Books
Browse or search ANU Press' range of books or find out more about the publications' authors and co-publishers. Download the book for free or buy a print-on-demand copy.
Displaying results 251 to 260 of 779.
Opening Government »
Transparency and Engagement in the Information Age
Edited by: John Wanna, Sam Vincent
Publication date: April 2018
Transparency and citizen engagement remain essential to good government and sound public policy. Indeed, they may well be the key to restoring trust in government itself, currently at an all-time low in Australia. It is ironic, then, that this has occurred at a time when the technological potential for information dissemination and interaction has never been greater.
Opening Government: Transparency and Engagement in the Information Age explores new horizons and scenarios for better governance in the context of the new information age, focusing on the potentials and pitfalls for governments (and governance more broadly) operating in the new, information-rich environment. Its contributors, a range of international and Australian governance academics and practitioners, ask what are the challenges to our governing traditions and practices in the new information age, and where can better outcomes be expected using future technologies. They explore the fundamental ambiguities extant in opening up government, with governments intending to become far more transparent in providing information and in information sharing, but also more motivated to engage with other data sources, data systems and social technologies.
Double Disillusion »
The 2016 Australian Federal Election
Publication date: April 2018
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the 2016 Australian federal election. Won by the Liberal–National Coalition by the slimmest of margins, the result created a climate of political uncertainty that threatened the government’s lower house majority. While the campaign might have lacked the theatre of previous elections, it provides significant insights into the contemporary political and policy challenges facing Australian democracy and society today.
In this, the 16th edited collection of Australian election studies, 41 contributors from a range of disciplines bring an unprecedented depth of expertise to the 2016 contest. The book covers the context, key battles and issues in the campaign, and reports and analyses the results in detail. It provides an evaluation of the role of political actors such as the parties, independents, the media, interest groups and GetUp!, and examines election debate in the online space. Experts from a range of policy fields provide an analysis of election issues ranging from the economy and industrial relations to social policy, the environment, and gender and sexuality. Each of the chapters is written on the basis of in‑depth and original research, providing new insights into this important political event.
Between the Plough and the Pick »
Informal, artisanal and small-scale mining in the contemporary world
Edited by: Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt
Publication date: March 2018
Between the Plough and the Pick deepens our understanding of informal, artisanal and small-scale mining, popularly known as ASM. The book engages with wider scholarly conceptualisations of contemporary global social, agrarian and political changes, whilst underlining the roles that local social‑political-historical contexts play in shaping mineral extractive processes and practices. It shows that the people who are engaged in these mining practices are often the poorest and most exploited labourers—erstwhile peasants caught in the vortex of global change, who perform the most insecure and dangerous tasks. Although these people are located at the margins of mainstream economic life, they collectively produce enormous amounts of diverse material commodities and find a livelihood (and often a pathway out of oppressive poverty).
The contributions to this book bring these people to the forefront of debates on resource politics. The contributors are international scholars and practitioners who explore the complexities in the histories, in labour and production practices, the forces driving such mining, the creative agency and capacities of these miners, as well as the human and environmental costs of ASM. They show how these informal, artisanal and small‑scale miners are inextricably engaged with, or bound to, global commodity values, are intimately involved in the production of new extractive territories and rural economies, and how their labour reshapes agrarian communities and landscapes of resource access and control.
This book drives home the understanding that, collectively, this social and economic milieu redefines our conceptualisation of resource politics, mineral‑dependent livelihoods, extractive geographies of resources and commodities, and their multiple meanings.
Hybridity on the Ground in Peacebuilding and Development »
Critical Conversations
Publication date: March 2018
Hybridity on the Ground in Peacebuilding and Development engages with the possibilities and pitfalls of the increasingly popular notion of hybridity. The hybridity concept has been embraced by scholars and practitioners in response to the social and institutional complexities of peacebuilding and development practice. In particular, the concept appears well-suited to making sense of the mutually constitutive outcomes of processes of interaction between diverse norms, institutions, actors and discourses in the context of contemporary peacebuilding and development engagements. At the same time, it has been criticised from a variety of perspectives for overlooking critical questions of history, power and scale. The authors in this interdisciplinary collection draw on their in‑depth knowledge of peacebuilding and development contexts in different parts of Asia, the Pacific and Africa to examine the messy and dynamic realities of hybridity ‘on the ground’. By critically exploring the power dynamics, and the diverse actors, ideas, practices and sites that shape hybrid peacebuilding and development across time and space, this book offers fresh insights to hybridity debates that will be of interest to both scholars and practitioners.
‘Hybridity has become an influential idea in peacebuilding and this volume will undoubtedly become the most influential collection on the idea. Nuance and sophistication characterises this engagement with hybridity.’
— Professor John Braithwaite
Land Use in Australia »
Past, Present and Future
Edited by: Richard Thackway
Publication date: February 2018
Land Use in Australia: Past, Present and Future, is a compilation of invited chapters from Australia’s leading specialists in land use policy and planning and land management.
Chapters present many widely recognised issues involved in Australia’s land use policy and planning, including limited understanding and poor awareness of:
the rich history of poor decisions on land use planning and management across different levels of government
the discontinuities between providers of national biophysical information
the tools, data and information to improve national land use decision-making outcomes
the poor synthesis and integration between science to policy to natural resource management and resource condition
the benefits of land use practitioners engaging in connection, cooperation, mutual inquiry and collective social learnings.
The aims of the book are threefold: 1) provide a review of the current status of land use policy and planning in Australia; 2) provide a resource to inform and influence the development of land use policy and planning; and 3) provide a sound contribution to Australia’s public–private land use debates in the future.
The audience for the book includes government and non-government land management agencies from state and national bodies, universities and researchers.
China's New Sources of Economic Growth: Vol. 1 (Chinese version) »
改革、资源能源与气候变化
Edited by: 宋 立刚, Ross Garnaut, 蔡 昉, Lauren Johnston
Publication date: February 2018
本书针对近年来中国经济增速的下滑，从供给侧角度出发，探讨中国如何启动经 济增长的新源泉，论证了通过改革进一步提高劳动生产率的重要性。全书分为两个部 分，第一部分为“改革与宏观经济发展”，主要内容包括宏观经济的展望、新经济增 长模式、新型城镇化、互联网金融的发展、供给侧结构性改革、中国的全球投资、农 民工的储蓄与消费行为、证券市场的泡沫检验、企业层面的杠杆率与去杠杆进程等；第二部分为“资源、能源、环境与气候变化”，主要内容包括中国低碳城市发展、能 源政策的变化、钢铁产业重组、工业用水和能耗趋势、水资源和森林资源的保护、电 力行业与环境保护的关系以及中国气候环境战略面临的挑战等。
Chinese print version of this book is available from Social Science and Academic Press
Cascades of Violence »
War, Crime and Peacebuilding Across South Asia
Authored by: John Braithwaite, Bina D’Costa
Publication date: February 2018
War and crime are cascade phenomena. War cascades across space and time to more war; crime to more crime; crime cascades to war; and war to crime. As a result, war and crime become complex phenomena. That does not mean we cannot understand how to prevent crime and war simultaneously. This book shows, for example, how a cascade analysis leads to an understanding of how refugee camps are nodes of both targeted attack and targeted recruitment into violence. Hence, humanitarian prevention also must target such nodes of risk. This book shows how nonviolence and nondomination can also be made to cascade, shunting cascades of violence into reverse. Complexity theory implies a conclusion that the pursuit of strategies for preventing crime and war is less important than understanding meta strategies. These are meta strategies for how to sequence and escalate many redundant prevention strategies. These themes were explored across seven South Asian societies during eight years of fieldwork.
Value for Money »
Budget and financial management reform in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan and Australia
Publication date: January 2018
The Greater China Australia Dialogue on Public Administration has held annual workshops since 2011 on public administration themes of common interest to the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan and Australia.
This book presents and discusses a selection of papers developed from the Dialogue’s fifth workshop held in late 2015 hosted by the National Taiwan University in Taipei. The theme, ‘Value for Money’, focused on budget and financial management reforms, including how different nations account for the relative performance of their public sectors.
All governments face the challenge of scarce resources requiring budgetary management processes for identifying the resources required by and available to government, and then for allocating them and ensuring their use or deployment represents value for money. Such budgetary and financial management processes need to inform decision-making routinely and protect the integrity of the way public resources are used – with some public accountability to indicate that their uses are properly authorised and reflect the policies of legitimate government leaders.
The chapters in this book explore budgeting and financial management in three very different jurisdictions: Australia, the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan). These activist and at times innovative countries are keen to analyse and reflect upon each other’s policy achievements and patterns of public provision. They are keen to learn more about each other as their economic and social engagement continues to deepen. They are also conscious that fundamental differences exist in terms of economic development and global strategic positioning, and levels and philosophies of political development; to an extent these differences are representative of differences amongst countries around the globe.
Asian Economic Integration in an Era of Global Uncertainty »
Edited by: Shiro Armstrong, Tom Westland
Publication date: January 2018
The Pacific Trade and Development (PAFTAD) conference series has been at the forefront of analysing challenges facing the economies of East Asia and the Pacific since its first meeting in Tokyo in January 1968.
The 38th PAFTAD conference met at a key time to consider international economic integration. Earlier in the year, the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union and the United States elected Donald Trump as their next president on the back of an inward-looking ‘America First’ promise. Brexit and President Trump represent a growing, and worrying, trend towards protectionism in the North Atlantic countries that have led the process of globalisation since the end of the Second World War.
The chapters in the volume describe the state of play in Asian economic integration but, more importantly, look forward to the region’s future, and the role it might play in defending the global system that has underwritten its historic rise. Asia has the potential to stand as a bulwark against the dual threats of North Atlantic protectionism and slowing trade growth, but collective leadership will be needed regionally and difficult domestic reforms will be required in each country.
A Long Way to Go »
Irregular Migration Patterns, Processes, Drivers and Decision-making
Edited by: Marie McAuliffe, Khalid Koser
Publication date: December 2017
A Long Way to Go: Irregular Migration Patterns, Processes, Drivers and Decision-making presents the findings of a unique migration research program harnessing work of some of the leading international and Australian migration researchers on the challenging and complex topic of irregular maritime migration. The book brings together selected findings of the research program, and in doing so it contributes to the ongoing academic and policy discourses by providing findings from rigorous quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research to support a better understanding of the dynamics of irregular migration and their potential policy implications.
Stemming from the 2012 Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers report, the Irregular Migration Research Program commissioned 26 international research projects involving 17 academic principal researchers, along with private sector specialist researchers, international organisations and policy think tanks. The centrepiece of the research program was a multi-year collaborative partnership between the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and The Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy. Under this partnership, empirical research on international irregular migration was commissioned from migration researchers in Australia, Indonesia, Iran, the Netherlands, Sri Lanka and Switzerland.