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In the 1970s Australian New Left theorists used the Technocratic Labor thesis to criticize the ALP. This held that middle-class university educated people were taking over the ALP and moving it to the right. Thirty years later there appears to be much substance to their argument. The ALP has increasingly been led by middle-class people and has moved to the right. It has also narrowed the recruiting base for its national parliamentarians, most of who are now groomed within the party and its affiliates rather than being drawn from the wider community. Nonetheless, the political utility of the argument may be questioned since most of the Australian workforce is now in the services sector and many are also middle class and university educated.

The new U.S. Administration, under President George W. Bush, will face opportunities and challenges in re-orienting U.S. diplomacy according to some new concepts its officials espouse. The East Asia Pacific region is still in transition from a Cold War bipolar structure to a regional system whose structures and parameters are not yet fully defined. In the main, as globalization replaces the Cold War, economic relations have supplanted strategic dimensions as the main priority in relations between states. Appropriate diplomacy now could enable a regional security architecture and institutional structure to emerge and secure greater stability for some time. Whether this will occur is far from clear. (Contemp Southeast Asia/DÜI)

Examines US political, economic, and diplomatic history during the twentieth century; argues that the US has shifted from a benign hegemon to an arrogant superpower, and that this will likely generate a hostile world reaction. Historical origins of the imperial state, domestic constraints, post-Cold War US policy in Europe, Asia, and impact of the 1999 Kosovo conflict.