Reinventing the public mission of the research university in the Asian century: a gateway approach

The recently released White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century reflected a consensus that higher education is at the cutting edge of our Asian engagement. To this end the White Paper prescribes an important role for public universities in the unfolding Asian Century. It suggests that universities – like other public and private institutions – should deepen our engagement with Asia.But what does this deep internationalisation mean for our public research universities? The argument in this Policy Brief is that varied forms of internationalisation will have different forms of balance between private and public purposes and benefits pursued by our research universities. Internationalisation or the ‘deep internationalisation’ proposed by the White Paper challenges us to consider the public purposes and benefits beyond the box of ‘national state’, and yet achieve this without letting the market model dominate the ‘public’ enterprise of the research university. As Simon Marginson (2012) – an astute observer of higher education – has maintained: how do we redefine the ‘public’ as universities operate on global and regional scales

Ideas boom or innovation bust? Could Australia’s ‘ideas agenda’ stifle real innovation?

Australia’s so-called ‘ideas boom’ comes at a cost to research funding and sustainable infrastructure, Kanishka Jayasuriya and Carol Johnson write. An emphasis on entrepreneurial culture at the expense of wider public research investment risks socialising the risks of research and privatising the benefits, which ultimately may do lasting harm to both sectors

Politics, economics and welfare : a comparative study of social expenditure in Australia and Canada

This study presents an analysis of the determinants of social expenditure in Australia and Canada within a comparative perspective. Its objectives are two-fold: first, to review and examine the key economic, social and political factors influencing outlays of public expenditure; second, to carry out an empirical evaluation of competing explanations of the link between party and policy. The core research problem of the study is a test of two models portraying the role and function of political parties and policy. One model termed the ’structural’, highlights the importance of socio-economic constituencies of parties in moulding party objectives; and the other, the ’strategic actor' model stresses the importance of strategic incentives in shaping policy objectives. The analysis of the association between political party structures and policy outputs is undertaken with reference to social expenditure, and permits an evaluation of these competing models in accounting for policy outcomes. Differences in party structure and organisation in Australia and Canada provide the basis for an empirical test of these two models within a ’similar systems' design. Methodologically a distinctive feature of the study is the use of a subset of quasi-experimental designs, the multiple-interrupted time-series design, to examine the differential impact of key political variables such as type of ’administration’ on policy outcomes. Initially, the economic determinants of expenditure are identified, paying heed to the effects of the international economic environment on policy. The latter are especially relevant in the economies of both countries as they are heavily dependent on the export of primary commodities. The political influences on expenditure outlays studied pertain to political administration and political competition. Both sets of influences are also subject to empirical examination. The major empirical findings of the study are threefold. First, it shows that international economic movements as reflected in expenditure changes are more apparent for Canada than Australia. This is largely because of key economic institutions such as the Arbitration system in Australia which served to insulate domestic income from the adverse effects of external forces. Expenditure was not needed to the same degree as in Canada to stabilise fluctuations in income. Secondly, the influence of ’administration’ on policy outcomes is evident in both countries. An explanation of this is offered in terms of a ’turnover model' of party functioning where the strategic incentives for parties in government are seen as the principal determinants of policy priorities. Finally, there is strong evidence that the factor of political competition, or more specifically inter-party competition, present in both countries is a significant factor in explaining expenditure and policy outcomes. In terms of the core research problem identified earlier, the findings lend strong support for the strategic actor conception of party rather than the structural perspective. This finding has important implications for the study of party and policy-making. It suggests that consideration of party strategies should be of crucial analytical interest. From a broader systematic perspective, the issues examined in this study, shows that despite obvious differences in political systems of Canada and Australia, there are marked similarities especially in the way political factors such as political competition and government administrations influence policy

E-CHEQUE: Re-Defined Era for Financial Transactions

Cheques are used to transfer money from one party to another, has the potential to capture a massive amount of financial value but on the other hand is a piece of paper which can be tarnished and torn into pieces and is fragile. The main objective is to create a E-Cheque application, where the mentioned issues will be eradicated by simply digitizing the cheque. Using an E-Cheque would raise a handful of security questions but utilizing the help of four security technologies these problems are minimized. The approach for dynamic password generation is to generate a password which would be resistant to a selected cyber security attack and would be a key-helping hand to remember the password. Secondly, with the use of OTP together with Voice Biometrics, where an OTP would be used as the first level of security and voice biometrics as the second level to increase security. To cover the compliance point of view, a comprehensive compliance policy is created hence applied to the application. Finally, QR Code generation which is generated with a E-cheque details received from user, then encrypted to generate the QR code and transferred through a chat socket where digital signature will be mandatory to transfer the QR based E-cheque, and therefore when all components are paired together creating a world security standard E-Cheque application. &nbsp

Regulatory regionalism and anti-money-laundering governance in Asia

With the intensification of the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF's) worldwide campaign to promote anti-money-laundering regulation since the late 1990s, all Asian states except North Korea have signed up to its rules and have established a regional institution—the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering—to promote and oversee the implementation of FATF's 40 Recommendations in the region. This article analyses the FATF regime, making two key claims. First, anti-money-laundering governance in Asia reflects a broader shift to regulatory regionalism, particularly in economic matters, in that its implementation and functioning depend upon the rescaling of ostensibly domestic agencies to function within a regional governance regime. Second, although this form of regulatory regionalism is established in order to bypass the perceived constraints of national sovereignty and political will, it nevertheless inevitably becomes entangled within the socio-political conflicts that shape the exercise of state power more broadly. Consequently, understanding the outcomes of regulatory regionalism involves identifying how these conflicts shape how far and in what manner global regulations are adopted and implemented within specific territories. This argument is demonstrated by a case study of Myanmar

Howard, Tampa, and the politics of reactionary modernisation

John Howard\u27s political program and Tony Blair\u27s New Labour share a common political logic: a mix of enthusiastic commitment to economic liberalism with an equally assiduous propagation of illiberal policies that draw on reactionary and nostalgic understandings of community and culture

Riding the accountability wave? Politics of global administrative law

The old certainties of administrative law – its location, nature, and purpose – are dissolving; administrative law is now much more varied, diverse, and diffused. As Sedley (1997) argues, this "systematic dispersal of the sites of power beyond the confines of what we had learned to recognise as the state, old certainties of public law are no longer there". No doubt there are some lurking in a law school here and there who would take exception to this stretching of the boundaries of administrative law. But there can be little doubt that one of the striking transformations in the industrialized and newly industrialized world is that the exercise of public power is now taking place in sites outside the formal structures of governmental power, a process which decentres and fragments the state. Decentring, in this context means that governance is located in multiple sites, engage a number of non state actors, and deploys a range of techniques of governance that move beyond the traditional structures of public law (see Jayasuriya 2001a; Offe 1996). These new modes of governance - such as public-private partnerships - and the growing importance of transnational non governmental standard setting organizations challenge our conception of the state as a coherent and unified centre; this in turn suggests that conventional mechanisms of accountability to regulate the exercise public power will be transformed.2 For instance, the thrust of a substantial literature on regulatory governance at the global or the national level is towards a search for substitute mechanisms of accountability and monitoring outside formal governmental institutions, all of which invariably raise fundamental challenges about the application of what amounts to a new administrative law in these new modes of governance. The development of these new modes of governance is the outcome of a complex set of structural forces that come under the generic label of neo liberalism. Although it is not within the scope of this paper to examine the nature of these new forces, it is possible to identity four crucial determining factors or drivers: first, the growing trend towards privatization and deregulation of key areas of economic and social governance leading to new pubic-private governance arrangements that sit uneasily with traditional conceptions of administrative law; second, the influence of non governmental - often transnational - agents in the management and regulation of domains considered as public governance; third, the growth of independent administrative agencies —such as central banks and financial supervisory bodies — often connected to transnational policy networks; fourth, the development of transnational regulation, administrative rules, and adjudication such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) or bilateral investment treaties producing hybrid forms of national and transnational governance. Of course, these determining factors cannot be simply reduced to neo liberalism as each of these has its own independent effects on neo liberalism. But what is clear is that the thrust of this process is towards a decentring of governance and administrative regimes