Review by Scott Ryan, Ph.D. Program in Political Science, University of Melbourne.

How to Win the Constitutional War and give both sides what they want
by Tony Abbott,
Australians for Constitutional Monarchy in association with Wakefield Press, Sydney, 1997,
162 pp, $16.95
ISBN 1-86254-433-6

There’s an old joke that goes, ‘If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?’ The answer, of course, is four – calling it a leg doesn’t make it one. Tony Abbott’s proposal for revising the monarchy works much the same way – calling the Governor-General a Head of State isn’t enough to make him one.

In reviewing this book, I approach it with strong republican beliefs. However, following the constitutional convention, it must be said that few of the arguments raised by the major players in this debate truly deal with republican issues. This is the trap into which Tony Abbott has fallen, in simply responding to the nationalist arguments of those who describe themselves as republican.

When one assesses the arguments put forward by many leaders of the mainstream republicans in Australia, best summarised as ‘a resident for President,’ it is clear that they rarely, if ever, deal with issues that confront a true republican. Groups such as the Australian Republican Movement attempt to limit debate to the nationalist issue of allowing an Australian to become our head of state. In How to Win the Constitutional War, Abbott attempts to deal with this argument, outlining the dangers an elected or appointed President would pose for Australia’s system of parliamentary government, as well as outlining his view on how Australia could achieve the primary aim of the republican movement – the office of Head of State being held by an Australian.

The crux of Abbott’s argument is that the removal of the monarch from the Constitution would endanger the intricate checks and balances within the Australian system. To ensure this does not happen while at the same time providing for republican concerns, he argues that it is possible to provide for an Australian Head of State without the danger of removing the monarch from the appointment process. This, he argues, could be achieved through either legislation providing that the Governor-General is Australia’s Head of State or, if deemed necessary, a constitutional amendment entrenching such a provision in the Constitution.

In outlining the dangers of altering the current constitutional balance, Abbott discusses the potential dangers of simply removing references to the monarch and replacing them with a new term such as President. Because of the language used in the drafting of the Australian Constitution, with executive power being vested in the Governor-General as the representative of the sovereign and the exercise of this authority being governed by conventions both imported from Westminster and developed locally since Federation, he is right to point out the problems with this proposal.

He is also correct in pointing out that the republican debate has yet to agree on a single model to be put to the people at a referendum. It must be remembered that, while many claimed the Constitutional Convention as a success in agreeing on a model to be put to the people in a referendum, less than half of the delegates supported that model. While this development occurred after the book’s release, it remains to be seen whether the proposal will be accepted by all republicans during the referendum campaign next year. In attacking the lack of unity within the broad republican movement, Abbott has identified a key problem that republicans face in asking for public support.

However, while attacking the republicans for failing to appreciate the role played by the Crown in the Australian Constitution, Abbott also fails to recognise that changes that have taken place since Federation have fundamentally altered some of the institutions he wishes to preserve. He falls into the trap laid by groups such as the ARM in not addressing issues crucial to the working of the Australian Constitution. Notable amongst these are the weakening of federalism due to increasing Commonwealth dominance in fields that have, traditionally, been within the realm of state responsibility, and the dominance of the House of Representatives by the Executive and party discipline.

By accepting the narrowing of the agenda as pushed by many republicans, he weakens his own case that removing the role of the Crown in appointing the Head of State is so crucial in the overall scheme of checks and balances. If it is so crucial, what about other features of our Constitution intended to act in a similar fashion, such as a level of autonomy for the states and effective parliamentary scrutiny of the Executive?

One of the recurring themes of the republican debate, from the main groups on both sides and many of their high-profile supporters, is the necessity to ensure that change does not endanger the supremacy of parliament. It is obvious to anyone who has studied the Australian Constitution that parliament has never been supreme. It is limited in its activities and scope by the anti-majoritarian and republican elements already present – such as the High Court, the limited powers conferred on the Commonwealth and the role of the people in assenting to constitutional change. Practical developments such as the rise of parties have also limited its ability to scrutinise executive activities.

In a recent essay, Hugh Emy* argues that the debate over Australia’s Constitution can no longer be delineated between two opposing sides described as progressive ‘reformers’ and conservative ‘spoilers’. There is a third force which values the republican and anti-majoritarian elements of our constitution – the federal constitutionalists. It is this group that is almost unheard, as Australia’s constitutional debate is completely dominated by the issue of whether or not we should remove the monarch from the Australian Constitution, in spite of various attempts (such as at the Constitutional Convention) to raise other issues.

Abbott fails to acknowledge the existence of this group as he addresses the issues of the debate in terms of two sides – republicans and monarchists. As the Constitutional Convention showed, there are many republicans that have little in common with the agenda of groups such as the ARM. The simplification of the debate is not only attributable to their narrow agenda, but also to those who oppose change on the basis that they value aspects of the current constitutional arrangements, yet fail to fully appreciate other aspects that perform a similar role.

However, as it is not Abbott who is proposing fundamental change to the Constitution, it is not necessarily his duty to support those proposing change by assisting them in building a broad enough coalition to ensure popular support. It would be more effective, though, for those defending the status quo to attempt to broaden their agenda, both for political reasons and to ensure that any change does not weaken other valuable features of the Australian Constitution.

* Hugh Emy, ‘Unfinished Business: Confirming Australia’s Constitution as an Act of Political Settlement,’ Australian Journal of Political Science, 32:3 (Nov. 1997).  

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Review by Mark Latham, Shadow Minister for Education and Youth Affairs.

Turning Point: The State of Australia and New Zealand
edited by Christopher Sheil
The Evatt Foundation and Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1997, 313 pp, $35.00
ISBN 1-86448-567-1

In many respects the social democratic project has been a victim of its own success. By the 1970s it had achieved most of its goals for the active role of the state in society, primarily through the spread of Keynesian economics, welfare statism and service planning. The exhaustion of this agenda, however, produced something of a vacuum within left-of-centre thinking and policy making. In most nations throughout the 1980s this policy void was filled by the deregulation of product and capital markets, plus the commercialisation of a wide range of public services. The rise of globalisation has forced nations to pursue new forms of competitive economic advantage, often by reducing the size and scope of the public sector.

This decade some encouraging signs have emerged that social democrats remain willing to adapt their policies to new economic and social circumstances. Leaders such as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton have been prepared to ‘think the unthinkable’ about the future of the welfare state. Reforms such as the 1994 Working Nation program in Australia have acknowledged the limits of passive welfare and the need for new forms of labour market intervention, based on the customisation of public services and the exercise of reciprocal responsibility. In several nations social democrats have been willing to advocate the devolution of state control as a way of repairing the strength of public mutuality and social capital. In this era of permanent change – with the transformation of work, production and community relations – the good society relies on a new type of relationship between citizens and the state.

Unfortunately, the Evatt Foundation has not been a significant contributor to this reform project. Its priorities and policies appear to be predetermined by its strong level of sponsorship from most of Australia’s large trade unions. Whereas during the Industrial Revolution unionism emerged as a force for social fairness and progress, it now frequently tries to hold back the rate of economic and social change. This has placed a heavy burden on public policy and finances: favouring large public subsidies to prop up the rate of profit (and supposedly employment) in old industries; opposing the reinvention of public sector functions and methods. These two themes are reflected throughout the Evatt Foundation’s latest review of government in Australia and New Zealand, Turning Point.

For many in the Australian Labor Party, the work of the Evatt Foundation has been disappointing. For those of us worried by the way in which the welfare state seems incapable of breaking the cycle of long term poverty, it is no longer sufficient to advocate more money for more programs of the old kind. For those concerned by the public’s dissatisfaction with the work of the public sector, the fundamental reform of government seems mandatory. For all its resources and public expectations, the Evatt Foundation has positioned itself more as a defender of the status quo than a rebuilder of collectivism and public mutuality. In this volume, only Peter Botsman’s chapter on the health economy sets out a fresh direction for public policy. He points to the potential of patient-centred funding systems as a way of ‘radically rethinking our concept of social welfare.’

Throughout the remainder of Turning Point the analysis is more mundane. So-called economic rationalism is regularly denounced, not by the construction of an alternative economic paradigm but through the emptiness of sloganeering. It is difficult to understand why so many on the political Left have come to regard the rational application of economic principles as inconsistent with the goals of the good society. Without the productivity and prosperity of a market-based economy, it is simply not possible for government – through a progressive tax/transfer regime – to redistribute the benefits of abundance. At no time in history – not during Antiquity, not during the Renaissance and certainly not during the Industrial Revolution – has human progress been achieved other than by rational problem solving. Now is not the time for social democrats to embrace economic irrationality as a response to globalisation.

Just as the sphere of capital has lifted to global arenas, social democracy needs to establish a new geography of economic policy. The footloose features of finance, production and trade have forced a clear distinction in the type of economic interventions the state might pursue. Public outlays need to be directed at those factors of production relatively anchored within the boundaries of the nation state. This points to the new growth horizons of national investments in education, research and certain kinds of economic infrastructure. Old forms of intervention – tariffs, bounties and the direct subsidisation of industry profits – have become inappropriate.

Footloose industries have the capacity to absorb public hand-outs and then relocate their investment to political jurisdictions offering even more generous forms of business welfare. Bidding wars between nations, under the banner of so-called industry policy, serve only to maximise the advantages and profits of global capital. The economic advantages of nations, properly understood and pursued, now lie in those inputs to the production process that sit outside the mobile geography of capital. Much of Turning Point’s analysis, however, relies on the failed Left assumption that all state interventions in the economy – no matter what their spatial features and consequences – are equally desirable.

Indeed, the ugly side of economic nationalism, whether expressed in Hansonism or the Evatt Foundation’s preference for trade barriers, reflects an act of national folly. This is especially the case for left-of-centre causes dependent on the active role of government. The growth of free trade since World War II has been associated with the expansion of the state public sector. Across the OECD, the openness of nations to trade is positively correlated with the size of national spending on social programs and welfare. Free trade and the growth of the welfare state have been two sides of the same coin (see Rodrick 1997). The authors of Turning Point fail to appreciate that their hopes for the expansion of the public sector rest on policies which, in the context of industry policy, they foolishly denounce as too economically rational – that is, economic multilateralism and free trade and investment. Moreover, these tendencies on the political Left fail to acknowledge the way in which, throughout the history of nationalism, restrictions on the free movement of goods and capital have mirrored the politics of race and bigotry.

Crude economic nationalism tries to portray free trade as a win/lose exchange between nations. The competitive advantages and employment growth of one nation is rhetorically positioned as occurring at the expense of another. False patriotism of this kind attempts to rewrite two economic truths. First, the way in which changes to technology are more likely to cause job losses in labour intensive industries than import competition; and second, how free trade actually produces win/win exchanges between national economies and thus, the prosperity needed to finance the work of government. As Paul Krugman has explained:

The rejuvenation of social democracy relies on thinking decidedly more innovative and bold than that set out in Turning Point. It relies on policies which embrace the new growth benefits of economic openness, plus define the economic sovereignty of the nation state by the skills and insights of a nation’s people. It relies on the reconstruction of the tax/transfer system and each of its associated forms of welfare. Without the surest route to economic growth the public sector can never hope to meet the public’s demand for protection from the impact of insecurity. Without the overhaul of the welfare state it will not be possible to break the punishing cycle of unemployment and educational disadvantage in our society. For left-of-centre causes, the real turning point will come when outfits like the Evatt Foundation abandon the post-war social democratic model and start to pursue the radical reform of public governance.

References

Krugman, Paul 1997, Pop Internationalism, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Rodrick, Dani 1997, ‘Sense and Nonsense in the Globalisation Debate,’ Foreign Policy, v. 107, Summer:25-6.
 

Rooting Democracy: Growing the society we want
by Moira Rayner
Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1997, 296 pp, $17.95
ISBN 1-86448-132-3

It should probably come as no surprise that any book looking at the state and future of democracy in Australia which names Jeff Kennett as its ‘original inspiration’ would be a free-wheeling, free-dealing, roller-coaster ride of an affair. And on that score, readers of Moira Rayner’s Rooting Democracy will surely not be disappointed.

In the book, Rayner – lawyer, former Commissioner of Equal Opportunity in Victoria, public commentator and more recently an elected delegate to the Constitutional Convention – paints a picture of Australian governance which is as panoramic as it is passionate.

Divided into three parts, Rooting Democracy first examines the parameters and desired processes of a democratic society – the protection of human rights, the rule of law, electoral rules. Rayner then outlines how she believes these processes have either been undermined or perverted in the Australian context, before concluding with a series of proposals for reform that are aimed at bolstering democracy and assisting the development of that most elusive of beasts – the ‘civil society.’

Rayner’s basic thesis is that the public has lost faith with the democratic process as practised in Australia, primarily because it is exclusionary and produces outcomes inconsistent with or ignorant of the community’s needs. Major reform is therefore required if our system of governance is to appropriately and adequately serve the community as a whole, and in so doing restore the public’s lost faith in democracy.

In developing her position, there seem to be few areas of public life that Rayner does not touch upon – the roles of the executive, the judiciary and the public service, the relationships between the various tiers of government, the relationship between government and the media, access to the law and the privatisation of public services are all the subject of her attention.

Yet in what is a relatively brief and, it should be said, easily readable book, considerable time is spent outlining basic systems of government and a heavy reliance is placed on the anecdotal (and on occasion the apocryphal) for support. In many instances this is at the expense of a fuller development of the arguments upon which her reform proposals are based.

Even accepting the powerful value of story-telling and its potential role in public debate, it would still be pleasing to have explained, for example, why ‘the essential value of a civil society is equal concern and respect for persons,’ or the basis for arguing that ‘public faith in the ideal of “justice” is perhaps the most fundamental sign that a society is truly civilised.’ And while Rayner may be convinced of the ‘obvious need’ for a constitutional bill or charter of fundamental rights and freedoms, simply stating so does little to convince those whose views are contrary or simply undecided.

This criticism should, however, be tempered by a recognition of what this book aims to be and, just as importantly, what it is clearly not. As Rayner herself notes, she has not written Rooting Democracy as a philosopher, a political scientist or a politician.

Rather, it is a very personal book; implicitly, it seeks to put a position, explicitly, it is designed to question and to provoke a response. In numerous aspects, it does this successfully.

Rayner’s constant theme of defining the individual as citizen rather than consumer points to, if it does not fully progress, the wider issue of the role and importance of language in public debate. How real or notional is the distinction between a ‘market’ and a ‘community’, each constituted by the very same individuals, organisations and institutions? Whither the concept of a ‘world best practice’ democracy?

The related exposition of the public’s response to policy decisions driven by an acceptance and endorsement of market forces also raises complex issues regarding the intangible forces which bind communities together – although Rayner’s unbridled scepticism of the ‘market’ often seems as uncomfortable as being held unswervingly in its thrall.

Unfortunately, just as often as Rayner may prompt the reader to thought, so too she is capable of jarring the senses. There is a tendency towards glibness and generalisation. Complex debates are reduced to base and unsustainable levels.

Rayner baldly states, for example, that ‘the brave new world of short-term employment and “floating” labour gives companies no incentive to invest in skill, as trained employees can simply float away taking their expertise with them.’ Yes, labour practices have become more fluid – for a variety of reasons – but Rayner simply ignores the broad spectrum and variations that exist in corporate strategy, and the different ways in which these choices will translate in terms of human resource management practices.

does less to suggest a lack of faith in politics and politicians than it does to imply, even inadvertently, a lack of faith in, and respect for, the very individuals who would constitute Rayner’s ‘civil society.’

Indeed, it is perhaps only in the series of reforms proposed – which include a reshaping of public debate, greater emphasis on local government, constitutional change and increased public involvement in regulatory processes – that Rayner, who appears to see the problems of Australian democracy with such clarity, reveals both some uncertainty and also the complexity of the issues she has chosen to address.

There is a level of disillusion in Australia with the way our system of governance operates. While this should be distinguished from the strong and continuing acceptance of and support for underlying democratic ideals, there remains a need to question, to improve and to renew.

Rooting Democracy provokes us to proceed along this path. While it would be surprising, even disconcerting, to find many who would agree with all that Rayner has put forward, perhaps that is what makes this book worthwhile.

Review by Nicholas Gruen, Business Council of Australia
(All views expressed here are those of the author and should not be attributed to any organisation with which he is associated.)

Conservation Strategies for New Zealand
edited by Peter Hartley
New Zealand Business Roundtable, Wellington, 1997, 526pp, NZ$39.95
ISBN 1-877148-32-6

This is a thoughtful, provocative and very interesting survey by the Tasman Institute of nature conservation strategies in New Zealand (and to a substantial extent Australia). The book provides a logical categorisation and presentation of issues with the first six major chapters presenting strong arguments in a range of different areas. Subsequent chapters on the structure and performance of the New Zealand Department of Conservation, Maori development and conservation policy and historic and cultural heritage were of less interest, partly because by that stage of the book, many of its major themes had been well worked.

The book is a powerful market-oriented polemic against the ‘statist’ and conservation purism of much ‘green’ politics. It benefits from a sound theoretical knowledge as well as broadly based practical knowledge of specific examples of market-oriented conservation in New Zealand and Australia (as well as some other countries – especially the United States).

Particularly instructive sections include:

Each of these case studies – together with a panoply of other (usually less extensive) studies and anecdotes – illustrates in a very useful and thought provoking way the essential themes of the book. In particular:

An important defect in the book goes both to its style and substance. It is unnecessarily tendentious in arguing for private sector conservation and against public sector activity. Thus the reader is never really confident that a balanced picture is being presented – a picture in which the reader can have confidence in the expert making his case. Environmental policy generally is bedevilled by so many classic economic problems – particularly externalities and the resulting free rider problems – that the best solutions are likely to come from an intelligent mix of collective and privately motivated initiatives and co-ordination.

The book constantly rehearses ways in which the private sector can benefit the environment (even though at first glance one would not imagine it had the incentive to do so). This is a very useful antidote to a dominant theme in much ‘green’ politics and the automatic assumption that whenever there is a problem ‘something ought to be done’ (i.e. by governments). However, it is a long way from justifying a general bias against the public sector in favour of the private sector. For example, at one point the author comments that, were it not for the distortions introduced by the Department of Conservation, the private sector would probably have better research infrastructure than the Department on conservation matters. While the private sector might well be more efficient than the public sector in some areas of research, assertions of the more general kind made here ought to be accompanied with some carefully considered evidence if they are to be convincing.

This defect renders the book both less persuasive and less penetrating in its analysis. At one stage there is a brief discussion of the development going on at Philip Island (Victoria) to build an extensive seal observation infrastructure. Keen as ever to point out the advantages of private sector involvement – which I for one do not need to be persuaded of – the authors pass over what seem to me to be the most interesting policy questions. What kind of regulatory regime would optimise the private sector contribution? What is the appropriate mix of markets and regulation? Presumably some developments would be better than others. Private sector development of seal observation on Philip Island would be better done by Earth Sanctuaries Limited than Disney Corporation!

Chapter three attacks the Conservation Act’s central requirement that government conservation agencies optimise the ‘intrinsic value’ of their conservation assets. The chapter points out the ambiguities of this formulation but it is not wholly convincing that the idea of intrinsic value is unworkable. It is a vague notion to be sure. But then so is the test of ‘reasonableness’ which our common law and statutes are shot through with.

Many people in the electorate who value conservation do have a strong sense that there are ‘intrinsic’ environmental values. If they continue to think this, the Act will probably continue to reflect those thoughts. A more accommodating approach might find constructive ways of engaging with concepts of intrinsic value – of pointing out their weaknesses and in so doing improving them – rather than simply rejecting them. I often found myself in broad agreement with the authors’ value judgements on conservation. But this did not save me from a certain unease. Any general definition of the rationale of conservation – if it is to be useful – is unlikely to be without ambiguities.

Chapter six was for me the most exciting chapter of the book. The idea of ‘net conservation value trades’ is highly subversive of much of the sentimentality and absolutism of green politics. (Net conservation value trades occur when some conservation goal is traded off for some higher value conservation goal. Thus, a government department might agree to mine site rehabilitation of a lower standard than otherwise required in return for conservation spending on the surrounding area which is of a higher conservation value.) Nothing like a healthy dose of the market to concentrate the mind and get people to really show you the colour of their money! The chapter discusses the likely environmental benefits which could flow from allowing environmental assets to simultaneously meet other needs, such as, for instance, low impact sustainable harvest of native timber.

Ultimately, however, even here the authors do not really engage with the other side. Net conservation value trades make sense, one would hope, even for environmentalists. But trading takes place in the context of negotiation and uncertainty of outcome is implicit in any negotiation. In such a circumstance value trades are almost always problematic. Who is to say that by refusing to trade off something (say very high quality mine site rehabilitation) one might nevertheless still get what was being offered in its stead (say further conservation expenditure on the environs of a mine)? The authors do not grapple with this problem.

I would have liked to see the brief chapter on historic and cultural heritage further developed. Today we focus almost entirely on the idea of preserving what we have by prohibiting or restricting change. I live in Port Melbourne where the streetscape has been frozen by restrictions on change to rows of lacklustre terrace bungalows. The hidden costs of this to owners and renters must be worth the construction costs of a Sydney Opera House or two. The demolition of a few terraces might allow us to make a heritage trade up to something like Hundertwasser’s House in Vienna. But, alas, the heritage agenda in this country is focussed on preserving what others have left us – often even if it is mediocre – rather than coming up with our own contributions to heritage.

The issue of greenhouse gas abatement (or more particularly carbon sequestration) does not seem to rate a mention. (I didn’t read every word, but I had a pretty good look throughout the book and in the index). This is an extraordinary oversight given that carbon sequestration offers the potential for major private sector involvement in and funding for conservation.

Conservation Strategies for New Zealand is lively, interesting and best of all provocative. For my taste it is a little too provocative in one sense of that word. It is too belligerent. But it is also provocative in the best sense. It sets one thinking.

Review by Frank Devine

Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader
by Dinesh D’Souza
1997, The Free Press (a division of Simon & Schuster), 192pp, $42.00
ISBN 0-6848-4428-1

D’Souza’s thesis is that Reagan was a great president, the most important in the 20th century after Franklin Roosevelt. This is as good a way as any to begin an assessment of Reagan, a task historians seem a little reluctant to undertake. His greatness is not unreasonable to assume, since great events, generally beneficial to his country, occurred while he presided, including the start of the dissolution of the Soviet Union – ‘the evil empire,’ as Reagan called it, amidst widespread derision for his simplisticism. Yet to hail Reagan as great is to confront the paradox of his ‘ordinariness,’ a euphemism in numerous minds for ‘inferiority’.

Some of those shying from the paradox have played with the preposterous notion that Reagan’s eight years in the White House coincided with a great presidency that lacked a great president. D’Souza briefly canvasses portrayals of Reagan as a man who, ‘like Peter Sellers’s character Chauncey Gardiner in the film Being There, was a cheerful simpleton who had no idea what was going on but happened to be in the right place at the right time and somehow managed to convince everyone that he was in charge.’

Someone was in charge during the eight years Reagan served as governor of California and the eight he was president. No hint of the presence of a Svengali was detected during those 16 years, nor has it been since. Moreover, Reagan’s years of high public office were preceded by a lifetime of demonstrated competence and effortful achievement.

‘Here was the son of the town drunk,’ D’Souza writes, ‘who grew up poor in the Midwest. Without any connections, he made his way to Hollywood and survived its cutthroat culture to become a major star.’ He also became a major union official, president of the Screen Actors’ Guild, and parlayed this office into an entree to Californian political circles – a career strategy so conventional as alone to challenge theories of Chauncey Gardiner guilelessness.

Reagan appears to be quite a strange man, and it may be in his personal strangeness that other writers, probing his character more deeply than D’Souza does in a book that is more political discourse than biography, will find explanations of his capacity for great achievements. D’Souza speculates informatively about an icy aloofness at the core. Reagan is credited with having made only one close male friend in his life – Robert Taylor, the movie actor – and to have achieved intimacy only with his second wife, Nancy. His children have complained of his remoteness to them, and Reagan has made the strange response of exhibiting photographs of happy family scenes in attempted refutation of such claims.

When you read about it all these years later, Reagan’s conduct immediately after being shot and seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in March 1981 is a significant example of strangeness. D’Souza provides the detail but, I think, draws the wrong conclusion from it.

The unabashedly partisan D’Souza asks rhetorically, ‘When has a man taken a bullet in the chest with greater elan?’

Elan? Some would discern instead a frantic tone in this torrent of wisecracking and facetiousness, as if Reagan were seeking to propitiate death – or the gods, or God – with an ingratiating performance. D’Souza explores only scantily Reagan’s
experience of growing up in a household under virtually constant financial stress. The president has never volunteered much about his childhood (Nancy Reagan probably revealed most when she said her husband’s family moved frequently). But it is not unreasonable to speculate that the need for frantic propitiation came early into Reagan’s life, along with identification of charming performance as protective armour.

This may explain the bare pass marks he earned at his undistinguished university and his great success there as an athlete and social leader. Reagan has always made light of his student experience, saying his best subject was football. But one senses a frantic quality in his extracurricular striving. He was head of the student council and editor of the university yearbook – but, as D’Souza writes, ‘seems to have formed no lasting male friendships.’

Reagan was very ambitious, though, astonishing his student contemporaries by predicting he would be earning $5,000 a year within 5 years of graduation – an awesome amount of money in 1929. D’Souza traces ambition as a consistent force in Reagan’s life, not always precisely focused but reflected in an intense desire to take the next step upward and a freedom from anxiety about where it might land him. At the same time Reagan became more and more able to make do with the once-removed emotional life that public performance and official position provided him with.

It is possible that part of Reagan’s success as governor and president was due to office being everything he had. One of the most revealing comments on Reagan as president comes from Mikhail Gorbachev, whom D’Souza interviewed: ‘I know that Reagan was criticized as having a superficial style, an unwillingness to analyze details. With a leader of such a large scale, several stylistic peculiarities are permissible.’

Reagan was profoundly conscious of the weight of the American presidency and perceived it as a driving force rather than any kind of burden. His indifference to the detail of his work, which some saw as evidence of his incapacity, is presented persuasively by D’Souza as stemming from his taking it for granted that the president would have at his disposal people of requisite skill to attend to the details – in other words, to execute the president’s will. Instead of amending drafts of important speeches presented to him by speechwriters, for instance, Reagan sometimes wrote the first draft himself and, losing interest, left it to the writers to give it final shape.

D’Souza takes note of an interesting perception of Reagan by the speechwriter Peggy Noonan, who observed that even when Reagan was not directly involved in White House decisions, they were determined by ‘the idea of Reagan.’ She did not mean by this that Reagan’s theories animated cabinet members and presidential advisers, but that his presidential persona commanded them. What would Reagan do in the circumstances, what would he want them to do? In short, Reagan managed even in the minds of those who worked closest with him to detach his personal nature from his office. He was the president.

D’Souza portrays Reagan as a leader who encouraged colleagues to present different points of view, which he heard out without much comment. When he decided between schools of thought, however, he was clear and confident. After that Reagan expected – took it for granted – that the president’s decision would be put at once into effect. Inefficient and recalcitrant aides, such as Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who apparently postured contempt for Reagan, were progressively cut off from participation.

Reagan seems to have been an affable and considerate boss but formed no attachments with members of his cabinet and staff. After they departed from the administration he made no effort to maintain social contact – not even a telephone call. Valedictories were somewhat perfunctory. A job had been done. It was finished. D’Souza attributes this to Reagan’s expectation that everybody in public service shared his complete commitment to it.

A third factor in Reagan’s putative greatness as a president may have been contributed by his age – 69 when he began his presidency, the oldest man elected for the first time. His character and philosophy, D’Souza judges, were already fully formed.

Reagan was implacably convinced that entrepreneurism and work were the fundamentals of the American way. In elevating them through his policies he embarked on deficit funding practices without precedent. Tax cuts were necessary in order to revive America’s entrepreneurial drive and create jobs; high defence spending was necessary to defeat the Soviet enemy. A phlegmatic writer, D’Souza does less than justice to the intensity of alarm and opposition Reagan’s policies aroused among advocates of detente and interventionist government.

During Reagan’s eight years, the national debt trebled, the $1·5 trillion added to it exceeding the entire accumulation of debt that had taken place during the rest of American history. D’Souza is somewhat unreservedly admiring of Reagan as an economic manager:

All this is so, but questions remain about whether America over-mortgaged itself, and the growing scar of poverty will have to be examined in the course of further assessment of the Reagan presidency.

Reagan was committed to the belief that American democracy was objectively good. The boldness and forcefulness with which this ordinary man dealt with the Soviets is truly astonishing. He ended the Reykjavik summit peremptorily when Gorbachev held out for too many concessions over America’s Strategic Defence Initiative – the possibly mythic Star Wars program, which hastened the Soviet Union’s bankruptcy by luring it into defence expenditures it could not afford.

D’Souza, a White House policy adviser at the time, reports that Gorbachev asked as he was taking his leave of Reagan the following day, ‘What else could I have done?’

Reagan replied relentlessly, ‘You could have said yes.’

His aloofness, his acceptance that the power of his office far exceeded his personal power and his settled positions on essential matters are important elements in Reagan’s claim to greatness. His presidency also invites close examination of the increasingly complex nature of the institution of the American presidency, which, deriving all its power from the people, seems to offer the chance of greatness to a remarkable array of individuals.

Review by Barry Maley

Feminist Amnesia: The Wake of Women’s Liberation
by Jean Curthoys
1997, Routledge, London and New York, 200pp, $28.95
ISBN 0-415-14807-3

The enfeeblement of the classical liberal and humanist tradition in the universities over the last 30 years, and the siege laid upon objectivity in the social sciences, literature and history, should not blind us to the fact that although traditions of scholarship may be grievously wounded, they cannot be finally extinguished. So long as the books, human intelligence, and a rooted interest in truth remain, recovery is always possible.

Jean Curthoys’s book is really about such things. Over the last few years she has been engaged on a revisionist odyssey that began with misgivings about the post-modernist and radical project of transforming society by controlling the education and political worldview of those who would staff the media. She came to see that this could not be accomplished except by fraud, intellectual blackmail, and the decay of disciplinary knowledge.

This theme is continued in the present book and illustrated by examples from the teaching of women’s studies and trends in ‘second wave’ feminism. In addition, she connects the moral confusion of contemporary feminism with its philosophical and scientific confusion. The Lysenko affair in the Soviet Union, which offered us the choice between ‘proletarian’ science and ‘bourgeois’ science, has its counterpart in women’s studies, which opposes feminine thought to masculine thought, and where correctness is determined not by reference to reality or verification, but by tests of imputed motive and politics. Falsehood and error are consigned to political and gender categories. What is left behind is not only a tradition of truth-seeking, but also the liberationist impulse which drove ‘first-wave’ feminism.

Needless to say, this sort of thing has attracted savage criticism from some wings of the feminist movement. So it is a brave book; but not only that, it is an important milestone in the struggle to restore the moral integrity of feminism, and the commitment to critical and disinterested inquiry which is so central to the academy.  

Reagan was committed to the belief that American democracy was objectively good. The boldness and forcefulness with which this ordinary man dealt with the Soviets is truly astonishing. He ended the Reykjavik summit peremptorily when Gorbachev held out for too many concessions over America’s Strategic Defence Initiative – the possibly mythic Star Wars program, which hastened the Soviet Union’s bankruptcy by luring it into defence expenditures it could not afford.

D’Souza, a White House policy adviser at the time, reports that Gorbachev asked as he was taking his leave of Reagan the following day, ‘What else could I have done?’

Reagan replied relentlessly, ‘You could have said yes.’

His aloofness, his acceptance that the power of his office far exceeded his personal power and his settled positions on essential matters are important elements in Reagan’s claim to greatness. His presidency also invites close examination of the increasingly complex nature of the institution of the American presidency, which, deriving all its power from the people, seems to offer the chance of greatness to a remarkable array of individuals.

Review by Jason Soon

An Introduction to the Thought of Karl Popper
by Roberta Corvi
1997, Routledge, London, 209pp, £Stg.12.99 (pb).
ISBN 0-415-12957-5

Karl Popper will be best remembered for his analysis of the totalitarian implications behind the work of some of the great thinkers and of the methodological approaches which underlay this totalitarian drift (such as a peculiarly narrow conception of the role of social science and history). This is not an unjust view of his achievements because it best captures the inseparability of Popper’s epistemology from his political stance: they both partook of the same waters of intellectual humility and fallibilism.

This very lucid and accessible survey admirably captures what its author rightly describes as the ‘layered’ character of Popper’s lifelong work. Starting with a brief biography of Popper, it then goes on to look at his epistemology or theory of knowledge. Popper’s subtle critique of positivism, where he carefully distinguishes the problems of ‘meaning’ and ‘demarcation’ and, correspondingly distinguishes the criterion of ‘verifiability’ from that of ‘falsifiability’, is very well explained.

Corvi then goes on to relate this to Popper’s political works, in particular his critique of historicist theories, and from there on to his ‘metaphysical’ works. The most pathbreaking of the latter are arguably those on evolutionary epistemology, where his thought shared many affinities with that of Hayek.

The book concludes with a short summing up of his themes and motifs. One noteworthy theme it points out is the affinity between Popper and Kant. Kant’s a priori theory of knowledge undergoes modification in Popper’s thought to become the idea, crucial to his evolutionary epistemology, of organisms (including man) having an inborn ‘research program’ which they use to test reality and which is subject to evolutionary pressures of its own.

The final chapter of this short but comprehensive book provides an overview of criticisms of Popper ranging from those of his more radical disciples like Imre Lakatos to those of the Frankfurt School.

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