Australian and New Zealand Journal of European Studies

2023-12-29T11:58:03+11:00

Notes on contributors

2023-12-29T12:43:06+11:00

Exhuming Samuel Huntington’s theorems: Civilizational clashes, world order, and the impact on Europe

2023-12-29T12:18:10+11:00

In the summer 1993 Foreign Affairs issue Samuel Huntington published a pathbreaking article titled “The Clash of Civilizations.” He followed it up in 1996 with a book carrying the modified title The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. What was the reason for listing a fuller title? This article focuses therefore on the remaking of world order calling into question Huntington’s second theorem instead of his celebrated first – civilizational clashes. It provides greater explanatory power to the unipolarity-versus-multipolarity debate that dominates international relations and, presumably, was behind Huntington’s title extension. As a potential civilization clash Huntington categorized Ukraine as a cleft state divided along significant ethnic, linguistic, regional, religious, and urban-rural lines. But the conversion from cleft state to a rebranded Western national identity was not part of his analysis and was instead confirmed following Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territories. Much overlooked by contemporary scholars today is the banal fact that territorial contiguity was regarded by many international relations specialists as the chief cause of conflict proneness between neighboring states. The remaking of world order leading to a multipolar system was not what Huntington had predicted and overshadows his ‘clash-of-civilizations’ theorem. Inadvertently, this article maintains, his logic was sidetracked by a more crucial development emerging in international relations, the matter of multipolarity.

Strategic ambiguity: Turkey, Russia and the War in Ukraine

2023-12-29T12:23:19+11:00

As a NATO member, Turkey is formally an adversary of Russia. Moreover, Turkey’s interests in the Middle East and the southern Caucasus frequently conflict with Russia’s. Yet Turkey has forged a productive working relationship with Russia over the years of Erdogan’s rule, with ties between the two ranging across defence, foreign policy and energy. In particular Turkey has finessed its reaction to the war in Ukraine: it has opposed Russia’s invasion at the United Nations, provided lethal aid to Ukraine and limited Russian naval access to the Black Sea; at the same time Turkey has refused to implement Western sanctions, continued to buy Russian gas, and allowed Russian tourism and trade to continue. Neither Russia nor the West can force Turkey to become more accommodating to their interests: Turkey’s key geostrategic location means it effectively has both sides over a barrel.

Protecting Australian democracy: From attempting to ban the Communist Party to resisting foreign interference

2023-12-29T12:34:05+11:00

The article analyses the shift of the limits of democratic tolerance in Australia. In 1950, the Australian Parliament passed an Act under which the activities of the Australian Communist Party were outlawed, and the party had to be dissolved. One year later, the High Court of Australia struck down the Dissolution Act and indicated that the "militant democracy" concept had never been a part of the Commonwealth Constitutional architecture. Thus, the interpretation of the judicial system of Australia went contrary to the findings, for instance, of the German Federal Constitutional Court, which dissolved the Communist Party of Germany in 1956. The latest developments in Oceania, such as a ban on foreign donations and the threat of foreign interference through political parties, require a new examination of the status quo of the limits of democratic tolerance in Australia and whether it has been subject to changes since the establishment of a highly liberal pathway to democratic competition.

Internationalisation of Australian small and medium-sized enterprises: The case of the Australia and EU Free Trade Agreement

2023-12-29T12:38:30+11:00

Australia is a member of many multilateral trade bodies and engages in trade agreements of a multilateral and bilateral kind across most regions. In June 2018, it launched negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the European Union (EU) which are still ongoing and since then Australia and the EU have conducted fifteen rounds of negotiations (last one on 28 May 2023 in Brussels). This paper aims to explore the business awareness of the EU amongst Australian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and to analyse the factors that influence their internationalisation. To ascertain this, we reviewed the results of two surveys[1] that were conducted pre- and post-COVID-19 pandemic (also coinciding with the Brexit transition period). This paper argues that SMEs in Australia are essentially unaware of the EU as a market and that no significant change in the business perception of the EU and potential international trade opportunities occurred between the pre- and post-COVID-19 political contexts.

Editors' introduction

2023-12-29T13:00:17+11:00