate policy. This project aims to discover whether the presence of unconventional climate advocates in public debate can foster broad-based support for climate policy in Australia. Unconventional advocates include political conservatives, farmers, resource industry workers, and businesspeople. The project expects to generate new knowledge about the role of intersectional social identities in contentious policy debates. Expected outcomes of this project include evidence-based insights on how to reduce social division about climate policy. This should provide significant benefits such as guidance for policy actors for how to overcome social cleavages to implement climate policy, with relevance to other contentious policy domains.Read moreRead less
Fearing going home: Australia's return of rejected asylum seekers, temporary refugees and others from refugee-like situations. Recent changes in government policy, combined with international political developments, mean that increasing numbers of asylum seekers and temporary refugees are being deemed ineligible for protection and removed from Australia or from Australian-run facilities. Notwithstanding the government's assessment that such people do not have protection needs, many live in acute ....Fearing going home: Australia's return of rejected asylum seekers, temporary refugees and others from refugee-like situations. Recent changes in government policy, combined with international political developments, mean that increasing numbers of asylum seekers and temporary refugees are being deemed ineligible for protection and removed from Australia or from Australian-run facilities. Notwithstanding the government's assessment that such people do not have protection needs, many live in acute fear of their pending return. They may indeed be returned to situations of danger, deprivation and desperate poverty. This project aims to research and document the plight of 'returnees' as they face the prospect of repatriation and then, to the extent possible, after they have been repatriated.Read moreRead less
Community Rule-Making in the Pacific Islands as Regulatory Innovation. Our study investigates the widespread phenomena of ‘community rule-making’ in Pacific Island countries, in which local communities engage in deliberative processes oriented towards development of new normative orders. Occurring largely outside of state-sanctioned authority, such processes may address social problems such as gender based violence, crime and poverty, and frequently occur in the context of other locally-driven ....Community Rule-Making in the Pacific Islands as Regulatory Innovation. Our study investigates the widespread phenomena of ‘community rule-making’ in Pacific Island countries, in which local communities engage in deliberative processes oriented towards development of new normative orders. Occurring largely outside of state-sanctioned authority, such processes may address social problems such as gender based violence, crime and poverty, and frequently occur in the context of other locally-driven attempts at community regeneration. Through collaborative empirical research in PNG, Solomon Islands and Samoa, our project will build an evidence base to better understand the potential and the dangers of community rule-making, and develop ‘responsive hybridisation’ as a new analytical framework to theorise about it.
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Democratic Resilience: The Public Sphere and Extremist Attacks. The project aims to explain responses to extremist attacks intended to sow division, and why some democracies prove fragile, succumbing to polarisation or exclusion of key groups, while others prove resilient by sustaining integrative, tolerant discourse. The project develops new knowledge through an innovative synthesis of cultural sociology and deliberative democracy to analyse nine cases of responses in the public realm to attack ....Democratic Resilience: The Public Sphere and Extremist Attacks. The project aims to explain responses to extremist attacks intended to sow division, and why some democracies prove fragile, succumbing to polarisation or exclusion of key groups, while others prove resilient by sustaining integrative, tolerant discourse. The project develops new knowledge through an innovative synthesis of cultural sociology and deliberative democracy to analyse nine cases of responses in the public realm to attacks. Expected outcomes include a new account of the democratic public sphere, and identification of how meaningful, civil communication whose health is vital to democracy, especially in a multicultural society, can be maintained. Benefits include identification of measures to counter extremist political disruption.Read moreRead less
Democratic dialogue and capabilities: new opportunities in post-reconciliation era Australia. In conflict and post-conflict societies around the world, democratic dialogue has proven to be an important element in processes designed to facilitate social change and create a more just and inclusive society. This project will make a significant theoretical and methodological contribution to national and international understanding of methods for resolving longstanding intercultural conflicts. It aim ....Democratic dialogue and capabilities: new opportunities in post-reconciliation era Australia. In conflict and post-conflict societies around the world, democratic dialogue has proven to be an important element in processes designed to facilitate social change and create a more just and inclusive society. This project will make a significant theoretical and methodological contribution to national and international understanding of methods for resolving longstanding intercultural conflicts. It aims to demonstrate the role that democratic dialogue can have in transforming the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It will test the hypothesis that the social and institutional change that is possible through dialogue will have capability-enhancing effects for Indigenous Australians.Read moreRead less
Reconciling nations: what can Australia learn from the international experience of democratic dialogue? This project will draw on international experience to explore the capacity for facilitated, democratic dialogue to revitalise the Australian reconciliation process. Using innovative case study research and an original applied theoretical approach, the project will develop new methods for resolving intercultural conflict in Australia.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE140101123
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$393,359.00
Summary
Through their eyes: Rethinking the role of information operations in counterinsurgency scholarship and strategy. Western counterinsurgency forces regularly lose the 'information battle' to militarily and economically inferior insurgent forces. This project explores why and how insurgent adversaries often prove superior in shaping the perceptions of local populations and winning their support. Through case studies of East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, the project identifies the key strategic pilla ....Through their eyes: Rethinking the role of information operations in counterinsurgency scholarship and strategy. Western counterinsurgency forces regularly lose the 'information battle' to militarily and economically inferior insurgent forces. This project explores why and how insurgent adversaries often prove superior in shaping the perceptions of local populations and winning their support. Through case studies of East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, the project identifies the key strategic pillars in insurgent information operations in order to critically analyse and revise the role of information operations in counterinsurgency theory and practice. This research will advance scholarly understanding of the psychosocial dynamics of influence during conflict and challenge dominant trends in counterinsurgency theory and practice.Read moreRead less