Time to put the "local" back into local government

There is no kerb and gutter in parts of Gunning, Upper Lachlan Shire Council, NSW.

One of the great things about our federal system is that local governments ensure local issues are dealt with by political representatives who are closest to the people. But recent fires and floods are proving that council amalgamations have replaced political representation with bureaucratic symbolism that is not meeting local expectations.   

Here is my latest article in The Spectator's Flat White, Local government or bureaucratic symbolism?

There's something going very wrong with local councils in Australia.

They were created to ensure that local communities could be taken care of by political entities embedded in the local community, but have they become a bureaucratic mess?https://t.co/Ih68KZgGPX

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) November 22, 2022

Freedom of Speech: What gives us the right?

33rd Infantry Battalion AIF - Report from April 1918. My Great-Grandfather probably saw this! 

While writing an article for The Spectator on a windy Sunday, I was thinking of the importance of freedom of speech when it comes to airing an opinion that is unorthodox or even utterly crazy. I am human like everyone else, and occasionally I self-censor or double-check when writing for a public audience. I am certain there are times when I have overstepped the mark of polite company, even with years of training in social etiquette and the highest level of education one can obtain in Australia. It wasn't so when I was younger but there you go. But why is freedom of speech so important and what gives us the right?

The growing culture of woke self-flagellation scares me. The global geopolitical situation has changed and Australians seem to be getting weaker and whinier. I often think of the importance of the Australian Army to my family. My great-grandfather, my grandfather, my son and I all served. I take great pride in that family tradition even though there are times I wish I could go back and take down the egotistical fool I worked for in my last two years in the Australian Regular Army. If I'd gone to war with him, I don't know what I might have done to save my men.

But my great-grandfather was the real deal. He served in the 33rd Infantry Battalion in the AIF. He joined up on 21st June 1916 (as soon as he was 18) at Narrabri and was sent to the front, arriving with the Battalion on 28th April 1917. He was wounded during the Messines Offensive on 7th June 1917 where he fought on the extreme right flank with D Campany, 33rd Infantry Battalion. Later, he fought in the First and Second Battles of Villers-Bretonneux. During April 1918 the Battalion suffered heavily from gas shelling and by 1 May 1918, my great-grandfather was invalided to Oxford Hospital.

Reading the 33rd Battalion records puts my daily grind nonsense into so much perspective, to the point where I feel guilty whenever I become self-conscious about public scrutiny. But today I realised that the long tradition I am part of calls for courage. Not because courage is reckless in the way egotistical fools pretend it is, but in the sense of Aristotle's "Golden Mean".

When you read the histories of actions during the Great War, you realise that one must fight or die terribly - not terribly as in the manner of death - but to read of German troops dying in their dug-outs without putting up a fight makes me feel so ashamed. 

Better to die fighting if one has to die. Or perhaps better to escape - is it one's duty to wastefully die for the actions of idiotic leaders? But how many have been put in that position by poor leadership, where one is so disillusioned one simply curls up, already defeated, as if welcoming death? 

This is how the 33rd Battalion recorded the sad wasteful end of demoralised troops:

Only in isolated cases did the enemy show fight and they were easily dealt with. One man, Private J. CARROLL, singlehanded captured a machine gun and killed the crew. In addition, he bayoneted five other Germans during the subsequent "mopping up".

Thinking of poor leadership, I remember being frightened for my men's safety (he'd already proven time and again he was there for himself and nobody else).  But I was so young. I don't regret my time but I do regret not knowing what I know now. Yet when I think about the situations I am dealing with now, I realise I am succumbing to the same issues. 

Is it part of the human condition to experience demoralisation to such an extent that we become paralysed? Even in times of peace, it would seem better to "die" from public humiliation while fighting than to die meekly from a broken heart. The Stoics were on to something when they focused on not leaving our happiness to chance but on our own self-reliance.

Courage, then, rather than emanating from an individual's moral state, can be seen as a deliberate choice. We can choose how we live, and we can choose how we die. But being able to make that choice is not something we should take for granted.

In my article in The Spectator to be published later this week, I state:

...my great-grandfather's service, and the service of the many other Australians since federation, gave us the freedom to air our views and to get to the truth of a matter.

That is what I have been trying to do in recent times. But there is a theoretical aspect to it that is part of my soul: free speech. Like Stoic philosophy, liberty is something that connects me to the philosophers of times past. To paraphrase that great man Harold Bloom, when you have an independent, original thought but later read something and discover that your thought was not original, this is not a time to feel sad about your lack of originality but to rejoice in your connection to humanity. I have experienced so many of these moments but they didn't seem important until I read Bloom.

And to paraphrase John Stuart Mill, that great man who had foibles not unlike my own, even if we have stupid ideas they need to be aired so they can be disproven - if we allow people to air their grievances or state their concerns about an idea, we can use these opportunities to uncover the truth of a matter. Better to prove an idea stupid than to let it fester and take on a life of its own.

So, our forefathers fought so we can exercise our right to freedom of speech. That's why I love The Spectator - unlike The Conversation, it doesn't censor ideas that challenge contemporary orthodoxy. I once thought I could research politics as an independent observer, but that is nonsense. I can do so while remaining aloof from groupthink, but I am a participant nonetheless.

And freedom of speech enables us to arrive at the truth of a matter even if it is through a particular:

...contrivance that allows one to assess one's truth as if one were a "dissentient champion, eager for [one's] conversion.

Or at least that is what Mill said. Thanks, Pop. I wish I had met you. I will continue to do my best to honour your legacy. I take that responsibility seriously. God bless.  

COVID-19 and Foreign Aid: Nationalism and Global Development in a New World Order

 

COVID-19 and Foreign Aid: Nationalism and Global Development in a New World Order

Here are the details of my latest book project:

For book details, click here.

For my chapter details, click here.

Book Description

This book provides a timely, critical, and thought-provoking analysis of the implications of the disruption of COVID-19 to the foreign aid and development system, and the extent to which the system is retaining a level of relevance, legitimacy, or coherence.

Drawing on the expertise of key scholars from around the world in the fields of international development, political science, socioeconomics, history, and international relations, the book explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on development aid within an environment of shifting national and regional priorities and interactions. The response is specifically focused on the interrelated themes of political analysis and soft power, the legitimation crisis, poverty, inequality, foreign aid, and the disruption and re-making of the world order. The book argues that complex and multidirectional linkages between politics, economics, society, and the environment are driving changes in the extant development aid system. COVID-19 and Foreign Aid provides a range of critical reflections to shifts in the world order, the rise of nationalism, the strange non-death of neoliberalism, shifts in globalisation, and the evolving impact of COVID as a cross-cutting crisis in the development aid system.

This book will be of interest to researchers and students in the field of health and development studies, decision-makers at government level as well as to those working in or consulting to international aid institutions, regional and bilateral aid agencies, and non-governmental organisations.

Table of Contents

1. Towards a post-COVID world order: A critical analysis

Viktor Jakupec, Max Kelly, and Michael de Percy

2. International multilateralism in a non-hegemonic world

Andrey Kortunov

3. COVID-19 and the decline of the neoliberal paradigm: On the erosion of hegemony in times of crises

Tobias Debiel and Mathieu Rousselin

4. The global dialectics of a pandemic: Between necropolitics and utopian imagination

Nadja Meisterhans

5. The rules-based world order and the notion of legitimacy crisis: Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on foreign aid

Viktor Jakupec

6. Pandemic shock and recession: The adequacy of anti-crisis measures and the role of development assistance

Leonid Grigoryev and Alexandra Morozkina

7. COVAX, vaccine (inter)nationalism and the impact on the Global South experience of COVID-19

Max Kelly and Mary Ana McGlasson

8. Health emergency or economic crisis? Fail forward and de-risking opportunities in IMF COVID loans to Egypt

Lama Tawakkol

9. Institutional exhaustion and foreign aid in the time of COVID-19

Michael de Percy

10. The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact in sub-Saharan Africa: Geostrategic dynamics and challenges for development

Matthias Rompel

11. Economic and social prosperity in time of COVID-19 crisis in the European Union

Angeles Sánchez

12. COVID-19 Impacts in Pacific Island Countries: Making an already bad situation worse

Mark McGillivray

13. COVID-19 vaccines and global health diplomacy: Canada and France compared

Stephen Brown and Morgane Rosier

14. Strong capacity and high trust: Perceptions of crisis management and increased nationalism among Chinese civil servants

Qun Cui, Lisheng Dong, and Tom Christensen

15. China’s inward- and outward-facing identities: Post-COVID challenges for China and the international rules-based order

Yan Bennett

16. Soft power and the politics of foreign aid: The case of Venezuela

Anthea McCarthy-Jones

17. Nationalist politics, anti-vaccination and the limits of the rules-based world order in an era of pandemics: The case of Tanzania

Japhace Poncian

18. COVID-19 crisis and the world (re-)order

Max Kelly, Viktor Jakupec, and Michael de Percy

Editor(s)

Biography

Viktor Jakupec is an Honorary Professor at Deakin University and the University of Potsdam. He is an international development aid consultant and a member of the Leibniz Sozietät der Wissenschaften, Berlin.

Max Kelly is Associate Professor of International and Community Development, and Research Associate at the Centre for Humanitarian Leadership, Deakin University.

Michael de Percy is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Canberra. He was appointed to the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts in 2022.

Reviews

"This edited collection provides an in-depth discussion and analysis of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on foreign aid within a context of the rules-based world order and the geo-political health crisis. In this volume, various political, social, and economic aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic are examined from diverse geo-political vantage points. This highly ground-breaking and timely volume is worthy to be read by scholars, policymakers, practitioners, and students in the fields of geopolitics, political economy, rules-based world order, and foreign aid."

Prof. Dr. Christa Luft, Rector (i.R.) University of Economics, Berlin, Germany

"Financial crises, pandemics, climate change, the growing risk of a nuclear conflagration, the growing assertiveness of China and Russia, and the new Cold War are accelerating the decline of the West’s confidence on the world stage. This will see traditional foreign aid and the model of global development that characterised the past 70 years disappear. To understand how this is happening, and how the foreign aid-global development nexus will unfold in coming years, this book is indispensable reading."

Prof. Dr. Wim Naudé, University College Cork, Ireland

"Global cooperation is seriously challenged when it is needed more than ever. This book considers the problem from all angles in a well-balanced intersecting manner. The deeply thought-provoking exploration is worth immersing oneself in."

Dr. Tetsushi Sonobe, Dean and CEO, Asian Development Bank Institute

My chapter details:

Institutional exhaustion and foreign aid in the time of COVID-19

ByMichael de Percy

BookCOVID-19 and Foreign Aid

ABSTRACT

The multilateral rules-based world order was already under threat from the rise of populism, China, and instability in US politics before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global diplomacy and brought about far-reaching economic crises. In response, nation-states have adapted to emerging nationalism amid the US–China trade war. Such multifaceted disruption forced nation-states to re-evaluate their traditional foreign aid partnerships, resulting in a weakened commitment to existing multilateral institutions. Such institutional exhaustion provided opportunities for China and Russia to challenge the existing rules-based world order through foreign aid. The result has been a parallel, albeit novel, world order for developing nations, resembling a competing form of neo-Cold War diplomacy. The foreign relations strategies of the US under Biden have resulted in a fragile balance of competition and cooperation between the major global powers, supported by the UK and Australian leadership and the strategic interests of other countries. This chapter examines foreign aid amid changing patterns of geopolitics in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and multilateral institutional exhaustion. It focuses on the shift in global geopolitics towards a new multipolarity that threatens to undo the much-lauded success of global capitalism and the rules-based world order upon which such success is presupposed.