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Political Leaders (political + leader)
Selected AbstractsThe Manager as Political LeaderNATIONAL CIVIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2001John Nalbandian [source] Political therapy: an encounter with Dr John Alderdice, psychotherapist, political leader and peer of the realmINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES, Issue 2 2009Graham Little Abstract This paper comprises an encounter by the author in 1992 with the distinguished Northern Ireland psychotherapist and political leader, The Lord Alderdice of Knock. Born in Northern Ireland in 1955, John Alderdice graduated in Medicine in 1978, and qualified as a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1983, followed by higher specialist training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. Alderdice joined the Northern Ireland Alliance Party in 1978, and in 1987 was elected Party Leader. Raised to the peerage as Baron Alderdice in 1996, he was one of the key negotiators of the Good Friday Agreement signed in 1998. This 1997 paper includes the author's interview with Alderdice, together with his observations on Alderdice's two-handed psychoanalytic and political practice, his "political therapy". Drawing upon the author's roots as a Belfast-born Australian, the paper reflects on the possibilities of Alderdice's applied psychoanalysis , of politics "off the couch". Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Mayoral Quality and Local Public FinancePUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 3 2009Claudia N. Avellaneda In most local developing settings, the political leader and the municipal manager are embodied in the same figure, the directly elected mayor. This research explores the impact of mayoral quality on local public finances in a developing country. Mayoral quality is operationalized as educational background and job-related expertise to analyze its impact on two local financial indicators: property tax collection and social spending per capita. The mayoral quality thesis is tested across 40 Colombian municipalities over five years (2000,2004). After considering other political, economic, and external influences, the findings reveal that mayoral quality is associated with greater property tax collection and more social spending per capita. This positive influence, however, decreases under external constraints,such as presence of illegal armed groups. This study demonstrates how much influence the mayor can have when circumstances permit. The findings point to the significance of electing qualified mayors, as decentralization may not directly improve subnational finance. Instead, through decentralization, qualified mayors contribute to improved local public finance. [source] Framing French Success in Elementary Mathematics: Policy, Curriculum, and PedagogyCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 3 2004FRANCES C. FOWLER ABSTRACT For many decades Americans have been concerned about the effective teaching of mathematics, and educational and political leaders have often advocated reforms such as a return to the basics and strict accountability systems as the way to improve mathematical achievement. International studies, however, suggest that such reforms may not be the best path to successful mathematics education. Through this qualitative case study, the authors explore in depth the French approach to teaching elementary mathematics, using interviews, classroom observations, and documents as their data sets. They apply three theoretical frameworks to their data and find that the French use large-group instruction and a visible pedagogy, focusing on the discussion of mathematical concepts rather than on the completion of practice exercises. The national curriculum is relatively nonprescriptive, and teachers are somewhat empowered through site-based management. The authors conclude that the keys to French success with mathematics education are ongoing formative assessment, mathematically competent teachers, policies and practices that help disadvantaged children, and the use of constructivist methods. They urge comparative education researchers to look beyond international test scores to deeper issues of policy and practice. [source] The enigma of Lenin's (1870,1924) maladyEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROLOGY, Issue 6 2004V. Lerner The health of heads of states is not always handled in the same way as an incapacitating disability in ordinary professionals. Instead of suspension of responsibilities, the health status of political leaders is concealed, especially when the illness is perceived as stigmatizing, such as organic mental impairment or sexual disorder. The objective of the present paper is to analyse the malady of Lenin (1870,1924) in the light of relevant and new medical information. It is hoped that this will accentuate the need for transparency when the health of a statesman is concerned. [source] Reinstatement of Controls at the Internal Borders of Europe: Why and Against Whom?EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 2 2004Kees Groenendijk The actual use of this power may tell us about the functions of border controls. This article analyses on which occasions the governments of the Schengen states did actually use this power after 1995, and what is known about the effects of those temporary controls. It appears that the actual use varied considerably in time and between the Member States. In most cases the temporary controls aimed not at reducing illegal immigration or preventing serious crimes, but at the protection of meetings of political leaders. The individuals checked or stopped at the borders are predominantly union citizens, not third-country nationals. It is contended that the controls at land borders are not considered as an effective instrument of crime or immigration control. They may have a highly symbolic function: showing the public that the state is protecting its citizens against undesired events. [source] Management or Politics , or Both?FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2002How Management by Objectives May be Managed: A Swedish Example Rather than manage the government administration in a systematic fashion, the Swedish Government reacts to all sorts of unsystematic information. Thereby, it ignores the decision-model that it has decided to employ. This situation has been criticised, and a coupling of practice to the decision-model has been recommended. However, while the political leaders have not found arguments to renounce a management approach to government, neither have they found means to employ it. In this article, it is suggested that a situation with two decision-models , one that is discussed but not used, and one that is used but not discussed , is a functional solution to this dilemma. Frequent criticism of this situation may help sustain it. [source] The Future of Regions: Why the Competitiveness Imperative Should not Prevail over Solidarity, Sustainability and DemocracyGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2000Riccardo Petrella The thesis here submitted for debate and criticism is as follows: if today's governing principles that inspire policy choices and priority setting in our societies (which claim to be "knowledge- based societies") are to remain in place in the course of the coming five to ten years, the relative position of the less developed regions (and cities) vis-à-vis the most developed ones will again deteriorate, even though per capita real purchasing power might also slightly increase in the less developed regions. The if-hypothesis, however, is not the only possible pattern of future developments. Because present economic and political leaders are, in general, the promoters and supporters of today's predominant principles, the only way to make possible alternative future developments based on solidarity, sustainability and democracy is that citizens themselves take the initiative, locally and globally, to modify present practices and define new goals and new priorities. In consideration of the results obtained in recent years by civil social movements and protests, one may reasonably consider it as a possible scenario. [source] The U.S. Federal Executive in an Era of ChangeGOVERNANCE, Issue 3 2003Joel D. Aberbach This article examines changes in the background characteristics, attitudes, and behavior patterns of high-level U.S. federal executives. It also considers the impact of the New Public Management (NPM) movement. The data indicate that despite intense struggles about the role of the public sector, top civil servants remain a well-educated, experienced, and highly motivated group, the members of which compare favorably to top executives in the private sector. The data also suggest that the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) of 1978 has been effective in producing a more politically responsive corps of career civil servants, and that administrators (both career and noncareer) are increasingly attuned to the more technical and legal aspects of their roles and less oriented to protecting particular interests or clientele groups. NPM-style changes are still in progress and remain controversial, but it appears that political leaders continue to have an excellent (and increasingly diverse) group of career people to work with and a system that,at least in part due to the CSRA reforms,is more responsive to them than before. The top part of the U.S. bureaucracy may have been bent and reshaped in many ways over the last thirty years, but, despite widely publicized fears, it has not broken. [source] From ,Great' Leaders to Building Networks: The Emergence of a New Urban Leadership in Southern Europe?INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2004William Genieys This article reviews the changes that have taken place in local government leadership in France and Spain. It has been argued that political leadership in local government in Southern Europe is characterized by major political leaders who are able to obtain resources from central government through their political connections. However, both French and Spanish local governments have evolved while developing new forms of leadership that are more connected to territory, its people and local issues than to the respective administrative capitals. The article argues that the development of new policies at the local level, the opening of new avenues of citizen participation and the introduction of new methods of public management have changed the relationship between elected representatives and the people. Institutional innovations at the supra-municipal level have also created a space between regions and municipalities for local leaders to develop their capacity as project leaders and network creators. Cet article examine les changements survenus au niveau de l'autorité gouvernementale locale en France et en Espagne. L'autorité politique dans un gouvernement local du sud de l'Europe se caractérise, assure-t-on, par de grands leaders politiques capables d'obtenir des ressources du gouvernement central grâce à leurs relations. Pourtant, les gouvernements locaux français et espagnols ont évolué tout en élaborant des formes originales de leadership, plus proches du territoire, de sa population et des affaires locales que les capitales administratives concernées. La conception de politiques publiques novatrices au plan local, l'ouverture d'autres accès à la participation des citadins et l'introduction de nouvelles méthodes de gestion publique ont modifié le rapport entre représentants élus et population. De plus, des innovations institutionnelles au niveau supra-municipal ont généré un espace entre régions et municipalités permettant aux leaders locaux de développer leurs aptitudes en tant que chefs de projet et créateurs de réseaux. [source] "Post-Heroic Warfare" and Ghosts,The Social Control of Dead American Soldiers in Iraq,INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2008Christophe Wasinski According to some researchers, the public acceptance of military intervention is conditional upon the minimization of military mortality. Once a threshold of military death is crossed, political leaders are obliged to limit their ambitions. This research proposes to consider the idea of threshold as mythical. Instead, it suggests focusing at the presence of the ghosts the dead American soldiers in the public sphere and the way they are "ventriloquated" in order to support or contest the intervention. [source] Not Making Exceptions: A Response to ShueJOURNAL OF APPLIED PHILOSOPHY, Issue 3 2009VITTORIO BUFACCHI abstract,This article refutes Henry Shue's claim that in the case of preventive military attacks it is sometimes morally permissible to make an exception to the fundamental principle regarding the inviolability of individual rights. By drawing on a comparison between torture and preventive military attacks, I will argue that the potential risks of institutionalizing preventive military attacks , what I call the Institutionalizing Argument , are far too great to even contemplate. Two potential risks with setting up a bureaucracy which specializes in preventive military attacks will be highlighted: that any preventive military strike may nourish a cycle of violence that will inevitably cause more deaths and destruction than could ever be justified; and that such preventive military strikes may be abused by political leaders in a desperate effort to hold on to power, including democratically elected political leaders working within a democratic framework. [source] No Shades of Gray: The Binary Discourse of George W. Bush and an Echoing PressJOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, Issue 2 2004Kevin Coe Binary communications represent the world as a place of polar opposites. Such conceptions of reality, although not uncommon in Western thought, take on a heightened importance when political leaders employ them in a concerted, strategic discourse in a mass media environment. With this in mind, this research offers a conception of binary discourse and uses this as a foundation to examine (a) the use of binaries by U.S. President George W. Bush in 15 national addresses, from his inauguration in January 2001 to commencement of the Iraq War in March 2003, and (b) the responses of editorials in 20 leading U.S. newspapers to the president's communications. [source] The Politics of Hostage Rescue: Is Violence a Route to Political Success?JOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2001Joseph Scanlon Over the years, law enforcement agencies have acquired extensive experience with hostage incidents, and most Western countries have officers trained in all aspects of hostage resolution. There are also articles and manuals outlining how to deal with the media coverage of hostage takings (Scanlon, 1989). However, because hostage rescue efforts can provide dramatic visuals that attract enormous audiences, the media have steadily intensified their coverage of such incidents. Today, a group of previously obscure persons can suddenly dominate the media agenda by successfully resisting an armed assault or by seizing hostages and calling themselves terrorists. After defining a hostage incident and looking at the strategy for dealing with such incidents, this article examines the implications of two fatal incidents: the stand-off involving religious fanatics at Waco, Texas; and the Air France hijacking that started in Algiers and ended in Marseille, France. Both became number one on the Western media agenda, and both became political crises involving the head of state; one threatening a president's credibility, the other enhancing a president's status. Together they suggest that the escalating media coverage of such incidents raises questions not only about the effectiveness of current response strategies, but also about political leadership. This article discusses a number of strategies that have been tried or suggested. It also debates whether involvement has a positive or negative effect on political leaders. It concludes that, from the evidence available, a successful hostage rescue can yield political rewards. [source] An inquiry into eastern leadership orientation of working adults in AfghanistanJOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES, Issue 1 2010Bahaudin G. Mujtaba This study analyzes the leadership tendencies of respondents from Afghanistan and compares them with their American counterparts. The responses of 219 Afghans are compared with 87 respondents from the United States, showing similarities of leadership orientation between the two cultures. Afghans have higher scores on the relationship orientation, and age seems to be a factor as well. Suggestions and implications are explored for local managers working with foreigners, multinational managers, political leaders, and United Nations officials working in Afghanistan toward reconstruction and peaceful development of the country. [source] Public Debt, Migration, and Shortsighted PoliticiansJOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMIC THEORY, Issue 5 2004Christian Schultz We analyze a model where local public debt levels are set by politicians who are chosen in local elections. Migration causes an externality across districts, and leads to overaccumulation of local public debt. Since debt is a strategic substitute, the median voters in each district prefer shortsighted political leaders who "borrow and spend," thereby exacerbating the problem of overaccumulation of local public debt. [source] URBAN GOVERNANCE AT THE NATIONALIST DIVIDE: COPING WITH GROUP-BASED CLAIMSJOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 3 2007SCOTT A. BOLLENS ABSTRACT:,This article examines how urbanism and local governance address group differences in cities of nationalistic conflict. I investigate four settings,Basque Country and Barcelona (Spain) and Sarajevo and Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina),that have experienced intergroup conflict, war, and major societal transformations. Findings come primarily from over 100 interviews with urban professionals (both governmental and nongovernmental), community officials, academics, and political leaders in these cities. I find that urban areas can constitute unique and essential peace-building resources that can be used to transcend nationalist divides. Urban interventions aimed at creating inter-group coexistence can play distinct roles in societal peace building and constitute a bottom-up approach that supplements and catalyzes top-down diplomatic peace-making efforts. I discuss why some cities play a progressive role in shaping new societal paths while others do not, how this peace-constitutive city function is actualized, and how this type of urbanism can be misplaced or neglected. [source] "BACK THE BID": THE 2012 SUMMER OLYMPICS AND THE GOVERNANCE OF LONDONJOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 3 2007PETER NEWMAN ABSTRACT:,The Olympic Park being developed in east London for the 2012 Games is one large urban renewal project among many in the city. The impact of the Games on urban development may be of less significance than the impact on city politics. Bidding for and delivering the Games has contributed to a reassessment of the recent experiment with mayoral government. The article examines these changing representations of the structures of London government that are now seen as a success. Much of the literature on Olympic cities is highly critical of the impact of the games, but the (current) substantial support for London 2012 also needs to be explained. We examine how London has created opportunities for support, and moments and spaces for celebration when political leaders and Londoners can come together around particular representations of themselves and the city. [source] Reclaiming modernity: Indigenous cosmopolitanism and the coming of the second revolution in BoliviaAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 4 2006MARK GOODALE In this article I explore the emergence of complicated new forms of indigeneity in Bolivia over the last 15 years. I argue that although what I describe as a second revolution is under way in contemporary Bolivia, there is a danger that this revolution will be misread by scholars, political commentators, and others because of the prevailing tendency to interpret social and moral movements in Bolivia (and elsewhere) in rigidly neopolitical,economic terms. I offer an alternative theoretical framework for understanding current developments in Bolivia, which I describe as "indigenous cosmopolitanism": the ability of national political leaders, youth rappers in El Alto, rural indigenous activists, and others to bring together apparently disparate discursive frameworks as a way of reimagining categories of belonging in Bolivia, and, by extension, the meanings of modernity itself. [source] The Politics of Privatization in Russia: From Mass Privatization to the Yukos AffairPACIFIC FOCUS, Issue 1 2006Duckjoon Chang Privatization constitutes one of the most successful achievements in Post-Soviet Russian reform. However, apparent great successes notwithstanding, the privatization program tainted with distortions of its original ideas, political compromises and collusions between political leaders and business elites produced tremendous criticisms and distrust as well. Given those negative aspects of privatization, some people raised the necessity of review of the privatization programs conducted during the 1990s. But despite such criticisms and negative evaluations of the privatization program, as was shown in the case of the Yukos affair, the Russian government never denied the principle of private ownership nor reexamined the privatization results. To explain such a trend in Russian privatization, this paper adopts the concept of policy learning, in which reconceptualization of policy agendas-adopting private property as an essential element of the market economy, for example-take place. [source] PERFORMING AUTHORITY: DISCURSIVE POLITICS AFTER THE ASSASSINATION OF THEO VAN GOGHPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 1 2008MAARTEN HAJER In November 2004, the assassination of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam by an Islamic extremist shocked The Netherlands. Critics of multiculturalism quickly linked the murder to the perceived failure of ,soft' integration policies and questioned the authority and legitimacy of Amsterdam's political leadership. This article studies the response of political leaders to those challenges from a performative perspective. Analysing governance as performance illuminates the importance of actively enacting political leadership in non-parliamentary settings such as talk shows, mosques and other religious meeting places, and improvised mass meetings in times of crisis. The authors distinguish different discursive means of performing authority, make suggestions for dealing with crisis events in ethnically and culturally diverse cities and draw some lessons from this approach as well as for methods of studying public administration. [source] The Emerging Federal Quasi Government: Issues of Management and AccountabilityPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 3 2001Ronald C. Moe There has been a growing trend in the federal government toward reliance on organizations that commingle legal attributes of the government and private sectors. These hybrid organizations now constitute a quasi government that occasions both interest and concern by political leaders, practitioners, and scholars alike because these organizations touch the very heart of democratic governance: To whom are these hybrids accountable? How well is the public interest being protected against the interests of private parties? In this article, the author seeks to define the quasi government and place these hybrid entities into manageable categories from which legal and behavioral generalizations may be drawn. Are hybrid organizations a problem or a solution? Looking critically at this question, the author suggests the answer may depend in large measure on which of two management paradigms the reader accepts: the constitutionalist management paradigm or the entrepreneurial management paradigm, both of which are defined and discussed. The author concludes that the increasin reliance on hybrid organizations constitutes a threat not only to accountable management within the government, but to the fundamental values of democratic governance as well. [source] How Foreign Aid Can Foster Democratization in Authoritarian RegimesAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2009Joseph Wright Donors in recent years have made some foreign aid conditional on progress toward democracy. This study investigates whether and how such conditionality works in practice. The promise of higher aid if the country democratizes only provides an incentive for democratization for political leaders who expect to remain in office after democratization occurs. I show that dictators with large distributional coalitions, who have a good chance of winning fair elections, tend to respond to aid by democratizing. In contrast, aid helps dictators with the smallest distributional coalitions hang on to power. I present a model that shows a dictator's decision calculus, given different a priori support coalitions and varying degrees of aid conditionality, and test the model implications with data from 190 authoritarian regimes in 101 countries from 1960 to 2002. [source] Women on the Sidelines: Women's Representation on Committees in Latin American LegislaturesAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2005Roseanna Michelle Heath This article explores how new groups can be marginalized after they gain representation in the legislature. We use data from six Latin American legislatures to examine the effect of institutional and political factors on how traditionally dominant male political leaders distribute scarce political resources,committee assignments,to female newcomers. In general, we find that women tend to be isolated on women's issues and social issues committees and kept off of power and economics/foreign affairs committees as the percentage of legislators who are women increases, when party leaders or chamber presidents control committee assignments, and when the structure of the committee system provides a specific committee to deal with women's issues. Thus, to achieve full incorporation into the legislative arena, newcomers must do more than just win seats. They must change the institutions that allow the traditionally dominant group to hoard scarce political resources. [source] South Africa, the world and AIDS (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 3 2010Keith Hart South Africa has been at the centre of world history for over a century and it is now the focus of all eyes for the World Cup. The country has been a by-word for racial inequality and more recently for crime and violence. But it is also notable for social progress and cultural vitality. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has claimed more victims there than anywhere else, a tragic sequel to apartheid. Successive political leaders highlight the contradictions of this historical moment in poignant, even Shakespearean ways. The author briefly reviews three books by anthropologists on AIDS there and suggests that South Africa is likely to remain a source of innovation for the discipline. But we need to take a broader view of world history than at present. [source] Beyond MIRAB: Do aid and remittances crowd out export growth in Pacific microeconomies?ASIA PACIFIC VIEWPOINT, Issue 1 2006Jon Fraenkel Abstract: The 1980s investigations of post-colonial Polynesian and Micronesian economies emphasised the role of aid, remittances and other rent incomes as ,booming sectors' which ,crowded out' export-driven growth. Contrary to orthodox theory-based models at that time being embraced by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (emphasising liberalisation and primary product export-oriented economic growth), Bertram and Watters instead highlighted long-run trade deficits and onshore government budget deficits, driven by reliance on overseas migration, remittances, aid and bureaucracy (MIRAB). ,Dependent development' was identified as ,both sustainable and preferable to a drive for self reliance', with the logical corollary that the objectives of the Pacific Islands should be ,the preservation and enhancement of their status as rentier societies'. Yet, this perspective has never sat easily with development-oriented Polynesian or Micronesian political leaders. Despite useful empirical insights, the MIRAB perspective informs a rather complacent and static view of Oceania as caught in some kind of ,steady state' equilibrium, and downplays the role of weak governance structures in inhibiting export production. This article argues that the strengths of the MIRAB thesis are primarily descriptive, whereas the analytical claims to have exposed what determines the evolution of the island economies merit reconsideration. [source] ,Asian values' as reverse Orientalism: SingaporeASIA PACIFIC VIEWPOINT, Issue 2 2000Michael Hill It is possible to demonstrate, using Singapore as a key example, the way in which the attribution of a set of ,Asian values' represented a Western project which is best labelled ,reverse Orientalism'. This process entailed the attribution of a set of cultural values to East and Southeast Asian societies by Western social scientists in order to contrast the recent dynamic progress of Asian development with the stagnation and social disorganisation of contemporary Western economies and societies. The contrast provided legitimation for some of the nation-building policies of political leaders in such countries as Singapore and was incorporated in attempts to identify and institutionalise core values. [source] Working Under Monarchy: Political Leadership and Democracy in NepalASIAN POLITICS AND POLICY, Issue 1 2009Ina Acharya The purpose of this study was to discover the prospects and challenges of democracy in Nepal. Mired with corruption and escalating conflict, Nepal is in its 16th year of democratic transition, with little hope for a fully functional, consolidated, liberal democracy. In trying to study the causes, the author hypothesizes that political leaders have made decisions that have had an adverse effect on democracy in Nepal. Empirical research has been conducted on landmark decisions made by political leaders to test the hypothesis. The author concludes that charismatic leaders, depending on their vision, statesmanship, and liberalism, choose to decide differently, and these decisions determine their mode of governance and its impact on democracy. [source] Public health metaphors in Australian policy on asylum seekersAUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, Issue 1 2009Glenda Koutroulis Abstract Objective: To analyse the way in which a public health metaphor has been incorporated into Australian political practice to justify the exclusion or mistreatment of unwelcome non-citizens, giving particular attention to recent asylum seekers. Approach: Starting with a personal experience of working in an immigration detention centre and then drawing on media reports and published scholarship, I critique political rhetoric and policy on asylum seekers, arguing that the significance of a public health metaphor lies in its effectiveness in persuading the public that refugees and asylum seekers are a moral contaminant that threatens the nation and has to be contained. Conclusion: Acceptance of the metaphor sanctions humanly degrading inferences, policies and actions. Public health professionals therefore have a responsibility to challenge the political use of public health and associated metaphors. Implications: Substituting the existing metaphor for one that is more morally acceptable could help to redefine refugees and asylum seekers more positively and promote compassion in political leaders and the community. [source] The Colonial Strut: Australian Leaders on the World StageAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 1 2005Graeme Davison In his influential account of modern nationalism, Benedict Anderson emphasises the role of the press in creating a sense of "imagined community". But the nation's identity is also constituted through the performances of representative nationals for an international audience. The visits of Australia's political leaders to London and Washington are carefully stage-crafted events, designed to elicit, or at least create an impression of, a favourable reception by its "great and powerful friends". This essay examines the international debuts of several Australian political leaders from Alfred Deakin (1887) and Robert Menzies (1935) to Bob Hawke and John Howard. It focuses especially on the interplay between the leaders' private and public selves; how they have crafted their public appearances and utterances to capture the attention of the desired international audience, and how their performances have been seen by the audience that, in the last resort, mattered most to them, the Australian one. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||