Mathew Davies
Biographic Data
| ID | 4492419 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mathew Davies |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mathew |
| FAMILY NAME | Davies |
| SIGNATURE | DAVIES M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Australian National University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6133-1239 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 87 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
An embarrassment of changes
The COVID-19 pandemic poses fundamental challenges to the ways that the discipline of International Relations makes sense of our world. Framing the pandemic as both a social disaster and as part of an ongoing polycrisis, this work argues that existing responses to COVID-19 are, whatever their insights, partial and limited, predicated on assumptions about how we know the world now shown to be problematic. This situation calls less for some defined…
Performances of Trust
What happens when trust ends? This article identifies a hitherto overlooked possibility, a performance of trust. Comprising ritualized diplomacy, performances of trust communicate the products of trust, the values that define membership of an international organization, but do not constitute those values. Realizing the obscuring, subjunctive, orthopraxic, and located nature of these ritual performances helps distinguish performance from other soc…
How regional organizations respond to human rights
This article builds a framework comparing how different regional organizations respond to human rights. Moving beyond Eurocentric beliefs that organizations either reject or unambiguously adopt rights, I present four categories of response: antagonism, ritualism, supportive, and embracing. I examine these categories conceptually and empirically, providing examples of how different regional organizations exemplify these categories. Next I detail h…
Ritual and Region
Why has ASEAN endured and why do members, many of whom remain comparatively weak and poor, continue to invest in the regional project? Existing answers, either that ASEAN is meaningless or that it has transformed regional affairs through the creation of shared values are both misplaced. Neither argument is empirically plausible. Instead, this Element argues that ASEAN has and continues to serve state interest through the creation of a shared ritu…
Regional organisations and enduring defective democratic members
Instead of asking whether regional organisations can promote democracy, a well-established conclusion, this article asks what type of democracy regional organisations can promote. Where their commitments to democracy are weak, regional organisations can promote the transition away from authoritarianism but cannot drive that process to completion with the creation of embedded liberal democracies. Under such circumstances regional organisations ser…
Important but De-centred
In this article, I argue that to capture ASEAN's importance in the promotion and protection of human rights requires embedding the analysis of what ASEAN says and does into an awareness of the broader human rights space of which it is a part. The Southeast Asian human rights space has four dimensions: ASEAN, domestic institutions, civil society, and the global United Nations system, all of which are increasingly linked together in a complex whole…
Assessing Indonesia's Normative Influence
This article takes a critical stance on Indonesia's normative influence. Whilst normative influence does help explain why Indonesia matters beyond the widespread consensus that it is weak, we also feel that its influence is often overstated. We examine three components of Indonesia's normative influence, modelling, diplomacy and civil society activism. In each component we assess the strengths and weaknesses of Indonesia and identify where wishfu…
Academic citizenships
To enquire about ethical academic conduct is to ask what are our obligations and to whom do we owe them? My claim is that our obligations in the realms of research and education go far beyond the approach that is promoted in the bureaucratised and incentivised structures of the neoliberal university
The ethics of scholarship in a changing region
The ethics of scholarship in a changing region." Australian Journal of International Affairs, 71(1), pp. 1–2
Women and Development, Not Gender and Politics
A community of practice
Despite change in the aims, institutions and informal diplomacy of ASEAN since 1997, the formal diplomatic code of conduct remains locked in a traditionalist mode first outlined in the 1970s. Existing approaches from mainstream International Relations theorising are unable to adequately explain this continuity and change. The recent ‘practice turn’ in theorising offers distinct explanatory advantage, which this article illustrates by arguing that…
Realising Rights
This book presents the hitherto unstudied variety of ways that human rights socialisation is attempted in the context of regional organisations, arguing that existing conceptual accounts of this phenomenon need to be expanded to best explain this diversity. By placing the study of the European Union’s relationship with Turkey alongside parallel studies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations engagement with Myanmar, and the Organization of …
An Agreement to Disagree
ASEAN's engagement with human rights culminated in the creation of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration in 2012. The Declaration is fascinating in three ways: Its institutional origins are surprising, it was agreed upon by states with very different positions on the role of human rights domestically, and it both contains commitments far in advance of some members and is at the same time dangerously regressive. The three leading frameworks that curr…
States of Compliance
The status of human rights in Southeast Asia is under increasing scrutiny as the process of community building culminates in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR). National, regional, and external civil society actors now populate the ASEAN “human rights space” pressuring member governments and ASEAN institutions. This article investigates the status of human rights in the 10 membe…
Realising Rights
Asean and human rights norms
ASEAN's engagement with human rights is characterized by an action-identity gap; member states have created impressive regional commitments while continually violating rights domestically. This gap suggests that member states of ASEAN have used rights for political ends, the enhancement of ASEAN's legitimacy in the eyes of critics, not because they are understood as morally correct. The strategic use of norms indicates that existing recourse to c…
The legacy of Atatürk
There exists a significant and sustained difference between the ability of the European Union to successfully socialise those member states who have joined since the fall of Communism, and its apparent inability to similarly socialise Turkey. Despite some
Rethinking International Relations Theory
Rethinking International Relations Theory." Australian Journal of International Affairs, 67(2), pp. 247–248
Explaining the Vientiane Action Programme
Existing explanations for the emergence of human rights on the political agenda in ASEAN focus either on the role of external pressure on ASEAN member states to ‘do something’, or on the way those states copied the form, but not the function, of other regional organisations such as the EU. Both approaches tacitly acknowledge that given the strong preference for intergovernmental governance displayed by ASEAN, regardless of interpretations, that i…
Rhetorical Inaction? Compliance and the Human Rights Council of the United Nations
The Human Rights Council of the United Nations was inaugurated in 2006 to much acclaim. Promising to defuse the tensions that had overwhelmed its maligned predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights, the council is based on the belief that depoliticizing human-rights discussions would enhance the effectiveness of the United Nations in the realm of human-rights promotion. This article investigates just what type of compliance pressure the council,…
An embarrassment of changes
The COVID-19 pandemic poses fundamental challenges to the ways that the discipline of International Relations makes sense of our world. Framing the pandemic as both a social disaster and as part of an ongoing polycrisis, this work argues that existing responses to COVID-19 are, whatever their insights, partial and limited, predicated on assumptions about how we know the world now shown to be problematic. This situation calls less for some defined…
A community of practice
Despite change in the aims, institutions and informal diplomacy of ASEAN since 1997, the formal diplomatic code of conduct remains locked in a traditionalist mode first outlined in the 1970s. Existing approaches from mainstream International Relations theorising are unable to adequately explain this continuity and change. The recent ‘practice turn’ in theorising offers distinct explanatory advantage, which this article illustrates by arguing that…
States of Compliance
The status of human rights in Southeast Asia is under increasing scrutiny as the process of community building culminates in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR). National, regional, and external civil society actors now populate the ASEAN “human rights space” pressuring member governments and ASEAN institutions. This article investigates the status of human rights in the 10 membe…
Asean and human rights norms
ASEAN's engagement with human rights is characterized by an action-identity gap; member states have created impressive regional commitments while continually violating rights domestically. This gap suggests that member states of ASEAN have used rights for political ends, the enhancement of ASEAN's legitimacy in the eyes of critics, not because they are understood as morally correct. The strategic use of norms indicates that existing recourse to c…
Ritual and Region
Why has ASEAN endured and why do members, many of whom remain comparatively weak and poor, continue to invest in the regional project? Existing answers, either that ASEAN is meaningless or that it has transformed regional affairs through the creation of shared values are both misplaced. Neither argument is empirically plausible. Instead, this Element argues that ASEAN has and continues to serve state interest through the creation of a shared ritu…
Explaining the Vientiane Action Programme
Existing explanations for the emergence of human rights on the political agenda in ASEAN focus either on the role of external pressure on ASEAN member states to ‘do something’, or on the way those states copied the form, but not the function, of other regional organisations such as the EU. Both approaches tacitly acknowledge that given the strong preference for intergovernmental governance displayed by ASEAN, regardless of interpretations, that i…
Regional organisations and enduring defective democratic members
Instead of asking whether regional organisations can promote democracy, a well-established conclusion, this article asks what type of democracy regional organisations can promote. Where their commitments to democracy are weak, regional organisations can promote the transition away from authoritarianism but cannot drive that process to completion with the creation of embedded liberal democracies. Under such circumstances regional organisations ser…
An Agreement to Disagree
ASEAN's engagement with human rights culminated in the creation of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration in 2012. The Declaration is fascinating in three ways: Its institutional origins are surprising, it was agreed upon by states with very different positions on the role of human rights domestically, and it both contains commitments far in advance of some members and is at the same time dangerously regressive. The three leading frameworks that curr…
Rhetorical Inaction? Compliance and the Human Rights Council of the United Nations
The Human Rights Council of the United Nations was inaugurated in 2006 to much acclaim. Promising to defuse the tensions that had overwhelmed its maligned predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights, the council is based on the belief that depoliticizing human-rights discussions would enhance the effectiveness of the United Nations in the realm of human-rights promotion. This article investigates just what type of compliance pressure the council,…
How regional organizations respond to human rights
This article builds a framework comparing how different regional organizations respond to human rights. Moving beyond Eurocentric beliefs that organizations either reject or unambiguously adopt rights, I present four categories of response: antagonism, ritualism, supportive, and embracing. I examine these categories conceptually and empirically, providing examples of how different regional organizations exemplify these categories. Next I detail h…
Important but De-centred
In this article, I argue that to capture ASEAN's importance in the promotion and protection of human rights requires embedding the analysis of what ASEAN says and does into an awareness of the broader human rights space of which it is a part. The Southeast Asian human rights space has four dimensions: ASEAN, domestic institutions, civil society, and the global United Nations system, all of which are increasingly linked together in a complex whole…
Performances of Trust
What happens when trust ends? This article identifies a hitherto overlooked possibility, a performance of trust. Comprising ritualized diplomacy, performances of trust communicate the products of trust, the values that define membership of an international organization, but do not constitute those values. Realizing the obscuring, subjunctive, orthopraxic, and located nature of these ritual performances helps distinguish performance from other soc…
The ethics of scholarship in a changing region
The ethics of scholarship in a changing region." Australian Journal of International Affairs, 71(1), pp. 1–2
Rhetorical Inaction? Compliance and the Human Rights Council of the United Nations
The Human Rights Council of the United Nations was inaugurated in 2006 to much acclaim. Promising to defuse the tensions that had overwhelmed its maligned predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights, the council is based on the belief that depoliticizing human-rights discussions would enhance the effectiveness of the United Nations in the realm of human-rights promotion. This article investigates just what type of compliance pressure the council,…
Asean and human rights norms
ASEAN's engagement with human rights is characterized by an action-identity gap; member states have created impressive regional commitments while continually violating rights domestically. This gap suggests that member states of ASEAN have used rights for political ends, the enhancement of ASEAN's legitimacy in the eyes of critics, not because they are understood as morally correct. The strategic use of norms indicates that existing recourse to c…
The legacy of Atatürk
There exists a significant and sustained difference between the ability of the European Union to successfully socialise those member states who have joined since the fall of Communism, and its apparent inability to similarly socialise Turkey. Despite some
Rethinking International Relations Theory
Rethinking International Relations Theory." Australian Journal of International Affairs, 67(2), pp. 247–248
Explaining the Vientiane Action Programme
Existing explanations for the emergence of human rights on the political agenda in ASEAN focus either on the role of external pressure on ASEAN member states to ‘do something’, or on the way those states copied the form, but not the function, of other regional organisations such as the EU. Both approaches tacitly acknowledge that given the strong preference for intergovernmental governance displayed by ASEAN, regardless of interpretations, that i…
Realising Rights
This book presents the hitherto unstudied variety of ways that human rights socialisation is attempted in the context of regional organisations, arguing that existing conceptual accounts of this phenomenon need to be expanded to best explain this diversity. By placing the study of the European Union’s relationship with Turkey alongside parallel studies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations engagement with Myanmar, and the Organization of …
An Agreement to Disagree
ASEAN's engagement with human rights culminated in the creation of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration in 2012. The Declaration is fascinating in three ways: Its institutional origins are surprising, it was agreed upon by states with very different positions on the role of human rights domestically, and it both contains commitments far in advance of some members and is at the same time dangerously regressive. The three leading frameworks that curr…
States of Compliance
The status of human rights in Southeast Asia is under increasing scrutiny as the process of community building culminates in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR). National, regional, and external civil society actors now populate the ASEAN “human rights space” pressuring member governments and ASEAN institutions. This article investigates the status of human rights in the 10 membe…
Realising Rights
A community of practice
Despite change in the aims, institutions and informal diplomacy of ASEAN since 1997, the formal diplomatic code of conduct remains locked in a traditionalist mode first outlined in the 1970s. Existing approaches from mainstream International Relations theorising are unable to adequately explain this continuity and change. The recent ‘practice turn’ in theorising offers distinct explanatory advantage, which this article illustrates by arguing that…
Important but De-centred
In this article, I argue that to capture ASEAN's importance in the promotion and protection of human rights requires embedding the analysis of what ASEAN says and does into an awareness of the broader human rights space of which it is a part. The Southeast Asian human rights space has four dimensions: ASEAN, domestic institutions, civil society, and the global United Nations system, all of which are increasingly linked together in a complex whole…
Assessing Indonesia's Normative Influence
This article takes a critical stance on Indonesia's normative influence. Whilst normative influence does help explain why Indonesia matters beyond the widespread consensus that it is weak, we also feel that its influence is often overstated. We examine three components of Indonesia's normative influence, modelling, diplomacy and civil society activism. In each component we assess the strengths and weaknesses of Indonesia and identify where wishfu…
Academic citizenships
To enquire about ethical academic conduct is to ask what are our obligations and to whom do we owe them? My claim is that our obligations in the realms of research and education go far beyond the approach that is promoted in the bureaucratised and incentivised structures of the neoliberal university
The ethics of scholarship in a changing region
The ethics of scholarship in a changing region." Australian Journal of International Affairs, 71(1), pp. 1–2
Women and Development, Not Gender and Politics
Regional organisations and enduring defective democratic members
Instead of asking whether regional organisations can promote democracy, a well-established conclusion, this article asks what type of democracy regional organisations can promote. Where their commitments to democracy are weak, regional organisations can promote the transition away from authoritarianism but cannot drive that process to completion with the creation of embedded liberal democracies. Under such circumstances regional organisations ser…
Ritual and Region
Why has ASEAN endured and why do members, many of whom remain comparatively weak and poor, continue to invest in the regional project? Existing answers, either that ASEAN is meaningless or that it has transformed regional affairs through the creation of shared values are both misplaced. Neither argument is empirically plausible. Instead, this Element argues that ASEAN has and continues to serve state interest through the creation of a shared ritu…
How regional organizations respond to human rights
This article builds a framework comparing how different regional organizations respond to human rights. Moving beyond Eurocentric beliefs that organizations either reject or unambiguously adopt rights, I present four categories of response: antagonism, ritualism, supportive, and embracing. I examine these categories conceptually and empirically, providing examples of how different regional organizations exemplify these categories. Next I detail h…
An embarrassment of changes
The COVID-19 pandemic poses fundamental challenges to the ways that the discipline of International Relations makes sense of our world. Framing the pandemic as both a social disaster and as part of an ongoing polycrisis, this work argues that existing responses to COVID-19 are, whatever their insights, partial and limited, predicated on assumptions about how we know the world now shown to be problematic. This situation calls less for some defined…
Performances of Trust
What happens when trust ends? This article identifies a hitherto overlooked possibility, a performance of trust. Comprising ritualized diplomacy, performances of trust communicate the products of trust, the values that define membership of an international organization, but do not constitute those values. Realizing the obscuring, subjunctive, orthopraxic, and located nature of these ritual performances helps distinguish performance from other soc…
Political science (18 works) · Politics (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Law (15 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography (9 works) · Human rights (8 works) · Political economy (8 works) · Economics (6 works) · International relations (5 works)