In the post-Vietnam era, no Australian government has placed such faith in the unbounded nature of American power, or in the rationality of American policymakers, as has the Howard government. Chris Reus-Smit discusses the character and implications of the government's approach to American power.

This short paper an overview and partial synthesis of the papers presented in the sessions of the SOAC 2003 conference dealing with the theme of Governance, Finance and Accountability. It is intended to contribute to the process of identifying the critical policy and research issues that are a major intended outcome of the conference, along...

This paper makes three main arguments. First, a critique of both the traditional state-centric approach to security and the more recently articulated human-centric approach suggests that each is necessary but not sufficient to address the contemporary security agenda. Second, there is however conceptual and empirical evidence that shows there is an evolving dialectic between these...

Jon Altman and Boyd Hunter examine changes in the socioeconomic status of Indigenous Australians during 1991-2001, a period that closely matches 'the reconciliation decade' using census data. Comparisons are made both of change in absolute wellbeing for the total Indigenous population, and of relative wellbeing between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in five broad categories -...

Report from the Solomon Islands scenario testing workshop held on 17 July 2003 at the Australian National University, Canberra. The aim of the workshop was to consider the international relations, military security, rule or law, and governance issues that may arise during the proposed mission and in so doing 'stress-test' the mandate for the Solomon...