Title: Australia and the search for a security community in the 1990s
Abstract: When Karl Deutsch and his colleagues proposed the concept of “security community” their focus was on groups rather than single states. Given the necessarily plural nature of “community,” it might be wondered how a single-country case study might assist in the retrieval of Deutsch's concept of security community. We argue that the case of Australia is indeed useful, because of the country's shifting location in global politics. While such changes are by no means unique, few political communities have as self-consciously sought to “relocate” themselves, in economic, diplomatic, and security terms as Australia did in the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1983 and 1996, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating pursued an undisguised “push into Asia.” While this hardly represented an Australian “defection” from the West, as Samuel Huntington put it, there can be little doubt that the ALP was seeking to “move” Australia from being a European/American-oriented community to being a nation in, and of, the Asia Pacific.
Publication Year: 1998
Publication Date: 1998-10-28
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 6
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