Asia Research Centre - Staff

My research interests are diverse, traversing the fields of security, development and aid, governance, political geography and international relations. I am particularly interested in understanding the evolving nature of statehood and political agency under conditions of globalisation. I have written extensively on issues of state building, non-traditional security, risk and risk management, regional governance and Australian development and security policy. My work has been published in a book, Regulating Statehood: State Building and the Transformation of the Global Order (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), and in journals such as Political Studies, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Third World Quarterly, The Pacific Review and The Australian Journal of International Relations.

I am interested in supervising postgraduate students in the areas of security and development in the Asia-Pacific; state building and post-conflict reconstruction; global governance; Asia-Pacific regionalism; Australian foreign policy; and state theory and new modes of governance.

Publications
Books Regulating Statehood: State Building and the Transformation of the Global Order (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Edited Collections with Florian P. Kühn) ‘Risk, Risk Management and International Relations’, International Relations 25, no. 3 (2011). (with Kanishka Jayasuriya) ‘Risk, regulation and new modes of regional governance in the Asia-Pacific’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 63, no. 3 (2009). Journal Articles (with William Clapton) ‘The Domestic Politics of International Hierarchy: Risk Management and the Reconstitution of International Society’, International Politics, forthcoming. Mitigating the Risk to Primitive Accumulation: The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands and the Logging Boom of the 2000s’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, forthcoming. (with Florian P. Kühn) ‘Risk, Risk Management and International Relations’, International Relations 25, no. 3 (2011), pp. 275-79. 'State Transformation, Territorial Politics and the Management of Transnational Risk', International Relations 25, no. 3 (2011), pp. 381-97. (with Kanishka Jayasuriya) ‘Regulatory Regionalism and the Dynamics of Territorial Politics: The Case of the Asia-Pacific Region’, Political Studies 59, no. 1 (2011), pp. 20-37. 'Governing Disorder: The Australian Federal Police and Australia's New Regional Frontier', The Pacific Review, 22(5), 2009: 549-74. 'The Region Within: RAMSI, the Pacific Plan and New Modes of Governance in the South Pacific', Australian Journal of International Affairs 63(3), 2009: 348-60. 'Beyond Methodological Nationalism, But Where To for the Study of Regional Governance?', Australian Journal of International Affairs 63(3), 2009: 430-41. 'Capacity and Its Fallacies: International State Building as State Transformation', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 38(1), 2009: 55-81. 'State Building or Crisis Management? The Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands and the Limits of State Transformation', Third World Quarterly, 30(1), 2009: 35-52. 'Risk Management, Neoliberalism and the Securitisation of the Australian Aid Program', Australian Journal of International Affairs, 62(3), September 2008:. 357-371 . (with Toby Carroll) ‘Good Governance and Security: the Limits of Australia’s New Aid Programme’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 37, no. 4 (2007), pp. 410-30. 'The Trouble with RAMSI: Reexamining the Roots of Conflict in Solomon Islands', The Contemporary Pacific, 19(2), 2007: 409-41. (with Toby Carroll) ‘Why Development Requires Less Nuance and More Class: a Response to Patrick Kilby’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 61, no. 3 (2007), pp. 306-11. 'Failed State or a Failed Paradigm? State Capacity and the Limits of Institutionalism', Journal of International Relations and Development, 10(2), 2007: 122-49. Book chapters (with Kanishka Jayasuriya) ‘Regulatory Regionalism in Asia’, in Mark Beeson and Richard Stubbs (eds) Routledge Handbook of Asian Regionalism (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), forthcoming. ‘Reality Check: the Critique of the Liberal Peace Meets the Politics of State-Building’, in Susanna Campbell, David Chandler and Meera Sabaratnam (eds) A Liberal Peace? The Problems and Practices of Peacebuilding (London: Zed Books, 2011), forthcoming Conference Papers 'State-Building, Risk Management and Primitive Accumulation in Solomon Islands’, paper presented at the workshop New Approaches to Building Markets in Asia, Singapore, 18-19 April, 2011, available as Working Paper 11, Centre on Asia and Globalisation, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy website. (with Lee Jones) ‘Non-Traditional Security and New Modes of Security Governance in Southeast Asia’, paper presented at the annual convention of the International Studies Association’, Montreal, 16-19 March 2011. ‘The Future of State-Building: Beyond the Crisis of Liberal Peacebuilding’, paper presented at the annual convention of the International Studies Association’, Montreal, 16-19 March 2011. 'State-Building, Counterinsurgency, and the Rescaling of the State in Iraq', paper presented at the Australian Political Studies Association conference, University of Melbourne, 27-29 September 2010. 'State Transformation and the Rescaling of Security: Understanding the Politics of Non-Traditional Security', paper presented at the European Southeast Asian Studies Association conference, Gothenburg, 26-28 August 2010. 'Theorising Regions or Theorising Statehood? Rethinking the Theory and Method of Comparative Regionalism', paper presented at the GARNET workshop 'Comparative Regional Economic Governance: Learning from Crises?', Peking University, Beijing, 28-30 June 2010. 'To Boldly Go? Risky Space, State Transformation and the Territorial Politics of Risk Management', paper presented at the 51st Annual International Studies Association conference, New Orleans, 17-20 February 2010. 'The Region Within: RAMSI, the Pacific Plan and New Modes of Governance in the South Pacific', paper presented at the New Modes of Governance in the Asia Pacific conference, Perth, 12-13 February 2009. 'The Fallacy of Capacity: is it State Building or State Transformation', paper presented at the 49th Annual International Studies Association conference, San Francisco, 25-29 March 2008. Media and Other Contributions with Toby Carroll) ‘A Crisis of Politics’, Le Monde Diplomatique, English edition, 1 October 2011. (with Toby Carroll) ‘It’s not booming for everyone’, The Canberra Times, 12 September 2011, p. 9. (with Toby Carroll) ‘The Threat to Liberal Democracy’, The Bangkok Post, 18 August 2011, p. 9. Reproduced in the Jakarta Globe, 19 August 2011. (with Toby Carroll) ‘The political consequences of Australia’s resources boom’, The Australian Broadcast Corporation, The Drum Unleashed 18 August 2011. Reproduced in Australian Policy Online, 23 August 2011. ‘Moti Case Highlights Pitfalls of Global Policing’ National Times, 22 December 2009. (with Toby Carroll) ‘The politics of the financial crisis’, Bangkok Post, 7 October 2008, reproduced in Australian Policy Online on 9 October 2008. ‘Julian Moti and the future of RAMSI’, Australian Policy Online, 18 July 2007. (with Toby Carroll) ‘Our parlous region’, The Age, 13 January 2007. ‘Howard’s Doctrine’, On Line Opinion, 28 November 2006. ‘Cole Removal about Politics, not Diplomacy’, The Age, 15 September 2006. (with Toby Carroll). ‘Aid Misses the Mark’, The Age, June 8, 2006. Reproduced in Australian Policy Online, 9 June 2006 ‘What Really Went Wrong in Solomons’, The Age, 24 April 2006, p. 11.'Global Governance, Local Rule: Counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan as Territorial Politics', Asia Research Centre Working Paper No. 164, Perth: Murdoch University, April 2010. Other non-refereed publications: ‘Bringing State Theory Back In: Why We Should Let Go of “Failed States”’ Global Dialogue 13, no. 1 (2011). ‘Global Governance, Local Rule: Counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan as Territorial Politics’, Asia Research Centre Working Paper No. 164, Perth: Murdoch University, April 2010. (with Toby Carroll) ‘AusAID’s White Paper and the Limits of Market-led Development’, ASIAVIEW, 16 (1), September 2006. (with Toby Carroll) ‘The Politics of AusAID’s White Paper’, Policy Commentary on Australia’s White Paper on Overseas Aid, The Australian Institute of International Affairs, July 2006.
Projects
I was recently awarded a three-year fully funded Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship for a joint Discovery Project with Dr Lee Jones from Queen Mary, University of London, to commence in 2011. The project, entitled 'Securitisation and the governance of non-traditional security in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific', is a comparative study of the factors shaping the way non-traditional security problems are defined and governed in the two regions of the world closest to Australia. My sole-authored book, Regulating Statehood: State Building and the Transformation of the Global Order was published in 2010 by Palgrave Macmillan. The book engages critically with the literature on state building in so-called failed or fragile states. It argues that prevalent approaches, whether policy-driven or critical, are limited by their propensity to evaluate state building interventions in terms of whether they help build 'more' or 'less' state, with the state understood in terms of an ideal-typical and ahistorical neoliberal or neo-Weberian construct. In contrast, I argue in the book that these interventions are creating a new form of transnationally regulated statehood that needs to be understood in its own terms, not as an aberration. Using case-studies from the Asia-Pacific, I analyse the politics of state building and the implications for contemporary statehood and the global order. Specifically, I examine the effects of state building on the distribution, production and reproduction of political power: Who rules and how? What conflicts are engendered or exacerbated by state building, and how are they managed? What coalitions support the production or reproduction of power relationships associated with these interventions?
Contact Details
Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, South Street, Murdoch, WA 6150. Tel: 9360 6228, Fax: 9360 6381, Email: s.hameiri@murdoch.edu.au

Publications

Books

Regulating Statehood: State Building and the Transformation of the Global Order (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
Edited Collections
with Florian P. Kühn) ‘Risk, Risk Management and International Relations’, International Relations 25, no. 3 (2011).
(with Kanishka Jayasuriya) ‘Risk, regulation and new modes of regional governance in the Asia-Pacific’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 63, no. 3 (2009).
Journal Articles
(with William Clapton) ‘The Domestic Politics of International Hierarchy: Risk Management and the Reconstitution of International Society’, International Politics, forthcoming.
Mitigating the Risk to Primitive Accumulation: The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands and the Logging Boom of the 2000s’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, forthcoming.
(with Florian P. Kühn) ‘Risk, Risk Management and International Relations’, International Relations 25, no. 3 (2011), pp. 275-79.
'State Transformation, Territorial Politics and the Management of Transnational Risk', International Relations 25, no. 3 (2011), pp. 381-97.
(with Kanishka Jayasuriya) ‘Regulatory Regionalism and the Dynamics of Territorial Politics: The Case of the Asia-Pacific Region’, Political Studies 59, no. 1 (2011), pp. 20-37.
'Governing Disorder: The Australian Federal Police and Australia's New Regional Frontier', The Pacific Review, 22(5), 2009: 549-74.
'The Region Within: RAMSI, the Pacific Plan and New Modes of Governance in the South Pacific', Australian Journal of International Affairs 63(3), 2009: 348-60.
'Beyond Methodological Nationalism, But Where To for the Study of Regional Governance?', Australian Journal of International Affairs 63(3), 2009: 430-41.
'Capacity and Its Fallacies: International State Building as State Transformation', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 38(1), 2009: 55-81.
'State Building or Crisis Management? The Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands and the Limits of State Transformation', Third World Quarterly, 30(1), 2009: 35-52.
'Risk Management, Neoliberalism and the Securitisation of the Australian Aid Program', Australian Journal of International Affairs, 62(3), September 2008:. 357-371 .
(with Toby Carroll) ‘Good Governance and Security: the Limits of Australia’s New Aid Programme’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 37, no. 4 (2007), pp. 410-30.
'The Trouble with RAMSI: Reexamining the Roots of Conflict in Solomon Islands', The Contemporary Pacific, 19(2), 2007: 409-41.
(with Toby Carroll) ‘Why Development Requires Less Nuance and More Class: a Response to Patrick Kilby’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 61, no. 3 (2007), pp. 306-11.
'Failed State or a Failed Paradigm? State Capacity and the Limits of Institutionalism', Journal of International Relations and Development, 10(2), 2007: 122-49.
Book chapters
(with Kanishka Jayasuriya) ‘Regulatory Regionalism in Asia’, in Mark Beeson and Richard Stubbs (eds) Routledge Handbook of Asian Regionalism (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), forthcoming.
‘Reality Check: the Critique of the Liberal Peace Meets the Politics of State-Building’, in Susanna Campbell, David Chandler and Meera Sabaratnam (eds) A Liberal Peace? The Problems and Practices of Peacebuilding (London: Zed Books, 2011), forthcoming
Conference Papers
'State-Building, Risk Management and Primitive Accumulation in Solomon Islands’, paper presented at the workshop New Approaches to Building Markets in Asia, Singapore, 18-19 April, 2011, available as Working Paper 11, Centre on Asia and Globalisation, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy website.
(with Lee Jones) ‘Non-Traditional Security and New Modes of Security Governance in Southeast Asia’, paper presented at the annual convention of the International Studies Association’, Montreal, 16-19 March 2011.
‘The Future of State-Building: Beyond the Crisis of Liberal Peacebuilding’, paper presented at the annual convention of the International Studies Association’, Montreal, 16-19 March 2011.
'State-Building, Counterinsurgency, and the Rescaling of the State in Iraq', paper presented at the Australian Political Studies Association conference, University of Melbourne, 27-29 September 2010.
'State Transformation and the Rescaling of Security: Understanding the Politics of Non-Traditional Security', paper presented at the European Southeast Asian Studies Association conference, Gothenburg, 26-28 August 2010.
'Theorising Regions or Theorising Statehood? Rethinking the Theory and Method of Comparative Regionalism', paper presented at the GARNET workshop 'Comparative Regional Economic Governance: Learning from Crises?', Peking University, Beijing, 28-30 June 2010.
'To Boldly Go? Risky Space, State Transformation and the Territorial Politics of Risk Management', paper presented at the 51st Annual International Studies Association conference, New Orleans, 17-20 February 2010.
'The Region Within: RAMSI, the Pacific Plan and New Modes of Governance in the South Pacific', paper presented at the New Modes of Governance in the Asia Pacific conference, Perth, 12-13 February 2009.
'The Fallacy of Capacity: is it State Building or State Transformation', paper presented at the 49th Annual International Studies Association conference, San Francisco, 25-29 March 2008.
Media and Other Contributions
with Toby Carroll) ‘A Crisis of Politics’, Le Monde Diplomatique, English edition, 1 October 2011.
(with Toby Carroll) ‘It’s not booming for everyone’, The Canberra Times, 12 September 2011, p. 9.
(with Toby Carroll) ‘The Threat to Liberal Democracy’, The Bangkok Post, 18 August 2011, p. 9. Reproduced in the Jakarta Globe, 19 August 2011.
(with Toby Carroll) ‘The political consequences of Australia’s resources boom’, The Australian Broadcast Corporation, The Drum Unleashed 18 August 2011. Reproduced in Australian Policy Online, 23 August 2011.
‘Moti Case Highlights Pitfalls of Global Policing’ National Times, 22 December 2009.
(with Toby Carroll) ‘The politics of the financial crisis’, Bangkok Post, 7 October 2008, reproduced in Australian Policy Online on 9 October 2008.
‘Julian Moti and the future of RAMSI’, Australian Policy Online, 18 July 2007.
(with Toby Carroll) ‘Our parlous region’, The Age, 13 January 2007.
‘Howard’s Doctrine’, On Line Opinion, 28 November 2006.
‘Cole Removal about Politics, not Diplomacy’, The Age, 15 September 2006.
(with Toby Carroll). ‘Aid Misses the Mark’, The Age, June 8, 2006. Reproduced in Australian Policy Online, 9 June 2006
‘What Really Went Wrong in Solomons’, The Age, 24 April 2006, p. 11.'Global Governance, Local Rule:
Counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan as Territorial Politics', Asia Research Centre Working Paper No. 164, Perth: Murdoch University, April 2010.

Other non-refereed publications:

‘Bringing State Theory Back In: Why We Should Let Go of “Failed States”’ Global Dialogue 13, no. 1 (2011).
‘Global Governance, Local Rule: Counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan as Territorial Politics’, Asia Research Centre Working Paper No. 164, Perth: Murdoch University, April 2010.
(with Toby Carroll) ‘AusAID’s White Paper and the Limits of Market-led Development’, ASIAVIEW, 16 (1), September 2006.
(with Toby Carroll) ‘The Politics of AusAID’s White Paper’, Policy Commentary on Australia’s White Paper on Overseas Aid, The Australian Institute of International Affairs, July 2006.

Projects

I was recently awarded a three-year fully funded Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship for a joint Discovery Project with Dr Lee Jones from Queen Mary, University of London, to commence in 2011. The project, entitled 'Securitisation and the governance of non-traditional security in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific', is a comparative study of the factors shaping the way non-traditional security problems are defined and governed in the two regions of the world closest to Australia.
My sole-authored book, Regulating Statehood: State Building and the Transformation of the Global Order was published in 2010 by Palgrave Macmillan. The book engages critically with the literature on state building in so-called failed or fragile states. It argues that prevalent approaches, whether policy-driven or critical, are limited by their propensity to evaluate state building interventions in terms of whether they help build 'more' or 'less' state, with the state understood in terms of an ideal-typical and ahistorical neoliberal or neo-Weberian construct. In contrast, I argue in the book that these interventions are creating a new form of transnationally regulated statehood that needs to be understood in its own terms, not as an aberration. Using case-studies from the Asia-Pacific, I analyse the politics of state building and the implications for contemporary statehood and the global order. Specifically, I examine the effects of state building on the distribution, production and reproduction of political power: Who rules and how? What conflicts are engendered or exacerbated by state building, and how are they managed? What coalitions support the production or reproduction of power relationships associated with these interventions?

Contact Details

Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, South Street, Murdoch, WA 6150. Tel: 9360 6228, Fax: 9360 6381, Email: s.hameiri@murdoch.edu.au