Professor Richard Robison

BA (ANU), MA, PhD (Syd)

Richard Robison has a BA from the Australian National University, an MA with first class honours and a Ph.D in political science from the University of Sydney. He was Professor of Asian and International Politics at Murdoch University from 1990 to 2002 and Director of the Australian Research Council’s Special Centre for Research on Political and Economic Change in Asia from 1994 to 1999 where he led research teams on studies of the new rich in Asia, the Asian economic crisis and political transitions in the region. During this period he was a member of the Australian Government’s Foreign Affairs Advisory Board and the Ausaid Advisory Board as well as a member of the Board of the Australia – Indonesia Institute. In 2001/02 he was awarded a Leverhulme Visiting Professorship at The University of Warwick and had previously held a Fulbright Senior Scholars Award in US. From 2003 to 2006 he was Professor of Political Economy at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.

Professor Robison has published extensively on the politics of markets and the way markets are being fused within authoritarian and populist forms of state authority. In particular he has written on the rise and fall of Soeharto’s Indonesia in this context. His more recent works examine the evolution of neoliberalism as the defining social revolution of our time and the ensuing political conflicts over the institutions of political governance, state authority and social power. In 2005 and 2006 he was convenor of the governance and development project within the EU Framework Six Network of Excellence programme for Global and Regional Governance and Regulation.

Professor Robison has authored, edited or co-edited 14 books. These include; Indonesia: The Rise of Capital (Sydney, Allen and Unwin 1986), Pathways to Asia: the politics of engagement (edited, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1996), Politics and Markets in the Wake of the Asian Economic Crisis (co-edited, London, Routledge, 2000), Reorganising Power in Indonesia: the politics of oligarchy in an age of markets (with Vedi Hadiz, London, Routledge, 2004). His most recent book is The Neoliberal Revolution: Forging the Market State (edited, London, Palgrave 2006). He has also published on issues of political economy, Asian Values, neo-liberalism, governance, corruption and state building in leading international journals, including; World Politics, Pacific Review, Tiers Monde, New Political Economy, Critical Asian Studies, World Development and The Journal of Development Studies.

Richard Robison, Emeritus Professor, Asia Research Centre and School of Politics and International Studies, Murdoch University, Murdoch, Western Australia 6150. Email: R.Robison@murdoch.edu.au