New Zealand Political Studies Association (NZPSA) Annual Conference

Chang Bum Ju
Nonprofit Advocacy, Government Funding, and Network Ties
This study combines insights from institutional theory and network analysis and examines how lateral conferral of legitimacy among peer organizations may affect a nonprofit’s political advocacy. Based on a survey of environmental NGOs in South Korea, the study shows that political advocacy is not significantly related to the organization’s dependence on government funding, but it is significantly related to the organization’s network centrality. The results support a network perspective, according to which inter-organizational ties provide a social context facilitating nonprofit political advocacy in criticizing and challenging government. The findings also suggest that variations in network connectedness breed variations in organizational legitimacy, leading to heterogeneity in organizational responses to institutional pressures. Network connections have become increasingly crucial for nonprofits in the midst of many emerging challenges. Among the many challenges is the shrinking of government funding, especially since the beginning of the global economic downtown in 2007 (Salamon, Geller, and Spence 2009). Social and environmental problems have become national and even global in scope. Government organizations and big businesses have continued to overshadow nonprofits in terms of power and technical efficacy. Yet donors and stakeholders of nonprofits have been calling for greater efficacy and mission attainment. As it is increasingly difficult for nonprofits to cope with these challenges individually, many have found it necessary to capitalize on the benefits of collaborating with their peers. Collaboration among nonprofits has become a norm in many service sectors (Herlin 2015; Provan, Isett, and Milward 2004) In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework that relates network ties to nonprofit political advocacy and organizational legitimacy. We then test our hypotheses using survey data we collected from environmental NGOs (ENGOs) in South Korea. The empirical analysis shows that the more central is an ENGO in a network of collaboration, the more active is it in political advocacy. In the rest of the paper, we first introduce the theoretical framework linking network ties to nonprofit political advocacy. This is followed by a discussion on data collection, measurement methods, results, and conclusions.

Shaun Goldfinch
Performative democracy, good governance, coups, and military government in Fiji
The claimed role for military intervention in government to facilitate stability, good governance, ‘modernization’ and development, legal/rationality and secularity - and even democratization - meets with considerable scepticism. But claims along these lines have made by the leader of the 2006 Fiji coup, Frank Bainimarama, now a prime minister after winning two elections deemed free and fair by overseas observers. With over a decade since the first coup, this paper evaluates whether the Fijian case suggests military intervention in developing states can lead to the implementation of progressive agendas. It finds that Fiji has implemented many of the forms and rituals of a good governance state, but this is a partial simulacrum of a Parliamentary democracy. Democratic forms are tightly constrained along paths that maintain regime dominance.

Lindsey Te Ata o Tu MacDonald & Alex Tan
The stories of democracy in NZ: a Q method study
Literature on democracy abounds, and political scientists in New Zealand have and are doing exceptional work on our democracy. Yet, the wider comparative literatures on democracy use surveys that draw upon phenomenological ideas created in Western Academies, based on classical and modern literatures of Europe. As Achen and Bartels (2016) have argued, most of these ideas are flawed. While we ought not to deny the influence of history of political ideas about democracy, we wanted to know what real people, doing real politics, actually think they are doing, and how do they think about that. That is, we wanted to understand the subjective experience of participatory politics for people. In the research presented here, we focus on New Zealanders. Since we were attempting to understand subjectivity, we chose Q method, a combination of a structured interview and analytical method that was invented exactly to understand the subjective stories that people use to understand their environment. Our research presents the stories (or factors) used by New Zealand born participants, and recent immigrants from South East Asia, to explain New Zealand democracy.

Serena Kelly
The EU’s new leadership: what impact on EU foreign policy?
In the last five years the European Union (EU) has had to confront a number of challenges including, irregular migration, the Eurozone crisis, the rise of populism and the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the EU (Brexit). Yet, there are also a number of positive developments on the horizon – a newly elected European Parliament, new EU leadership appointments and continuing EU solidarity on the Irish “backstop”.The new leadership in the European Union is notable for a number of reasons, notwithstanding Ursula von der Leyen who was elected to what is arguably the most important role of the EU, the Commission President, previously serving as the German Minister of Defence and by-passing the tradition of electing the European Parliament’s ‘Spitzenkandidat’, and making up one of 13 (out of a total 27) female Commissioners. Another nomination of note is former Agricultural Commissioner and Irishman, as next trade commissioner. This paper assesses the possible ramifications of the EU’s new leadership on how the EU engages with the Asia-Pacific.

Milenko Petrovic, Daviti Mtchedlishvili 
EU Enlargement and the Eastern Partnership after Brexit: new prospects or new challenges
While it remains preoccupied with unresolved internal political issues, the EU seems to have completely forgotten its eastern neighbours who are (still) hoping for an ‘EU future’. The hopes that Western Balkan accession had returned to a high place on the EU enlargement agenda after European Commission President Junker’s optimistic State of the Union speech in 2017 and the adoption of a ‘new’ Enlargement strategy in February 2018 have so far largely evaporated. Even the long awaited resolution of the naming dispute between Greece and (now) North Macedonia and the removal of Greek veto over the latter’s progress in EU accession by the Prespa agreement of June 2018 have not yet resulted in the opening of accession negotiations with this country (although the Commission had originally recommended it exactly ten years ago). Brexit and the election of the new EU leadership can hardly be expected to bring a break through in the EU’s relations with the countries in its immediate eastern neighbourhood. Both the political elite and wider public in (most) EU member states increasingly tend to look at these countries as threats and challenges rather than friends and (potential) members of the same club. Neither the Eastern Partnership nor enlargement to the Western Balkans were a topic in the campaigns for the European Union elections. The major competing parties largely bypassed the topic either due to its unattractiveness to European voters or because they tried to avoid playing into the hands of far-right populists. Considering EU-internal struggles related to Brexit and different views regarding the future of EUropean integration, it is unlikely that either the new Parliament or the new Commission will make any serious attempts to bring their European neighbours closer to the Union in the next few years.

Wang Xiwen
The impact of Brexit on EU-China relations
It has been 3 years since the UK voted for leaving the European Union in 2016. Until now, the UK hasn’t reached any clear and definite withdrawal agreement with the EU. The new UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson seems determined to withdraw from the EU even under the circumstance of “no-deal” with the EU. The future of the UK is full of uncertainty so far and so is of its foreign relations. As the EU’s second biggest trading partner in the world, China has also been an important trade partner with major western EU countries. Not only the UK plays a significant role in formulating EU’s common strategy towards China, China always sees the UK as its important partner in Europe and an gateway to European single market. The future uncertainty of the UK raised a question with regard to how Brexit will impact on the China-UK relations and that between China and the EU due to intertwined relations among the EU, China and the UK. This paper aims to elaborate on the topic and will specifically focus on elaboration of the impact of Brexit on UK-China and EU-China economic relations.

Natalia Chaban, Svitlana Zhabotynska, Michele Knodt.  
Ukraine’s European Choice: Framing of Ukraine in the Russian Online Media 
There is an emerging debate among scholarship concerning the conceptual relationship between frames and strategic narratives. Informed by the intersection of two theories – Cascading Activation Framing (Entman 2003) and Strategic Narrative Theory (Miskimmon et al. 2013) – our paper proposes innovative synergy of the two models, with the concept of cultural resonance in the center. Assuming its key role in a successful take-off of new narratives which depart from historically and culturally established frames, we explore how historico-cultural resonance becomes a means to mis-/dis-inform. Empirically, we trace frames and narratives on Ukraine created and projected by popular Russian e-news platforms. These have a wide reach in Russia and among Russian-speaking population world-wide. We analyze a set of new narratives emerging in reaction to Ukraine’s most recent (2017) advances in its relation with the EU, and among those acquiring a visa-free travel to the Schengen zone. In its methodological innovation, the paper accounts for cognitive and emotive elements in image formation and offers a new comprehensive method to trace and measure cultural resonance – rarely debated, but barely operationalized concept.

Hend Zaki 
Muslims in New Zealand and the Emergence of a Western Muslim Identity
The paper focuses on the identity of Muslims in New Zealand, specifically young Muslims born/raised in New Zealand aged 18-37 years old. The findings are based on a survey and semi-structured interviews that were carried out prior to the 15 March 2019 Christchurch terrorist attack.
The paper explores the identities constructed within the Muslim community in New Zealand, and it shows that there is an emergence of a Western Muslim identity among the younger generation of Muslim in New Zealand. The paper demonstrates how the younger generation of Muslims in New Zealand are approaching and practicing Islam in a way that is different from their parents and grandparents. In addition, the paper explores the challenges faced by Muslims in New Zealand as well as the opportunities and responsibilities.

Carmen Fulco
Political Islam on the eve of the Arab Spring
Beginning in December 2010, a wave of protests and civil unrest swept the Arab World culminating in toppling the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Democratization, ending corruption, reducing unemployment and halting human rights violations were among the core demands made on the streets by protestors. In this context, major Islamist political movements re-emerged on the Middle Eastern scene following decades of repression by Arab authoritarian regimes to spearhead these demands. In particular, two influential Islamist parties successfully gained significant popular support during the first round of election results in Tunisia and Egypt. Before outlining their objectives to the electors, these Islamist groups promptly re-established themselves as ‘independent’ political parties, and demonstrated that political Islam had adapted to some of the challenges presented by the concept of umma in the era of globalization. This stage in the evolution of political Islam – characterised by a complex interaction between certain Islamist parties and state bureaucracies, external actors, and domestic factors - inaugurated a phase of unprecedent political pragmatism whose traits will be considered in this paper.

Naimah Talib
The Politics of Islamization and Shari’a in Brunei
The Sultanate of Brunei has long institutionalized Islam in an attempt to enhance its legitimacy and entrench royal absolutism. Combined with this appeal to religion, Brunei has also provided extensive welfare programmes through the expeditious use of its oil revenue to support the legitimacy of the Sultan. The centrality of Islam in public life is evident in the promotion of Islamic financial institutions, the adoption of Islamic curricula in education, and the trend towards Islamic conservative values and religious piety. The top-down policy of Islamization since independence in 1984 is also seen in the gradual expansion and bureaucratisation of the administration of Islamic law or shari’a. The recent implementation of the Shari’a Penal Code Order (2013) was aimed to consolidate shari’a offences and introduce a comprehensive shari’a regime. However, the Shari’a Penal Code also signalled a major policy shift with the introduction of harsh punishments, such as flogging, amputation and stoning, for the first time in modern Brunei history. What prompted this change? While it may be argued that the expansion of shari’a is a natural outcome of the steady politicisation of Islam, the adoption of harsh shari’a punishments puts relationships with the West and Brunei’s neighbours at risk. We thus should look more carefully at underlying factors driving the shift to shari’a punishments, including the fears of lower state capacity, both to sustain generous welfare to citizens and to suppress opposition, as a result of declining oil revenue.

Jeremy Moses and Geoffrey Ford
Humanitarianism and the Weapons Industry: From an ideology of peace to a logic of war
Humanitarianism was born out of anti-war sentiment and a desire to bring aid to those affected by war, regardless of their identity or allegiances. In current international politics, however, humanitarianism is commonly invoked in the justification of war. This instrumental use of humanitarian ideals in support of political violence is now so embedded in the theory and practice of contemporary warfare that it has become a major part of the sales pitch for many corporations in the weapons industry. This paper analyses the marketing materials and available associated literature on new weapons systems and technologies in order to demonstrate the extent to which humanitarian values – particularly in the form of references to international humanitarian law and just war principles – are now a central touchstone for the weapons industry. The paper criticises the presence and extent of the references to humanitarian principles in the marketing of weapons and calls for a demilitarisation of humanitarianism in order to protect and promote its traditional values.

Graeme P Auton
The Korean Peninsula and Multilateral Security Frameworks for Northeast Asia
A decade ago it seemed that Northeast Asia’s regional conflicts, particularly the confrontation on the Korean Peninsula, might be addressed through multilateral arrangements. The 1990s Framework Agreement had given way to the Six Party Talks (6PT), while discussions among China, Japan and South Korea on the margins of ASEAN evolved into six trilateral summits between 2008 and 2015. The U.S., too, was committed to multilateral engagement. The world of 2019 is different. The Six Party Talks are dead. The United States, under the Trump Administration, has embraced unilateralism in foreign policy, including withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. China has launched its Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Development Bank. Trilateral Beijing-Tokyo-Seoul consultation has yielded to a triangle of distrust. Negotiation with a now-nuclear-armed North Korea has become a matter of bilateral summitry between Kim Jong-un, Xi-Xinping, Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump, turning the six parties into a party of four. In an epoch of burgeoning nationalism, is it still possible for multilateral mechanisms to contribute to the resolution of Northeast Asia’s conflicts? Can a multilateral security architecture for Northeast Asia be constructed, as called for under Committee Five of 6PT, and what relationship might such an architecture have with multilateral economic arrangements? This paper argues for the creation of a Northeast Asia regional security mechanism and examines how such a mechanism might be structured.

Patrick Flamm
Hegemonic, hierarchical, and/or exceptional? Conceptualising Antarctic political order
The Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) is generally seen as a very successful international governance mechanism which is often attributed to a certain exceptionalism: whereas international politics haven been dominated by rivalry and conflict, Antarctic affairs were ‘a pole apart’ with cooperation and consensus being the main modes of operation on the ‘continent of peace and science’. The ATS order, however, also seems to exhibit hierarchical stratification and hegemonic features: there is a core group of actors (the so called 7+2) with certain privileges inherent to the status quo order. Further, historically the ATS order was set up by the United States and the other original signatories and still reflects their political interests. If a new actor wants to join or elevate their status within this order, this has to happen according to the established rules and practices which put the constitutes the core group as de facto-veto powers. As the ATS is facing new regulative and strategic challenges in climate change, increasing human impact on Antarctic ecosystems and global power transitions, a sound conceptual understanding of how power is structured within its political order seems necessary for future academic and policy analyses of Antarctic politics.

 Muhammad Arsalan Karim
International and Regional Power Politics Shaping Pakistan's Internal Security
The British Empire in the nineteenth century annexed two regions in the South Asian subcontinent that became part of Pakistan in 1947. It annexed Afghanistan and Balochistan; both inhabited by primitive and tribal ethnic societies; on whom the British were not able to exercise control. They created princely states and tribal agencies and handed them over to princes or tribal elders. These areas became a buffer zone between the British Empire and Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). The British left the newborn South Asian countries (India and Pakistan) to fight over the princely state of Kashmir. The role of the British Empire in creating conflicting borders and the USSR and United States (US) in exploiting those ethnio-religio-political rivalries in these border areas had an impact on Pakistan’s national security. These two super powers utilized regional allies like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and India to make the conflict situation in Pakistan more complicated by fostering their own national interests. Pakistan’s internal security has a strong link with the interests of its allies and adversaries. It should focus on having a more independent state and foreign policy before internal chaos in Pakistan worsens and spills over in the entire region.

Lara M Greaves, Chris G Sibley, Danny Osborne, Fiona Kate Barlow
A Lavender Vote or a Rainbow of Opinions? Political Diversity across Sexual Orientation Identities
Research consistently demonstrates that lesbian/gay and plurisexual (those who identify as bisexual, pansexual, queer etc.) people are more politically liberal than heterosexuals. Yet key questions remain. For example, is there one consistent “Lavender vote” (Hertzog, 1996) or is there political diversity in the Rainbow community? Past research has also overlooked the political views of asexuals. This paper adresses these oversights by using data from a national probability study (namely, the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study) to investigate political differences betwen heterosexual (n = 16,491), lesbian/gay (n = 442), plurisexual (n = 747), and asexual (n = 69) participants. Plurisexual and lesbian/gay participants rated themselves as more politically liberal, were more supportive of marriage equality, accepting of homosexuality, and had higher political efficacy than heterosexuals. Plurisexual, but not lesbian/gay or asexual participants, also found their political views as more important to their identities than did heterosexuals. Interestingly, the only significant difference between heterosexual and asexual participants was that asexuals were more politically liberal. These results show that there is considerable political diversity within the Rainbow community.

Rachel Laird
Online Dialogue for Peace: Reshaping Notions of Other Through Intentional Encounters
"The increasing accessibility of the internet and immersive technologies allow people to encounter each other in ways previously unimaginable. While the internet can be used for divisive means, the same technology that is used to create echo chambers that amplify existing ideas of other and self-identity, can also be used towards more pro-social ends of building new relationships and reshaping notions of other. My research contributes to an evident gap of knowledge within Peace and Conflict research regarding dialogue practices online and seeks explicitly to illuminate the participant experience and reflections when encountering other in a meaningful and intentional way in online settings. Utilizing approaches from the emerging field of online ethnographic research, this paper presents findings from data collected within a facilitated virtual dialogue program with international participants from diverse geographical areas, who are engaging in sustained dialogue with those who historically have been viewed as other. In this paper, I present findings specific to the individual experience in a dialogic encounter online, including reflections on how notions of self-identity and perceptions of other shift through the program, while addressing specific challenges inherent to these encounters such as issues of power dynamics and factors unique to online settings.

Sarah Hendrica Bickerton
Women and #NZPol: New Zealand Women Twitter Users and Political Participation Construction
This presentation is based on my PhD research, focusing on the question of how women Twitter users in New Zealand construct political participation. Twenty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed using thematic reiterative coding. Historical research has tended to be technologically deterministic, and either wholly optimistic or pessimistic about the potential of the online as a political space. Contemporary research into the effect of online use on offline political participation has identified a gap: that the qualitative particularities of political participation online have not been sufficiently researched to provide a nuanced understanding. Further, in a New Zealand context, empirical research has focused on a top-down approach, through political parties and electioneering, with there being almost no research into bottom-up citizen-focused online politics. My findings include a confirmation of international trends around ‘consumerist’ issue-orientated approaches to politics, as well as a flipping of traditional hierarchies towards reading, listening, and discussion. Further, there exists an empathetic imperative amongst my participants, as well as a quite complex approach to social media bubbles and a diversity of voices. Primary relationships and personal experience lenses are prioritised over more traditional rational narratives, and there exists a conscious awareness of New Zealand’s size and networks.

Joshua James
Understanding the Pink Vote in Aotearoa
There is little written on how gay men engage in the electoral process, and this lack of data extends to New Zealand. When speaking to peers about this topic, it was the widely held view that gay men support the Labour Party, as there has been a historic level of support for the queer community from the Labour Party. This study takes a mixed method approach to answer the dual research questions: which political parties do gay men in New Zealand vote for, and why do they vote for those parties? By using data from the New Zealand Values and Attitudes Survey, and the New Zealand Election Survey, this paper shows a broad picture of how gay men vote. Interviews in Auckland, Wellington, and Dunedin are used to expand on this, and to understand why gay men in New Zealand vote, and why they vote the way they do. The results of the interviews and data analysis shows that, despite the assumption that gay men support the Labour Party, the majority of gay men in New Zealand vote for a diverse range of left-wing parties, and vote for parties that most closely align with their own values.

Shirin Brown
Diversity matters: The Local Board experience within Auckland Council
Established in 2010, Auckland Council is by far the largest local government authority in New Zealand, representing over 1.6 million people and 200 different ethnicities. The governance model provides a two tier system where 20 elected councillors and the mayor make regional decisions, and 149 local board members make local decisions. This study seeks to explore the lived experiences of local board members in a context where our communities and elected members are becoming increasingly diverse. For the purpose of this presentation, I draw on selected data from interviews with twenty local board members from across the Auckland region who spoke about how they view success in their role. The participants were chosen to reflect as great a range of diversity of life experience and identity characteristics (such as age, gender and ethnicity) as possible. Interview transcripts were analysed thematically using a relational framework to identify key features of their experience. Initial findings suggest that perceptions of success are dependent on a number of interacting factors resulting from both institutional constraints and personal actions. Of particular interest is the effect that increasing numbers of younger, female and ethnic minority participants has had on the decision-making process.

Shaaliny Jaufar
Sustainable citizen perspectives on citizenship in the Maldives and New Zealand
As the environmental movement has grown, a specific type of citizenship practice characterised by environmentally conscious lifestyles and activism has emerged. Alongside this, we can see the evolution of theorisations of citizenship within the green citizenship paradigm move away from a focus on individual action towards acknowledgement of the influence of wider structural factors in the understanding and practice of citizenship. The engagement of young people is emerging as critically important in achieving sustainable outcomes both locally and in the global context, particularly as they face the consequences of action or inaction on the threats caused by climate change and environmental degradation. The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development emphasises a critical role for young women and men, hailing them as critical agents of change. With the challenges in inhabiting the kind of lifestyles that promote and embody sustainability within a system that is environmentally exploitative, groups of young people are managing to carve a space for themselves as “sustainable citizens” within the context of a wider contradictory system. This paper reports on research that has examined the experiences of activism and conceptualisations of citizenship among active and engaged young citizens in Maldives and New Zealand. The findings indicate a strong sense of responsibility among the participants, and allow for the identification of factors that foster an ethic of civic engagement and citizenship that is committed towards a sustainable future.

Luisa Leo
Pacific Climate change and the Politics of Diaspora responses in New Zealand
As the consequences of climate change alter our physical, social, and political environments, diasporas are being identified as transnational actors capable of facilitating effective climate adaptation strategies via the exchange of information, finances, and human and social capital. Increasingly many international organisations are also acknowledging that the process of migration, of which diasporas are an integral part, may be “one of several adaptation strategies and coping strategies” to climate change. Now that the potential contribution of diasporas to climate adaption has been identified, it is also urgent to consider how diasporas themselves are positioned within the complex meeting point of climate change adapation and migration, in relation to their own wellbeing. These questions are particularly pressing in the context of the Pacific where concern has been raised that Pacific diaspora are under increasing strain, facing growing expectations of their ability to support new migrants and community members facing compounding and interrelated problems of climate change
This paper outlines how my phd research into this topic will be undertaken in relation to Samoan-New Zealand diaspora because recent governent reports have increasingly anticipated that diaspora communities may be able serve as support organisations for increased climate-related migration. This research therefore asks, how is the wellbeing of Samoan diaspora in New Zealand impacted by the intersection of migration and the climate crisis? From this, three points of enquiry have been outlined: 1) how diasporas view wellbeing, migration, and adaptation to climate change, in relation to one another; 2) how diasporas understand their own engagement in the transferral of information, finances, and human and social capital; 3) how diasporas view their own roles in adaptation strategies. Interviews in the shape of Talanoas (open-ended conversations) will be undertaken. These will be guided by Teu le va, a methodology based on Pacific relational ethics, that is a “strategic, evidence-based, outcomes focused, Pasifika success approach” to research.

Bronwyn Hayward 
Climate Policy in New Zealand: Resisting the rhetoric of Emergency
In August this year I tentatively tweeted that I could not commit to a “declaration of rebellion” beginning this is”‘our darkest hour”. I was commenting on the publication of the Extinction Rebellion handbook “This is Not a Drill”, published by many thoughtful colleagues I admire. In this paper I want to discuss my concerns with the rhetoric of emergency. In this paper I will argue against the Extinction Rebellion’s and others’ narratives of climate emergency which minimise how indigenous and religious communities have experienced genocide, and nations have experienced horrific wars. The general overwhelming fear associated with emergency rhetoric narrows opportunities for imaginative political action and denies the present realities of renewed creativity, resistances & new connections of youth led and indigenous and minority community movements
Having observed the use of emergency powers by governments I am also so cautious about the appeal to the use of state force embedded in the idea of a declaration of emergency (which I argue is very different from talking of a crisis). As climate campaigner Adam Currie noted in a related twitter exchange, “any call for an emergency mobilisation of government resources lends itself to top-down solutions instead of people-powered ones and "It’s clear that when emergency powers are invoked, people of colour and those on the margins of society bear the consequences." My concerns about the declaration of emergency extend further. Like Bonnie Honig, I’ve argued that as emergencies become more frequent in a changing climate, our challenge is to find a way to sustain democracy, not keep suspending democratic decision making to address each new crisis. In this context it is also necessary to resist the claim in the opening of This is not a Drill which declares the bonds of the social contract null & void’ . That position is not only unhelpful, it assumes that the social contract is ground in agreement between the citizen & state, rather than for example, Rousseau’s vision of an agreement continually forged and renewed over time between citizens (& nonhuman nature/families/tribes). I also object to the framing of the IPCC 1.5 report, (a report for which I was a lead author) that we “only have 12 years left”, something the Special report on 1.5 Global Warming did not say. And yet, if we resist the rhetoric of emergency how should we respond to the climate threat? My argument recognises the role of civil disobedience as a democratic responsibility and I do not advocate a Pollyanna sense of hope against deeper grief/despair. But my concern is to uncover ways to maintain sustainable development, address poverty eradication and advance long term societal transformation for example through decentred Radical Hope projects, led by indigenous communities and just-degrowth movements for “well-living”.

Brian Roper
The Climate Change Policy Framework of the Sixth (Ardern) Labour-led Government: Description, Explanation, Critical Evaluation
Environmental issues, especially climate change and the pollution of New Zealand’s waterways, were prominent during the 2017 election campaign. In an Auckland campaign speech, Ardern argued that the fight against rising carbon emissions and climate change “is the challenge that defines my generation” and “is my generation's nuclear-free moment, and I am determined that we will tackle it head on.” This raises the question: has the Labour, New Zealand First, and Green Ardern-led Coalition Government tackled the problem of rising carbon emissions ‘head on’? The first section of the paper addresses this question with a descriptive account of the Government’s climate change policy framework. The Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill, which will establish an independent Climate Commission to monitor emission

Stephen Winter
Rules, standards and factors: assessing historic redress claims
To assess a redress application is to assign a monetary value to the claim. The process involves deep epistemic and communicative challenges Assessment converts an individual’s private injurious experience into a common public quantifiable metric—money. That conversion is hard. The quantity of compensation communicates an appraisal—what the disvalue of injury is worth. It is difficult to assess the disvalue of historic abuse and neglect and the resultant foreseeable damage: information is partial and complex and people can reasonably make differing judgements as to the disvalue of different experiences. This paper explores some of the benefits and drawbacks associated with common assessment techniques.

David Bromell
Ethical competencies for public leadership
Diversity in proximity generates conflict. The smaller the “room” the greater the conflict. So who do I need to be and become, and how do I need to behave, to work well (effectively and ethically) in public life with people who want and value different things? And how can we manage conflict politically in ways that minimise domination, humiliation, cruelty and violence? At the 2018 Conference, David Bromell introduced his latest book project, Ethical competencies for public leadership: Pluralist democratic politics in practice. This will be released in Springer International’s professional book series in late 2019. David will report back on the project and how it turned out. He did not set out to identify a comprehensive set of competencies (or virtues) for public leadership but focused on a limited set of mutually reinforcing leadership practices for a pluralist democratic politics. By drawing on political theory and social ethics, he frames these leadership practices as ethical competencies in the form of personal resolutions: When exercising leadership in public life with people who want and value different things, I will be … civil, diplomatic, respectful, impartial, fair and prudent.

Sian Troath
Trust as a Strategic Resource
The lines between within the state and outside the state are blurred. The lines between war and peace are blurred. What constitutes security in this environment? One way to think about both new strategies of cognitive or society-centric warfare and the information capitalism conducted by large corporations is to understand them as a threat to trust. Both of these threats seek to undermine the social trust that binds societies together, the trust populations have in their government, and the trust in relationships between states. In such a scenario the best defence, then, is to build trust. When trust is understood as a strategic resource, building trust must be seen as a necessary and effective defence strategy. Given the blurring of the lines between inside and outside the state, and between peace and war, building trust should not only focus on relationships between states, though that remains important. Trust must also be built within the state, to ensure a resilient society in the face of changing security challenges.

Xavier Marquez
Charisma and Authority
This paper explores the connections between the idea of charisma and the idea of authority, including the ways in which social, political, and economic changes affected the “staging” of charismatic authority starting in modern times. It begins by briefly sketching the religious genealogy of the idea of charisma, from its origins in Pauline theology (specifically 1 Corinthians and Romans) to its usage by German theologians in the 19th century (drawing in particular on John Potts’ history of charisma). It then presents a detailed account of Weber's paradigmatic account of charisma, stressing the ways in which he appropriated and secularized what was until then essentially a religious concept with little applicability outside theological polemics. Weber's main conceptual innovation was to connect charisma to authority, and thus to the recognition by others of exceptional qualities demanding obedience, independent of their religious content. Charisma must nevertheless be distinguished from a number of superficially similar concepts, including celebrity, prestige, fame, and popularity, insofar as superficially related concepts like celebrity or fame do not have the same connection to authority, though they may grant influence or cultural prestige. But charismatic authority, like all authority, needs to be staged to reach any group larger than a few people; and the technologies available to represent charisma and decode such representations changed immensely over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Moreover, changes in the economy, society, and politics also produced new sources of ‘charismatic competition,’ as industrial leaders, artists, and demagogues could and did make claims to authority based on charismatic claims that sometimes conflicted with the routinized charisma of traditional monarchs. The final section of the paper systematically explores the ways in which these changes affected the staging of charismatic authority.

Natalia Chaban, Donald Matheson, Linda-Jean Kenix
Ukraine through a Baltic Lense: Operationalising links between images, frames and narratives in IR 
The narratives and perceptions of actors in international relations (IR) have a potential to influence outlook and behaviour of general public and elites, and thereby affect external relations short- and long-term. This paper focuses on narratives of post-Maidan Ukraine and its ongoing security challenges as framed by nine leading e-news platforms in the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (data collected within Jean Monnet Project E-YOUTH, supported by Erasmus+). The three EU member states have a reputation as champions of Ukraine’s aspiration to join the EU/NATO and as supporters of Ukraine in the context of Russia-Ukraine conflict. But with a changing Europe in the changing world, will this position remain? We assume there is a leading role of mainstream online news media in creating and disseminating frames and narratives in justifying foreign policy/IR decisions (see also Entman 2003). Varying interpretations of the same event may lead to equally varying policy responses. In our empirical focus is a pan-Baltic news agency Delfi which owns popular e-news platforms in the three Baltic countries, publishing news in local languages and tailoring it to domestic FP/IR priorities. Cognitive, emotive and affective elements of Ukraine’s media images (Hopmann 1996) are in the focus of this comparative research. They are evaluated in terms of their magnitude and visibility, emotive charge and local resonance (Entman 2003, 2004). The resulting images are argued to contribute to the narratives that project to local audiences messages on Ukraine’s perceived power, benefits and cultural affinity (Herrmann 2013) to the Baltic actors and justify self-narratives of respective foreign policies towards Ukraine challenged by the conflict.

Alexander Malkov
Analysis of Narratives on the Future Post-European Parliament Election 2019: Is Russia to become a CEEC regional leader via its interactions with V4? 
The 2019 European Parliament (EP) election witnessed a dramatic loss for the two largest parties in Europe – the European People’s Party group and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. Increasing populism and growing nationalism among EU member states’ political elites (internal factor) is argued by many to be behind this result. Other commentators attract attention to one possible external factor, namely an intensifying drive by the Russian Federation towards bilateralism in its relations with EU countries, and specifically with Central European EU member states. This paper aims to analyze narratives on the future of the Vishegrad Group (V4) EU member states in the world, the EU and in their relations with Russia, in the context of the 2019 EP election results and the absence of V4 member states’ representatives in the new EU leadership. Special focus is on the framing of Russia’s role as a regional leader through its interactions with V4. The study is informed by the strategic narratives theory (Miskimmon et al., 2013). Empirically, it explores papers and opinions on EU cohesion and possible post-election scenarios published by EU experts of EU-Russia and Russia-V4 relations, as well as Vladimir Putin’s and Russian elites' recent opinions.

Serena Kelly
Russia, the EU and Free Trade Agreements: a case study of New Zealand    New Zealand prides itself as a liberal free trading nation 
The country is on track to sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the European Union (EU) by the end of 2019 and expects to commence talks with the United Kingdom (UK) once the UK is able to do so. In 2010 negotiations began on a New Zealand-Russia FTA (alongside Belarus). These talks were suspended in reaction to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and in line with other Western Nation’s reactions to events in Ukraine. Yet, in 2018 New Zealand’s newly appointed Foreign Minister, Right Honourable Winston Peters, made public that he intended to reopen the New Zealand-Russia FTA (www.newsroom.co.nz) This paper charts the political and economic relationship between New Zealand and Russia since 2014, addressing the potential impact of New Zealand’s Labour coalition’s stance which appeared to contravene the opinions of its traditional Western allies, including the EU and UK (www.radionz.co.nz). In particular, the paper assesses political narratives of the EU and Russia in New Zealand and their impact on public perceptions.

Nasibul Hoque
Intercultural Dialogue and the EU’s narratives on greater cross-cultural communication 
Meer & Modood (2012) assert that interculturalism is an indication to a dialogue which is not confined within groups or cultures. The White Paper (2008) of the Council of Europe – organization which features membership of all EU member states – is one policy that formulates and projects pan-European policy message on interculturalism and intercultural dialogue as instruments and finality for integration, social cohesion, national identity and tolerance. Yet, other commentators (e.g. De Perini 2019) suggest that intercultural dialogue as a cross-cultural communication model -- also used by the EU -- is underdeveloped and vague due to the model’s changing nature over time. This based paper will investigate the concept of intercultural dialogue used by the EU as one of its narratives after the 9/11 attack. The analysis will apply this concept to understand how the narrative informs the EU’s actions which aim to maintain the cross-border cultural competency. The paper will also ask whether the changes in the model over the years can have significant impact on policy level.

Matthew Castle
The Political Externalities of Institutional Inclusion: Preferential Trade Agreements and Political Relations with Third Party States
Global institutions are understood as one of the best means of achieving inter-state cooperation. Yet this perspective omits the effects of institutional creation on non-members. We know that exclusion from trade agreements affects countries’ economic cooperation. I show here that exclusion also affects cooperation in other issue-areas. Excluded countries are generally prompted to seek closer political ties with institutional members in order to gain access to the excluding institution. But if excluded countries are instead more likely to create competing institutions, exclusion may result in worsening political ties. Case studies of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Chinese institution-building in the Asia-Pacific illustrate the theory. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was viewed as a strategic effort by the United States to set a new agenda for trade, given failing multilateral talks. Yet the TPP also had a strategic dimension, with China viewed as a prominent non-member. Statistical analysis of the near-universe of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) and countries’ voting affinities in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) further support the argument. When countries have a history of poor relations, institutional exclusion can sharpen existing political divides. Global institutions are an arena in which countries contest legal language, with cooperative and non-cooperative effects.

Muhammad Waqar Anwar
Asymmetric Economic Exchange and Insecurity: A Case Study of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor
The Belt and Road Initiative of China has become a hall-mark of China’s new mode of inter-state and multilateral cooperation in the 21st century. The multi-billion dollars project promises a vast array of development ventures with positive outcomes for the recipient states in the form of increased economic growth, security and politico-economic wellbeing. Pakistan is the first country to be the launch pad of this gigantic venture, in the form of the 64 billion USD China Pakistan Economic Corridor. Although being touted as a ‘game changer’ there are certain aspects of the venture which have negative repercussions for the social, economic, environmental and state-society relations which are increasingly been occluded by the state- run media, government funded think tanks, and a significant portion of the main stream intelligentsia. The paper will highlight the potentially negative outcomes of the project, using the conceptual framework of ‘structural power’ and ‘structural violence.’

Hizkia Respatiadi
Explaining Indonesia’s Food Trade Policy: The Tension between Free Trade and Self-sufficiency
The Indonesian government’s ambition to reach food self-sufficiency puts it at odds with its commitment to international trade agreements. As proposed by the nationalists, this ambition is in line with the popular notion in Indonesia that the government exists to protect the poor against the capitalists commonly associated with those who prefer trade liberalisation. On the other hand, the technocrats and international organisations such as the World Bank argue that Indonesia must integrate with the regional and global market to achieve food security. Meanwhile, we should not overlook the influence of the oligarchs who survived political turmoil and the financial crisis of 1997-1998 and have managed to keep their political connections intact and their economic power reorganised. This research will analyse why the Indonesian government prefers pursuing food self-sufficiency to working towards food security via trade liberalisation, in particular during the administration of Yudhoyono and the recently re-elected Joko Widodo. It will compare the influential parties in this period with those after the financial crisis 1997-98 when the influence of international organisations was significant. It will draw primary data sources from interviews with government officials, representatives of international organisations, as well as practitioners in business associations related to agriculture and food industry in Indonesia.

Sanjal Shastri
The 2019 General Elections: What is Ailing India’s Liberals?
The 2019 elections have proved to be a watershed event for India’s liberals. The Congress, which has been the flagbearer of secular liberalism, was reduced to 52 seats, just 8 more than the previous elections. The BJP on the other bagged 303 seats, 21 more than the 2014 elections. Postmortems of the 2014 elections highlighted anti-incumbency as a factor. However, with a second consecutive defeat, important questions need to be asked about, where liberal political parties went wrong. This paper highlights three factors that worked against the Congress. Firstly, the rural agrarian population and the poor, which previously formed the core of Congress’ vote bank, have moved away from it. Secondly, centralization of power and the reliance on one political family meant that the party failed to adapt to local political discourses. Thirdly, the Congress failed to come up with an ideological alternative to the BJP. The opposition’s campaign in general and the Congress’ in particular revolved around the lone agenda of defeating the BJP. This paper concludes with two fundamental questions. How can liberal parties like the Congress regroup and put up a better fight in future elections? At the international level, what lessons are there for liberal political parties facing off against majoritarian nationalism in other parts of the world?

Berkay Koçak
Towards the End of the Long Downturn: Politicizing the Transition of Turkey
As the long downturn of Erdoğan and his ruling AKP continues, evident in the loss of popularity in the March and June 2019 municipal elections, Turkey is heading towards a major political transition process with new political parties and new political leaders. Apart from the incomplete establishment of the presidential system which aimed to concentrate power in the office of the presidency and the failure to reorganise the bureaucracy accordingly, the future of Turkish politics is full of uncertainties. Worsening economic conditions have also been affecting the collective response to Syrian refugees, creating new tendencies in domestic politics around nationalism. By using Ellen Wood’s framework ‘the separation of the economic and political,’ and Robert Brenner’s ‘politically constituted property,’ this presentation aims to illuminate the emerging tendencies in Turkish politics by focussing on the changing social property relations in the upcoming transition period, and will consider the shifting position of Turkey in the international community as well as the declining economic stability (Wood, 1991; Brenner, 1985).

Robert G Patman, Austin Gee
New Zealand’s Intelligence Reforms, the Five Eyes Alliance, and the Huawei Controversy
Although it has a long history, New Zealand’s membership of the Five Eyes intelligence network only came to wider public attention on a sustained basis after the revelations made by Edward Snowden in 2013. Revelations about the extraordinary surveillance capabilities of the US National Security Agency intersected with growing public concern about the activities of New Zealand’s intelligence agencies at home. On the one hand, legislation was passed to extend the powers of the Government Communications Security Bureau, the country’s external intelligence organisation, to include internal surveillance. On the other hand, the new post of Deputy Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security was instituted in 2014 to monitor the various intelligence agencies, and an independent inquiry was conducted into their activities. This led in 2016 to further legislative reforms, which more clearly defined the responsibilities of the agencies and enhanced their accountability. This presentation looks at the results of these changes with regard to New Zealand’s role as a member of the Five Eyes. It then focuses on Chinese influence in New Zealand and the South Pacific in the past decade, and in particular the example of the recent controversy over the alleged links between the technology company Huawei and the Chinese intelligence services.

Justin Phillips
White Supremacy, New Zealand, and Big Data: A Demonstration of YouTube Comment Analysis and User Behaviour
Two common arguments have emerged in both academic and public debate surrounding online white supremacist behaviour, particularly in the aftermath of the tragic events of March 15, 2019. First, observers argue that white supremacist discourse is becoming more prevalent on social media. Second, content creators that traffic in such views on social media (e.g. Alex Jones’ Infowars) indoctrinate and radicalize their mass audiences, further magnifying the presence of such hate speech online. This paper demonstrates how researchers can test these assumptions via big data analysis and natural language processing. In a case study of roughly 40,000 YouTube comments on New Zealand media sources (e.g. Newshub, One News), both concerns are shown to be well justified. Since 2011 there has been a significant increase in such hate speech on these New Zealand based channels, and the users which engage in this language congregate around (i.e. subscribe to) many of the same alt-right YouTube channels. Further investigation demonstrates the process of an individual’s radicalization over time, showing the alteration of views in some cases over nearly a decade of media consumption.

Suzanne Loughlin
New Zealand security policy: the securitisation of Afghanistan and the politicisation of Iraq
In 2001 New Zealand represented itself as a member of the international community of Western liberal democracies existentially threatened by the international terrorism thereby necessitating support for the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. Subsequent to the overthrow of the Taliban and, ostensibly, the end of the armed conflict, the United States turned its attention to the existential threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Rather than engage in the process of securitising weapons of mass destruction, which would again entail the resort to force, Government insisted that only a multilateral process and upholding international law would afford legitimacy to any disarmament process. This paper compares the processes by which New Zealand constituted itself in relation to other/s and the policies each entailed to illustrate the constructed, and hence political, nature of security threats.

Nguyen Khac Giang
Succession politics and authoritarian resilience in Vietnam
The Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) is heading to its 13th VCP National Congress in 2021, this paper plans to discuss the politics of succession in Vietnam, an increasingly significant regional player in the Asia - Pacific. The author will first analyse the dilemma of the VCP when choosing the next leadership, as the 13th Congress will likely mark the end of Secretary General Nguyen Trong’s eventful era. Drawing from historical data and Party documents, the author examines the level of institutionalization of VCP’s succession politics, its norms and procedures, and the power consolidation process after the change of guards is made. The paper also analyses possible impacts of succession on Vietnam’s domestic and foreign policies. The author then compares the characteristics of Vietnam’s succession politics with other authoritarian regimes, most notably China, and discusses its implications for these regimes’ prospects of resilience and political changes.

Hasith Kandaudahewa
Drivers behind Sri Lanka’s Foreign Policy: Assessment of Systemic and Domestic Variables Related to the Port Project (2005-2015)
The proposed research will focus on the role of systemic and domestic factors in Sri Lankan foreign policy related to the Hambantota Port Project (H’Port) under neoclassical realist lens. Geopolitical advancement of Sri Lanka has shaped its intrinsic value for centuries in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and will continue to grow in future. Naturally, it allows Sri Lanka to act as a central player who maintains the balance of power within the region. The chronological history of the H' Port goes back to ancient Ceylon era (now Sri Lanka), where it used as a maritime trade centre in IOR. At the beginning Rajapaksa era, he decided to build an inland deepwater seaport in-home electoral – Hambantota as promised by his political vision – Mahinda Chinthana (Rajapaksa, 2005). Present-day, the H' Port considered as a tangible indicator to indicate the Sri Lankan foreign policy drift towards China, increase the growing tension between regional superpowers. The study adopted neoclassical realist inspired type III framework -multi-layered approach – to develop and assess the causal link between independent (systemic stimuli), intervening (domestic) and dependent variables (foreign policy outcomes) under qualitative approach along with semi-structured interviews, process tracing, documental analysis (archival), and case study as selective methods (Ripsman, Taliaferro, & Lobell, 2016). The finding of this study suggests domestic constraints: leader perception; non-aligned principle; social acclaim; and domestic institutions infused by systemic stimuli shaped the Sri Lankan foreign policy in development-related projects.

 Leon Goldsmith
‘Dancing Between Raindrops’: Politics Education in an Authoritarian State – the Sultanate of Oman 2012-2019
When it comes to political and intellectual freedoms most portrayals of the Arabian Peninsula continue to depict an arid region. This perception extends to education and especially education in political studies or critical social sciences. Indeed, public universities in the Gulf monarchies are more readily labelled regime instruments than ‘critic and conscience of society’. This image of an intellectual desert does not, however, fully capture a reality that is more complex. The first purpose of this article is to help sketch together new empirical outlines of the actual educational and intellectual landscape of the Arabian Peninsula by documenting the emergence of politics education in the Sultanate of Oman from 2012. A second objective is to raise new theoretical questions in the post-Arab Spring literature regarding the politics of education in the Middle East in general and education in ‘Politics' (or Political Science) more specifically. The research is informed by participant observation from 2013 until 2019 when the author was one of the faculty members of Oman’s Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) political science department. Using ideas of the underappreciated Syrian thinker Abdul Rahman Al-Kawakibi (d. 1901) the paper explores the theoretical implications of politics education in terms of its substance and objectives in the Middle East. The main themes that arose are that there seems far greater substance to politics education in Oman than could be expected in an absolute authoritarian political context. Another finding was the emerging disequilibrium between the socialising and intellectual capacity-building functions of politics education in Oman and the Gulf monarchies.

Alejandra del Pilar Ortiz-Ayala
Disarming minds: State armed actors and persistence of Violence lessons from Colombia
After a peace agreement was signed, to what extent soldiers from the State Army contribute with the creation of a permissive environment of violence? During and after the cold war, the U.S.-led anti-Communist doctrine, which influenced the political exclusion and roots of the armed conflict in Colombia, that translated into a definition of who are the internal enemies and threats. This created an ideological bias inside the minds of state armed actors that influenced their willingness to protect certain group of civilians. Using experimental surveys and inspiration from the devoted actor model, my research indicates how state armed actors have an idea about: who does and doesn’t deserve to be protected after a peace agreement was signed. Some results suggest that ideology remains an important stimulus in soldier’s mindset affecting their behavior. This research contributes with an unexplored dimension in Security Sector Reform, the individual level of analysis. It that provides international lessons about the biases in the minds of the security actors and the creation of a permissive environment of violence against certain groups because their identity group.

Joshua Ferrer
The Effects of Proportional Representation on Election Lawmaking in New Zealand
It is widely recognized that politicians are self-interested and desire election rules beneficial to their reelection. Although partisanship in electoral system reform is well-understood, the factors that encourage or constrain partisan manipulation of the other “rules of the game”, including election administration, franchise laws, campaign finance, and electoral governance, has received little scholarly attention to date. New Zealand remains the only established democracy to switch from a non-proportional to a proportional electoral system, and thus presents a “natural experiment” to test the effects of electoral system change on the politics of election lawmaking. I am conducting a longitudinal comparative case study analysis examining election legislation from 1970 to 1993 (under FPTP) and from 1996 to 2018 (under MMP). Utilizing legislative texts, debate transcripts, committee reports, newspaper coverage, and interviews with key actors, I am discerning the level of partisanship and assumed electoral effects behind reform efforts. I will then compare FPTP and MMP eras to determine whether PR has coincided with less partisan election lawmaking.

Brent Commerer
Hustle and Jostle: Evaluating How And Why The Invisible Primary Has Changed
America uses a time-consuming, costly, and complex system for picking each political party’s candidate for President of the United States. Five months of actual voting in the states is preceded by year-long national pre-voting campaign—the ‘invisible primary’—where candidates hustle and jostle to position themselves. This paper evaluates the invisible primary of 2019, and discusses how and why it has changed from previous presidential election cycles. I explain why the 2020 Democratic field of candidates is so large, and why Trump is not being seriously challenged for the Republican nomination. I examine empirical data to compare numbers at this point in the cycle to past elections, for factors such as fundraising, opinion polling, and endorsements, and argue that none of these can reliably predict the result of the primaries. Republicans have America’s most controversial president. Democrats have the largest field of candidates ever to run for president. This paper seeks to add to our understanding of how the 2020 contest for the White House may unfold.

Mark Boyd
Downward Spiral? Television News Coverage of New Zealand Election Campaigns, 1993-2017
Television news is the main provider of political information to New Zealand voters during general election campaigns, despite increased use of online sources. But how good a job does television do? How has its campaign coverage changed over the past two decades since the advent of MMP in 1996, and against a background of commercial and technological transformation? This study, based on the author’s PhD thesis, responds to those questions with a content analysis of the period 1993-2017. The quantitative variables are considered in the context of a ‘Coverage Quality Index’ allowing for direct longitudinal comparison of campaigns. Measured by normative yardsticks, the quality of coverage of election campaigns on both TVNZ and TV3 declined from 1993, reaching its nadir in 2014. It was substantially ‘devalued’, with fragmented statements by politicians and other participants; a confrontational style of reporting concentrating on scandals and trivia at the expense of policy exposition; and an increase in negativity.
But in most variables, and overall, the 2017 campaign saw a sharp increase in quality on both networks. What seemed like a downward spiral into triviality and cynicism was arrested, returning the quality of coverage to levels last seen two decades ago.

Matthew Gibbons and Jack Vowles
The practice and ethics of matching individuals over time: Lessons from New Zealand using electoral roll data
This paper discusses the strategies used to match a sample of 30,000 cases drawn from the 2014 New Zealand electoral roll with the 2016 and 2017 electoral rolls. The aim was to follow a panel of voters to determine who had voted in the 2014 and 2017 general elections, and also in the 2016 local government elections. Matching procedures used to match entire electoral rolls over shorter periods of time are also considered. As well as describing the matching procedures we also consider the rate or residential mobility and changes in names in New Zealand, and the privacy issues concerned. The results will be of interest to those carrying out panel survey research over time and those matching historical datasets.

Sam Crawley
Beyond belief: cross-country variation in three dimensions of public opinion on climate change
Previous studies have shown that European countries differ in levels of public belief and concern about climate change, and that demographic, political and value-based factors relate to belief in climate change. However, although single-country studies have shown that examining issue salience and other dimensions leads to a more comprehensive understanding of climate change views, few cross-country studies have moved beyond the dimensions of belief and concern. In this study, we use Eurobarometer data from 28 EU member states to investigate three dimensions of climate opinion: concern, issue salience and support for government action. Using Bayesian multilevel analysis, our results show that the salience of climate change varies substantially across countries and is positively related to GDP per capita. Furthermore, salience is higher among the highly educated, higher status and younger respondents, trends which are similar across countries. There is less cross-country variation in levels of climate change concern or support for government action, although the relationships between these dimensions and the individual-level factors investigated vary by country. Overall, our findings suggest that there are important country-level differences in public opinion on climate change, and that these differences extend to dimensions beyond belief and concern, particularly issue salience.

David Hall
Mending the Web of Life: Producing Value through Reparation Ecology
Moore and Patel (2018) conclude their recent monograph by sketching out a reparation ecology, a world-ecology which acknowledges the embeddedness of political economy within nature, and aims to repair the damage inflicted upon ecosystems and peoples. It is guided by five principles – recognition, reparation, redistribution, reimagination and recreation – which respectively involve recognising the systemic causes of environmental crisis, repairing the harms done to ecosystems and communities, redistributing flows to mitigate further harm, reimagining humanity’s relationships to its environments, and recreating the future of work to enrich social and environmental value. This paper uses Moore and Patel’s framework to ‘make sense’ of the Living Laboratories project, an ecological restoration project in Aotearoa New Zealand which the author and others have established through a partnership between AUT University and indigenous tribe Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei. In particular, the reparation ecology framework (REF) will be contrasted with the natural capital framework (NCF), an increasingly popular economic logic for conceiving of the value of ecological restoration (e.g. Helm, 2016; Cohen et al., 2017). I will argue that the REF is more practically useful than NCF for the Living Laboratories case study, which has implications for upscaling such projects nationally and internationally, where partnerships involve indigenous groups or local communities. I will also critically analyse whether the REF fulfils its own commitment to recognition by not displacing tikanga Māori through the imposition of a general framework.

Peter Skilling, Patrick Barrett, Priya Kurian
Evidence, interests and the collective good: community participation in a situation of environmental dispute
This paper explores the interactions between scientific expertise, public opinion and economic interests in a public dispute over an environmental problem. In a small coastal town in New Zealand, the local community had long expressed concern over the degradation of a river-mouth estuary that had been an important recreational and fishing resource. Attempts to resolve the issue since the 1950s had seen the wishes of the community and the advice of scientific reports subordinated to established economic interests further up the catchment. This paper shows how a carefully designed participatory process (2006-2009) facilitated a solution that came closer to meeting the demands of the local community. The data in this paper consists of public documents and interviews with key participants. These data are analysed using the typology of “orders of worth” posted by pragmatic sociology (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006). This analytical framework allows us to specify with some precision the ways in which the various parties to this dispute sought to render their respective position reasonable and compelling. While the technocratic process followed in earlier moments of dispute reinforced the dominance of established interests and the market order of worth, the participatory process examined here provided a forum in which a wider range of actors could be heard, and in which additional orders of worth (specifically the domestic, civic, and green orders) could be positively valued. This case is instructive in stressing the importance of the institutional containers within which public disputes take place. The participatory process followed here mediated the interaction between scientific expertise, economic interests and a local community. The process provided a way in which competing claims to speak for “the public” and for “the collective good” could be publicly evaluated. At the same time, the findings in this paper offer a theoretical contribution. Specifically, the arguments made in this case by an indigenous community do not fit easily into pragmatic sociology’s typology of how arguments can be effectively made in situations of public dispute.

Pascale Hatcher; Jennifer Lander
Are We Indigenous Peoples? Local Pastoralist Communities, New Identities and Large-Scale Mining in Mongolia
Amidst Mongolia’s fast-pace development of large-scale mining, conflict over land use has increasingly pinned large mining interests, the state and local pastoralist communities living in the vicinity of large-scale mining operations. The latter have recently sought to trigger international grievance mechanisms on the basis of being indigenous people, even though they are not recognized as such by their own government. This paper reflects on the multi-scalar implications of extractive activities on transnational identity formation, political spaces and strategic negotiations with state and corporate power.

Esme Hall
Uncovering Silences in Collective Memory: How France deals with challenges to Republican nationalism from memories of Algeria
Collective memories of Algerian colonialism and independence are constructed to reinforce the French republican national identity. To do this, the ways this dominant identity has produced inequality and violence for Algerian people is forgotten and silenced. This article uncovers elements of silenced memories through analysis of a series of historical snapshots beginning with France’s early colonial period and spanning to the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), post-war ‘forgetting’ in France, the 1990s ‘memory wars’ and present-day discrimination against Algerian and other North African Muslim French people. Tracing this history demonstrates that the French republican values of liberty, equality and fraternity have only ever applied to the dominant, white ethnic group in France. However, this group exercises discursive power to shape collective memory and silence the challenges to republican French identity by history in Algeria. Silences continue to shape historical memories of Algerian colonialism, the Algerian War, and limit fair assessment of contemporary racism in France.

Tayyaba Latif
Civic and Ethnic Nationalism in Pakistan
Pakistan emerged as a new nation-state in 1947, a Muslim majority state constituted of two halves East and West Pakistan and with a serious challenge of developing a homogeneous national identity for its people. The divided interpretation of broader national culture, local cultures of different provinces and religious culture formed the basis for three preferred forms of culture and subsequent forms of nationalisms in Pakistan from the beginning. According to Gellner, in modern states the national education system planned and provided by the nation-state plays a fundamental role in building a homogeneous national culture in heterogeneous societies. However, it is important to understand that if the elites in government have a divided view on the preferred form of national identity then it is less likely that they agree on a uniform educational discourse leading to the formulation of a shared national identity. Educational policy shifts in Pakistan reflect divided focuses over the years leading to divided ideas of shared national identity. I argue that deeply divided high and folk cultures and their integration with religious identity affect the national integration process in Pakistan.

Maileenita Penalba
Conceptualising Citizen Competence in a Multicultural Society
To become a good citizen in a democracy entails developing a level of competence that facilitates the proper and effective conduct of politics. Political scholars, however, agree that there exists a “deep and widespread political ignorance” among most citizens (Somin 2006, 256) that (potentially) limits their competence. The conventional model for developing competence by increasing political knowledge is widely accepted. The literature on competence, unfortunately, fails to provide a more complex analysis of other social and political factors affecting competence especially in multicultural societies. This paper offers a discussion of various forms of competence and their key characteristics. Factors that facilitate and/or hinder the development of citizen competence are presented as well. The paper highlights why citizen competence needs scholarly focus despite multiple and wide-ranging studies already done on the topic. In conclusion, this piece offers an initial framework for studying citizen competence in a multicultural setting.

Dominic O'Sullivan 
Indigenous Voice and the Politics of Treaty Making: reframing Australian debates about citizenship, democracy and self-determination
Proposals to establish an elected indigenous Voice to the Australian parliament and to negotiate treaties between states and indigenous nations raise theoretical and practical questions about the nature of citizenship, democracy and self-determination. What liberal justifications exist for indigenous citizenship to be exercised distinctively from that of other citizens? May the presumption of ‘one person, one vote of equal value’ be developed to a presumption of ‘one person, one voice of equal value’ to make democracy work better for indigenous citizens? Might treaties help the state to acquire the moral legitimacy it lacks in indigenous eyes? What differences could treaties make for indigenous peoples. Through these questions, the practical nature of the indigenous right to self-determination is examined.

Olli Hellmann, Kai Oppermann
Visuals in the Strategic Narratives of Autocratic Regimes: A Comparative Analysis of China and North Korea
The “visual turn” in IR has drawn attention to the power of images and non-verbal communication. However, the growing literature has so far paid very little attention to the question of how political actors use visuals for strategic purposes. To address this gap, our paper explores the role of visual images in the public diplomacy of autocratic regimes. Building on priming theory, we argue that autocratic regimes produce and disseminate photographs of their leaders as a means to develop strategic public diplomacy narratives. Through a mixed-method research design that combines quantitative content analysis with semiotic tools, we show that China and North Korea visualize their respective leaders—Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un—as the main characters in broader legitimacy narratives aimed at foreign publics. Specifically, we are able to demonstrate that, through the strategic application of photographic techniques, the two leaders come to play very different roles. Given the Chinese regime’s desire to present itself at eye level with other major powers, Xi is portrayed as a powerful and able statesman. In contrast, because the North Korean regime wants to be perceived as a “parent” looking after their “children”, Kim Jong-un is visualized as a warm and compassionate leader.

Dennis Quilala
Stronger Populist Leader: Winning the 2019 Midterm Elections
How do you win an election in the Philippines? The literature tells us that in the Philippines, a two-pronged approach would be necessary to win the elections. The first is ensuring that a candidate has access to an electoral machinery and second is for the candidate to be exposed through mass media. The electoral machinery ensures that people on the ground get mobilized for a candidate during election day. This machinery is also important in rural areas who still see a more personal approach to campaigning. Mass media exposure enables candidates to reach millions of voters inside their homes. This is also more important in urban areas where voters do not have much time to attend campaign sorties.
Most of the senatorial candidates who won in the 2019 Philippine midterm elections have used this two-pronged approach. They also have one more thing in common: the incumbent president’s endorsement. This presentation will be focusing on the results of the midterm elections and its implications to Philippine politics and also for Southeast Asia.

Jessica Valisa
Exclusivist narratives and cyberspace: towards a post-national nationalism?
This study explores the complex relation between technology and politics, focusing on the relation between the evolution of internet technology and the spread of extreme nationalist and exclusivist narratives. Personal and community identities have not been erased in cyberspace but have found in it new modalities of expression. I employ Benedict Anderson’s theory on the role of newspapers in fostering a common identity, an ‘imagined community’, and apply it to cyberspace.
On the one hand, the internet allows hybrid and plural identities that contribute to the construction of multiple and ‘personalized’ imagined communities, which are not necessarily state bound. On the other hand, the ‘algorithmic architecture’ of the contemporary corporate-based internet incentivises the propagation of emotional and sensational narratives over informed discussion. This factor amplifies the feeling of uncertainty and collective displacement created within the global neoliberal economic framework and works as an aggregating tool for people in search of identity. The imbrication between internet technology and need for belonging results in a sort of ‘post-national’ nationalism constructed on trans-national lines. I argue that this framework may be profitably employed to illuminate the rise of exclusivist and nationalist movements world-wide.

Dan Zirker
The ‘Rasputins’ of the Exclusionary Populists: Hijacking ‘Thin Ideologies’?
Populism tends to create court politics, with access to the prince tantamount to power.  Although ‘exclusionary’ (right-wing) populism (Gidron and Bonikowski, 2013), increasingly present in declining democratic settings, remains primarily a campaign tactic, burdened typically with a ‘thin ideology’ (Stanley, 2008) at best, and buttressed by constant rallies and testimonials, successful candidates are left with little formative direction to their leadership other than brute authoritarianism. In the contemporary setting, several major exclusionary populist leaders initially embraced ‘Rasputins’, some of whom exercised influence in several countries simultaneously.  This study compares and contrasts several such influential ‘philosopher/advisors’ to determine if there are ideological connections between their views and the emerging pattern of global authoritarianism, punctuated as it has been by terrorist responses.  The US, India, Turkey, Russia and Brazil provide an interesting assortment of examples of would-be (and crossover) ‘Rasputins’, a term that is commonly used in the national presses to describe them.

Geoffrey Ford, Kevin Watson 
"They are us” too: a corpus-assisted analysis of discourse about immigrants on New Zealand talk radio before March 15, 2019
In the immediate aftermath of the March 15 terror attack, PM Jacinda Ardern acknowledged the migrants who were targets of the attack and emphasised their inclusion in the national community with the words “They are us”. In this paper we take the opportunity to focus on another “they”, talk radio hosts and callers, and the kinds of things “they” were saying about immigrants prior to the attack. Despite sizeable talk radio audiences and its significance as a platform for political commentary and discussion, there is surprisingly little academic study of talk radio in the New Zealand context (by political scientists or other scholars). We applied corpus-assisted discourse analysis and analysed the use of the words immigrant, immigrants, and immigration in a large audio corpus of 1788 hours of talk radio broadcasts from early 2016. The findings, in light of March 15, are troubling. Negative discourse about immigrants appears to transcend national settings: we observed people on talk radio invoking the same problematic metaphors identified by Baker et al. (2008) in their study of the UK press. In addition, statements about immigration that were framed in economic terms often included and appeared to initiate anti-immigrant statements.

Rachel Billington
The Affective Networking of Fringe Narratives
The Christchurch Call has drawn attention to the threat of extremism and radicalisation in online spaces, and our collective security depends on mitigating the spread of violent extremist ideologies. This research establishes a theoretical framework by which to understand the interweaving mechanisms that allow fringe ideologies to proliferate. Three theories are drawn from to account for different phenomena that occur simultaneously: Actor Network Theory explores how information - and often disinformation - travels online, between human and non-human actors; Affect Theory explains how sensational and highly-emotive content stirs more engagement and more expansive dissemination; while Framing Theory demonstrates how particular narratives can be deployed strategically, to recruit and mobilise susceptible actors. It emerges that information and disinformation can be strategically deployed to sow distrust and confusion, stoke hatred and prejudice, and establish new collective identity frames, thereby demarcating ingroups from new collective enemies. The commitment to collective security against the threat of violent extremist ideologies requires a holistic understanding of the mechanisms at play.

Wael Al-Soukkary
Inadvertent Support: how conceptualizing Islamophobia is growing the appeal of white nationalism 
The tide of anti-Muslim sentiments has been alarmingly growing in many countries around the globe. The so-called war on terror launched by the US 18 years ago in Afghanistan and Iraq has directly killed hundreds of thousands of people. The death toll is exponentially higher if the power vacuum seized by ISIS, population displacement, disease, hunger and the destruction of infrastructure are taken into account. In the meantime, and on western soil, another concurrent "war on terror" is taking place against Muslims with the Christchurch massacre being only but the latest in a string of dire consequences for the ongoing vilification of Muslims. In response, Islamophobia has been adopted by many voices into the academic, social and political lexicon a descriptor of prejudice towards and dislike of Muslims and Islam. The widespread acceptance and deployment of the term has been successful in raising awareness about the vulnerability of Muslim communities and Muslim individuals in non-Muslim majority countries. However, I will argue that the conceptual problems of Islamophobia as a meaningful descriptor is also impeding the efforts to curtail and address the othering of Muslims and, more precariously, is substantially enabling appeal of white nationalism to a wider audience.

Guy C Charlton, Mike French 
Law and the Colonial State: Responses to the Black Plague in 19th Century Hong Kong
This article analyses the evolution of colonial state power and jurisdiction through an investigation of how the Hong Kong Colonial government responded to the 1894 Bubonic Plague. This lethal illness disproportionally afflicted the local Chinese population and led to extensive intervention by the colonial administration into Chinese communities. The efforts to combat the disease were not only hampered by the limited knowledge of how the disease was caused and transferred across the population, but the response was also complicated by cultural misunderstanding, economic inequalities, local resistance to government health policies, as well as British patterns of enclave-based indirect colonial rule. Nevertheless, in an era where European notions of public health were transitioning from a laissez-faire private and community model to a state directed government programme, the culturally superior and racialist basis of colonial rule led inevitably to an authoritarian response by British officials. The resulting change in the policy-making process hastened the development of a new form of authoritarian colonial state. This new form of colonial state, which continued to be based on a narrow European presence, military power and local elite cooperation created a more independent administrative apparatus that has increased state capacity across a range of activities today.

Muhammad Arsalan Karim
The Crippling Ethnic Nationalism in Pakistan: Pashtun and Baloch Nationalism vs the State
The British left the sub-continent leaving behind uncontrollable tribal ethnic (Baloch and Pashtun) population for Pakistan as part of its physical base. Pakistan has been successful in keeping the separatist nationalism of both ethnic nations in control and suppressed. But it was able to achieve this through an integrated approach of religion, dictatorships, elite nationalist, tribal and regional politics and wide spread corruption.
Religion, being the idea of the state, still camouflages the differences in the society and keeps the country united. But to keep the ethnic people and their leaders connected with the state, the dictators and elite politicians allowed nationalist political parties to be established; all headed by elite political figures or tribal leaders. The war against USSR further helped Pakistan to spread religious polarity and keep ethnic nationalism suppressed. However, wide spread corruption at all levels of social, political and government structure has been the major factor for crippled ethnic nationalism whenever the conflict is about to turn violent.
It is time for Pakistan to create an actual link with the rising Baloch and Pashtun ethnic middle class population to supress and control the upcoming wave of right wing nationalism that is spreading throughout the world.

Nadine Kreitmeyr
“Despot Housewives” or Politically Relevant Actors? First Ladies, Authoritarian Rule & Neoliberal Policy-Making in the Middle East & North Africa
This paper analyzes the political roles and policy-making of first ladies (wives of the rulers) under authoritarianism. This study approaches the topic from a gendered political economy perspective drawing on the concepts of state and market feminism; it aims to contribute to a better understanding of first lady politics under authoritarianism which is a largely under-researched field. I argue that first ladies play an active political role and cannot be reduced to representative spouses and philanthropists. In addition to fostering the regimes’ political, economic and social agenda in policy areas such as education, (self-)employment, entrepreneurship and humanitarian aid they also contribute to the (de-)legitimation of the authoritarian regimes. Therefore, we need to link the study of first lady politics to the study of neoliberal politics and authoritarianism. This paper presents a conceptual framework for the study of first lady politics under authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa and applies it to the cases of Queen Rania of Jordan and Princess Haya (wife of the ruler of Dubai). This comparative case study draws on data such as speeches, interviews, press releases and news reports.

Khusrow Akkas Abbasi
The Emerging Nuclear Weapons Program of China and its Implications for International Security
In an increasingly globalized international system, the political-strategic relations among states are becoming more complex and interdependent, and threats are now both more diffuse and uncertain, and competition remains inherent to interstate relations, yet unpredictable. Additionally, it remains a fact that full-scale conflict involving nuclear weapons would be devastating for the entire globe. States seem to agree on the general need to cooperate and manage competition, but the details of how to move the relations forward on this basis remain unclear, particularly in critical areas where progress has been difficult to achieve, such as nuclear arms control and disarmament, nuclear deterrence and strategic stability, missile defence and space weaponization.
As China’s power in the international system rises, its strategic policies are changing. This includes its evolving nuclear program and nuclear deterrent, viewed as a critical guarantor of Beijing’s security and a tool that supports its growing regional and global interests. China’s emerging nuclear program and its nuclear use doctrine have multidimensional implications for not only international and regional security and strategic stability but also for non-proliferation regimes, and multilateral export control regimes.

Xiang Gao 
Responsible power diplomacy? China’s engagement with international normative community in the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’
This paper first examines how Chinese government has understood the concept of ‘state responsibility’ in foreign policy since 1978 through a content analysis of Beijing Review articles. Using the normative ideas generated from the content analysis, the research explores China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, especially state-led investment and overseas aid. While many western democracies and international organisations set preconditions for giving loans or investment to developing countries, such as meeting certain human right and representative democracy standards; generally China’s investment has occurred with ‘no strings attached’ in the developing world. This paper investigates how the Chinese government uses foreign investment to pursue its foreign policy goals in the BRI. Those Chinese foreign policy goals cannot simply be measured by material benefits or strategic calculation as many western scholars argued; nor are they pure reflection of China’s ‘benevolent power’ and ‘road of peace’, as contended by the Chinese government and some academics. This study focuses on the ‘social factors’ of Chinese power and responsibility in state-led foreign investment and aid, and argues that the BRI has provided China with a forum to engage the international community more broadly and promote its preferred values related to foreign investment and foreign aid.

Robert G Patman, Balazs Kiglics
US-China Rivalry and Japan: Is Tokyo’s Diplomacy Moving Beyond Constructive Ambiguity?
The 21st century has been an era of dynamic structural change for the Asia-Pacific where China, Japan, and the United States are key strategic powers. Our paper first considers the case made by John Mearsheimer, a prominent offensive realist scholar, that the US and China are destined to intensify their rivalry and the Asia-Pacific could be the region where “great power politics will return in full force,” ensnaring the two superpowers in a major war. Second, US-China tensions are examined in relation to the South China Sea dispute, North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, and bilateral trade. Third, consideration is given to Japan’s diplomatic responses to the escalating superpower rivalry during the Obama and Trump administrations. There are signs Japan’s diplomacy is moving beyond constructive ambiguity. While Tokyo welcomes the Trump administration’s willingness to directly address Beijing’s military and economic assertiveness, it remains uncomfortable about particular methods chosen to do so. By joining the CPTPP and deepening its trade ties with the EU, Japan seems unwilling to allow its interests to be defined Mearsheimer-style by the two superpowers.

Peter Grace
Russian Revanchism since 2014: Overbalancing as a theory of mistakes
How do we account for Russia's revanchism since 2014? This paper attempts to explain Russian behaviour using neorealist balancing theory: specifically a reconceptualisation of the theory of overbalancing. Russia has responded to the problem of US predominance, and the perceived threat that the liberal internationalist policy the American unipole made for the Putin regime, by mobilising in a balancing action that sought to undermine US influence and coalesce other dissatisfied states against it. By dusting off balancing theory, this paper positions overbalancing as a 'theory of mistakes' which the system should be expected to duly punish.

Onat Isik
How has strategic culture affected Putin's conservative turn? A comparison of Ukraine and Crimea
In 2014, with the annexation of Crimea and the intervention in the east region of Ukraine, Russia’s foreign policy has come under close scrutiny. For some, Putin is trying to secure the legitimacy of his regime, but for others, by promoting the ethnic prejudices, nationalist voices and national values externall,y Putin is reacting defensively. Through the theory of strategic culture, this paper aims to highlight the role of history and the role of the culture behind Putin’s conservative turn. This the paper argues that the assertive foreign policy measures by Russia and the rise of nationalist voices in the political culture demonstrate the continuity of Russian strategic culture in international relations. During the times of Catherine the Great, ultraconservative Orthodox circles named Crimea and Ukraine as Novorossiya (New Russia). Today, these two key regions are perceived as part of the East Slavic Orthodox civilisation. This thesis will give special priority to the nationalist ideas, structures and language analogies of the critical thinkers in the 19th and 20th century Russia to indicate the influence of these ideas on the Russian culture; Russianness, Universalism, Gatherer of Lands, Orthodoxy, Russky Mir.

Raghuvir Dass
The representation of terrorism in US, UK and Indian newspapers
According to the Global Terrorism Database there has been an unprecedented increase in terrorist attacks, with over 55,000 casualties due to ISIS, Boko Haram, the Taliban, and Al-Shabaab. Right-wing terrorism, such as the attacks in El Paso and Christchurch, has quadrupled between 2016 and 2017 in the U.S, and increased 43% in Europe. Yet little research exists on the nature of the newspaper coverage given to these diverse terrorist groups and attacks. This study uses 8,750 coded news articles, the total volume of terrorist news from 2016, from six of the world’s highest circulating newspapers from the U.S, the U.K, and India, to indicate multiple significant biases. Groups are identified as terrorists in North America and Western Europe, but receive the less evocative labels of fighter, militant, and insurgent in South and South East Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. Over and under coverage has been identified by region, country, and perpetrator religion/ideology, with only 0.9 percent of studied coverage given to right-wing terror. Early observation indicates that terrorism is seen as a psycho-social problem, less responsibility is accorded to government policies and political and historical factors. This, among other facets of study such as the use of diverse sources and how they change over time, is still under analysis.

Scott Walker 
Colombia: Counterterrorism Policy as a Tool to Defeat Domestic Insurrection
Colombia is a clear example of a country where there has been a long period of government activity primarily directed against groups that are terroristic in nature. Since at least the 1980s, the principal challenger to government authority, the FARC, carried out terroristic attacks in the country that are funded by drug production, hostage taking, and money laundering. The ultimate goal of such activity, hypothetically, was to replace the government with a socialist one. The conflict was an old one, as the FARC’s origin dates back to the mid-1960s. However, before September 11, 2001, this was widely viewed as an intra-state struggle between the government and an organization that sometimes employed terroristic methods.
Immediately following the September 11 attacks. The government’s rationale for fighting the FARC ceased to be political or anti-drug. It was instead designated as a terrorist group. The Colombian government therefore took advantage of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) to not only control, but eliminate its opposition and centralize the use of force in the hands of the military. Thus, the government was given a free hand (and external support) to use counterterrorist policy as a means not only to demolish its political challenger and to control other groups such as the ELN (another left-wing group) and the AUC (a right-wing paramilitary organization), but to also receive international acclaim for being a “model” state on the GWOT. In addition, particularly during the Uribe regime, the government was able to use counterterrorist policy as a means of freeing up land for economic elites, largely by way of removing poor and indigenous groups from the land. While the FARC is now officially deactivated, there is no end in sight to the government’s counterterrorist rationale, as it allows the state to receive international acclaim and support, and to continue to ensure that it does not face direct political challenges.

Dennis Quilala
“Just Doing Our Jobs”: The Role of Local Governments in Conflict Resolution 
Local governments have a role in conflict resolution. The literature has been silent on the role of the local government actors in conflict resolution. Even the “local turn” in conflict resolution theory and practice has failed to put a spotlight on their roles. The local in the “local turn” has been focused on empowering national governments or local community as agents in resolving conflicts. This also means that international actors have to play a minor role. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by looking at cases of local governments in the Philippines. Local governments in the Philippines are empowered by the 1987 Philippine Constitution and the Local Government Code of 1991. Most of the basic services were devolved to these local governments but the national government kept its role in external and internal security. In the absence of this security role, some local governments have to innovate in order to manage conflicts and other security concerns within their jurisdictions. By looking at the role of local governments in conflict resolution, this paper would also have implications on the role of local governments in security. "

Kieran Ford
Agonistic Opportunities: Alternative approaches to countering the far-right extremism in Aotearoa/New Zealand
This paper asks: how should Aotearoa/New Zealand respond to the evident challenge of far-right extremism? Within the paper, I examine the case of the Christchurch mosque attacks, and the wider problems of white supremacy and racism within New Zealand society. My research draws from Critical Terrorism Studies, nearly two decades of scholarship critical of counter-terrorism and counter-extremism strategies around the globe. In this paper, I argue that these critiques often centre around the problem of exclusion. Counter-extremism is predicated on the need to eradicate the problem from society through the removal either of extreme individuals or extreme ideologies. Through deploying the political theory of Chantal Mouffe, I argue that a strategy predicated on exclusion is doomed to failure, and moreover actively produces the extremism it seeks to eradicate through its act of excluding. Instead, I offer an alternative framework of inclusion located within Mouffe’s work on agonism. Suggestions for how an agonistic strategy might look in practice are offered. In so doing, I argue that Aotearoa/New Zealand has a prime opportunity to propose a radical alternative to dominant global responses to terror, one that has the engendering of a peaceful society at its heart.

David Hall
The Christchurch Principles: A Democratic Framework for Reducing Harmful Online Content
The Christchurch mosque attacks on 15 March 2019 crystallised growing concerns about the role of digital technologies in driving, enabling and empowering violent extremism. The Christchurch Principles address these concerns by proposing a set of regulative principles to articulate and mitigate the threats to human rights and democratic institutions posed by harmful online content. Taking the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) as a starting point, the Christchurch Principles articulate the various responsibilities of states, business and civil society actors to protect and respect human rights and democratic institutions, and to remedy their degradation. By extending the UNGPs’ framework of Protect-Respect-Remedy beyond human rights to include democratic institutions, the Christchurch Principles offers a democratic model that recognises that it isn’t sufficient to merely protect canonical rights, but also to support democratic norms, sentiments and practices that create the most favourable conditions for human rights to flourish. These Principles were co-designed by the Helen Clark Foundation, The Policy Observatory, The Workshop, and other stakeholders to present to the Paris Peace Forum on 11-13th November 2019.

Kate Nicholls
After Christchurch: The Royal Commission of Inquiry and New Zealand’s Policy-Making Tradition
Three weeks after the Christchurch mosque attacks of March 15th 2019, the government announced the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate any possible failures of state agencies that might have contributed to this event. Due to report back on December 10th 2019, aside from gun control reform this has constituted the main government response in the months following the attack. This paper analyses, evaluates, and critiques the design of the Royal Commission by reflecting on New Zealand’s policy-making tradition and some of its consequences. Mature democracies vary in the ways in which their policy-making traditions make use of specific institutional tools to engage in public consultation and utilize both elite and street-level expertise. New Zealand leans toward the use of expert-driven, one-off, secretive, highly legalistic structures controlled by the executive branch of government, but shies away from more inclusive, iterative, and more open alternatives. The paper looks at some of the consequences and limitations of this tradition, and questions whether an alternative or parallel citizens assembly-type structure might have led to better decision-making in terms of both specific policy output as well as better democratic health and enhanced social inclusion.

Bhakti Eko Nugroho
Preventing another Christchurch Incident from Recurring: A Proposal from Peacemaking Criminology
Stemming from the critical criminology tradition, peacemaking criminology does not see crimes as simply being caused by pathological individuals. The root of crimes lies more in the perpetrators’ personal suffering, which is shaped by a complex external environment. From the perspective of peacemaking criminology, looking into the difficulties that Brenton Tarrant went through in life is of great importance in understanding why he committed harm to others in the Christchurch Incident. While Tarrant’s incarceration for life may relieve society’s anger towards his brutality, peacemaking criminology believes that such a measure cannot address Tarrant’s personal suffering, which is the root of his crime. As Tarrant was motivated by previous racist terrors, his violent attack on Muslims may also inspire others who sympathize with his cause. This is to say that making Tarrant suffer to pay for his crime, as the public in general has demanded, can only make the situation worse by provoking other violent attacks. Against such a backdrop, this article seeks to discuss how society should appropriately react to incidents such as the Christchurch Incident in order to prevent similar attacks from occurring in the future. This article argues that the perpetrators’ incarceration cannot effectively create peace following violent terrorist attacks if society continues to label them as pathologically based. Peace cannot be established if there is no restorative mechanism that includes a deradicalization plan as well as close engagement with the victims and their families.

Kate McMillan
An ASEAN model of ‘responsibility-sharing’ for refugees and asylum-seekers?
The concept of ‘responsibility-sharing’ for the protection of refugees and asylum seekers implies that such responsibility should be shared among the world’s states, rather than falling, as it often does, to states proximate to refugee-generating countries. It is a concept with a long heritage, underlying both the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 2018 Global Compact on Refugees. But, even as the term gains currency in a number of international and regional fora, the basis on which responsibility might be assigned to different states, and the mechanisms for distributing such responsibility, remain deeply contested. In the South East Asian context, which has received a large number of locally- and externally-generated forced migrants, there appears to be widespread acceptance that greater regional cooperation is required in order to manage the responsibilities associated with forced migrants, and the term ‘responsibility-sharing’ has begun appearing frequently in regional and national statements. Yet, there is no consensus and, indeed, very little formal discussion at the governmental level, about how responsibility might be shared within the countries that make up the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), where only two out of ten Member States are signatories to the 1951 Convention. Using the results of interviews with 40 individuals working in government, NGO, IGOs, civil society organisations, and refugee groups in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, I identify ways in which ASEAN countries are already sharing responsibility for refugees and asylum-seekers, and examine the prospects for what might be considered an ASEAN model of responsibility-sharing.

Yeojin (Lisa) Seo
In Search of Hospitality in International Relations, Differentiating the Asylum Seeker and Refugee: Kant vis-à-vis Arendt
In this paper, I argue that both Kant and Arendt offer an explanation in which states and individuals could offer hospitality towards strangers - specifically in regards to asylum seekers and refugees. As the terms asylum seeker and refugee are legally different, Kant and Arendt likewise illustrate a different understanding of these two concepts. In Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals and Perpetual Peace, Kant’s notion of hospitality is understood as he legitimizes the asylum seeker. In The Origins of Totalitarianism and We Refugees, Arendt’s writing depicts our general understanding of a refugee. Arendt points out that the term ‘refugee’ should be dealt with greater attention as it is inherently a human right. Despite Kant being regarded as neither a rationalist or empiricist, in this paper I argue that when dealing with the subject of hospitality, Kant’s writing appeals to rationalism while Arendt’s writing aligns closely to empiricism. This paper concludes that both of the two approaches by Kant and Arendt are viable when dealing with the current refugee crisis - since the two philosophers call for humanity as being the ultimate solution to overcome the differences found within the international system.

Khairu Sobandi
Social boundaries and identity in international migration
In an increasingly globalized world, international migration has become an important phenomenon that impacts both the host countries as well as the countries of origin. With transportation across countries becoming affordable and easily available, more and more migrants are leaving their countries in search of better opportunities overseas. While new migrants try to integrate into vibrant local communities in their host countries, they are bound by restrictive host government policies that shape their interactions. These policies not only define their status but also govern the nature of their everyday social interactions and relationships with migrant and host communities and engagement with local institutions in the host countries. I argue that such conditions create clear social boundaries between new migrants and the local population, contributing to discrimination, ethnic stereotyping or even stigmatization. My study of Indonesian labor migrant experiences in the Middle East and wealthy Asian countries show evidence of this pattern of exclusion from host communities and inclusion with the migrant community. The findings of my study highlight the importance of the construction of social boundaries in the host country as this inevitably leads to a transformation of the identities of new migrants.

Andy Asquith, John Martin
What does ‘fit-for-purpose' local government look like in Australia and New Zealand?
The wave of public sector managerial and structural reforms known as the ‘New Zealand Model’ were extended to local government in New Zealand by legislation passed in 1989. Alongside the NZ reforms, Australia too was implementing significant changes in the way its local authorities operated. It is therefore fitting that some 30 years after the various Acts that comprised the enabling legislation were passed, that the reforms are examined to assess their impact on local government – specifically their ‘fitness-for-purpose’. How do we determine if a local government system is fit-for-purpose? That is, that the individual local authorities within the nation or provincial state are creating and facilitating sustainable and resilient communities in an efficient and effective manner? Using data derived from interviews and documentation in the public domain, we have identified the following five factors:1. Do they have an effective mandate? Do the local authorities have the commensurate authority to plan and manage their communities? Is the principle of subsidiarity evident in the working relationship between individual (neighbouring) authorities, regional bodies, provincial government (in federations) and central government? 2. Is their modus-operandi outcome focussed? Are the local authorities plans and actions outcomes focussed regardless of whether they have authority over an issue? Do they work with other institutions and organisations to achieve outcomes that meet the greatest needs of the greatest numbers? 3. Do they build effective and appropriate working relationships with businesses who deliver works and services as contractors and consultants? 4. Does their governance reflect agreed individual and team roles in their day to day management? Are elected members aware of and focussed on their governance role complemented by the work of the CEO and staff? 5. Does the local authority have well-structured and meaningful processes and programs that engage stakeholders across their community and without (as appropriate)?

Karen Webster, Andy Asquith, Andrew Cardow, Lara Greaves
Political Parties in New Zealand local government: Is Auckland an anomaly?
Political parties have been an accepted and dominant presence in many representative democratic local governments, specifically, in the UK, and Northern Europe, throughout the 20th century. In New Zealand and Australia however, citizens of similarly representative democratic institutions have consistently expressed their repugnance for the idea of national politics influencing local governance (Bush 1980). Recent research across New Zealand’s five metro centres has identified that the influence of national party politics in Auckland local government is stronger than across the other centres. This paper presents an analysis of the declared political affiliation of Auckland, Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin local government elected representatives, across four local elections between 2007 and 2016. While evidence suggests that national political party involvement in Auckland is on the rise, this is not mirrored in the other five metro-centres. government.

Mike Reid
Reinvigorating local democracy – LGNZ’s localism campaign and the prospects for decentering government in NZ
New Zealand is widely recognised as one of the most centralised states in the OECD in which power and authority has come to be concentrated in the hands of a relatively unchecked national administration. LGNZ (the association of local authorities) with a range of other organisations, such as the NZ Initiative, is promoting an active programme of decentralisation leading up to, and beyond, the 2020 general election.
The presentation for the local government panel will briefly cover the following: How “localism” is defined and interpreted in the NZ context; the reasons behind the decision to launch national campaign promoting decentralisation and localism; an outline of the campaign and its objectives; the historical and political context in which the campaign to promote localism is situated, including challenges to be overcome; update on progress.

Jitraporn Somyanontanakul
How do protests look like in Thailand? Evidence from Thai Rath newspaper, 1997-2016
An increasing number of protests is evident in many new democracies. My research will use Thailand as an example to investigate how protests look like and the words used or displayed by the protesters. In my research, I examine protest events from 1997 to 2016 by collecting data from 7,665 news articles between 1997 to 2016 from Thai Rath, the most popular newspaper in Thailand. The Protest Event Analysis (PEA), a type of content analysis, is applied to analyze the data. The findings reveal the different search results from two different words, Protest, การประท้วง- karn-pra-tuang,(535) and Demonstration, การชุมนุม, karn-choom-noom, (4051). The search results of Demonstration are 5 or 7 times greater than those of Protest. The next conclusion, drawing from Thai Rath, is that it mostly reported about the United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship or UDD and the first day of August was the most likely time the protest events would reach its peak in terms of frequency. The final conclusion comes from investigating phases frequently used by the campaigners in the protest events. The main target of the protesters was the government and their words contain a diagnosed frame and a motivational frame. Overall, the research findings reveal waves of protest and how some groups of protesters connected to each wave of protest.

Suthikarn Meechan
Power from Below: How Local Networks Operate and their Impact on the 2019 Thai General Election
This article examines operating patterns and impacts of local networks on the 2019 Thai general election. Fieldwork was conducted in Roi-Et Province, the strong political base of prominent anti-junta parties, closely watched by the Military Junta. The military-led government assumed control and conducted political activities in local areas previously identified as powerbases and sources of political resistance. The roles of elected local politicians were monitored, with budgets of local administrative organizations significantly reduced. Officials operating under the umbrella of the Ministry of Interior were encouraged to promote the pro-junta Palang Pracharat Party at the grassroots level. To survive and strengthen their power bases, local actors reinvented forms of relationships under clientelistic politics. In other words, local powers adopted a parallel connection that generated an upsurge in political networking to both negotiate and competes against other factions. The general election results in constituencies have become noteworthy evidence of the power generated by local forces. The primary focus is to determine how political parties and local networks work toward accomplishing achievement in the national election that also impacts on the coming local elections. Findings are also presented proposing the nature of local cliental-electoral networks embedded in modern-day Thai politics.

James Ockey
Future Forward and the Thai Elections of 2019
In March 2019, Thailand held its first election since 2011. Although the military regime carefully devised an electoral system to benefit pro-regime candidates, and provided extensive advantages to its own party in campaigning, the opposition nevertheless did very well, winning nearly half the seats. While the Pheu Thai party won the most seats--it has won the most seats in every election since 2001--election analysts were taken by surprise as a new party heavily outperformed its polling results. That party, Future Forward, had taken a new approach to politics, shunning former MPs and choosing new, generally young candidates. It had numerous female candidates near the top of its party list. And it had invested considerable effort in online campaigning, seeking to attract new, young voters who had not been eligible to vote eight years ago. In this paper I will analyse the reasons for the success of Future Forward, focusing on its campaign strategy. I will argue that while its success is based in large part on its innovative approach, it also benefitted from more traditional forms of support, borrowed from other parties.

Pinsuda Wonganan
Shifting patterns of candidate selection in Thai Local Administrative Organisations
Since the landslide victory of the Thai Rak Thai party in the legislative election in 2001 much literature on Thai local politics concentrates on the strengthening of political parties in electoral competition. Party identification and party branding have become a critical winning factor in elections rather than personality, vote-buying, and patronage. However, Thai political parties are likely to play an informal role in local politics and allow a free vote, creating a pervasiveness of local political groups and political dynasties. Hence, the relationship between political parties and local politics in Thai contemporary politics needs to be re-examined. This paper sheds light on the shifting patterns of formal party involvement in Thai local politics and traces their roles in selecting candidates, setting party policies and competing in elections.

Laura Anderson, Will Dreyer, Sinead Gill, Matthew Schep
Generation Vote: a Dunedin Case study of Youth Citizen Engagement
Generation Vote is a non-profit organisation that delivers interactive and informative civic education programmes to high schools and soon, community groups. We are a group of students from the University of Otago - mainly within the Master of Politics programme. As Politics students, we have learnt to understand Aotearoa’s democratic system and developed the tools to become active citizens in ways that were not available to us in high school. There is a gap in the knowledge that students leave high school with and how they are expected to engage as adults. We aim to fill this gap and pass our knowledge on to the next generations. The core of our programme is a series of workshops that explore Aotearoa’s political environment. These workshops focus on the impact of civics on students’ lives, and how they can meaningfully interact with processes as active citizens in our democracy. Our workshops cover ideology, public policy, Te Tiriti/the Treaty of Waitangi, local government, and MMP/government formation. Throughout the workshops, we run an election simulation which enables participants to develop their own political party and policies, and culminates in both an election and coalition formation. This form of active learning increases students’ engagement with the content, and allows for practical application of their new skills. We have multiple versions of the programme which each align with specific units within schools. Over the past few months we have taught at Otago Girls’ High School in Dunedin and Tokomairiro High School in Milton. In late August, we will begin teaching at Columba College in Dunedin. Whilst we have experienced some challenges, namely in reaching our target demographic of Year 13s, the programme so far has been a success, both in students’ engagement with their content and in their enjoyment of the programme.

Sylvia Nissen
Legacies of a student mobilisation: Insights from archival sources
The spontaneous student mobilisation that took place in Christchurch after the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 remains one of the largest youth-led movements in New Zealand in recent years. Nearly ten years on, the case of the student volunteering offers a unique opportunity to consider the civic legacies of this student collective action. This paper presents preliminary analysis from the first stage of this three-year research project, which has involved an examination of historical material and news media relating to the mobilisation. This initial analysis offers insights into the process, sequence and timing of the mobilisation, as well as the possible longitudinal effects of significant moments of youthful agency.

Miriam Gibson 
Introducing the School Leavers Toolkit - Civic and Citizenship Education in NZ
The School Leavers' Toolkit is a Government manifesto commitment to ensuring all young people have access to resources relating to key workplace competencies, financial literacy, civics, and personal wellbeing, before they leave school. As part of the School Leavers' Toolkit, the Ministry of Education has developed a range of civics education resources to help students develop knowledge and understanding of civic processes and their rights and duties as citizens of Aotearoa New Zealand. This session will introduce the civics resources that have been developed so far and outline our plans for evolving the Toolkit over the next six months.

Amelia Woods     
Youth particpation in the school strikes-citizens' emerging theories of justice 
On Friday 15 March 2019, over 1.5 million children and young people from over 125 countries went on strike in protest over inaction of governments in addressing climate change. Many protestors expressed anger and frustration over being excluded from discussions about climate change, a problem that they did not cause, but one that will have a significant impact on their lives in the future. The protest action taken by youth worldwide has also re-focused attention on the intragenerational justice dimension of climate change. Issues of justice are inherent in many environmental problems, and one of the aims of this research is to examine how concepts of environmental justice, ecological justice and social justice are understood by children and teens in New Zealand. This paper presents the results of a literature review that forms part of my PhD research that aims to understand how children and teens understand injustice, agency and identity. Subsequent research will draw on focus group and semi structured interviews of children to examine the processes of mobilisation, collective action framing, and the development of political consciousness and identity that informs current debates and understandings of youth citizenship, political socialisation and social movement theories.