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Rémy Davison
Rémy Davison is Jean Monnet Chair in Politics and Economics at Monash University. He gained his Ph.D. at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of Foreign Policies of the Great and Emerging Powers (2008), The Political Economy of Single Market Europe (2011) and co-author of The New Global Politics of the Asia-Pacific: Conflict and Cooperation in the Asian Century (2018). He covered the Eurozone crisis for The Conversation throughout 2011–15. He regularly advises governments on trade, security, industry and monetary policy issues. His forthcoming book is The Political Economy of the Eurozone Crises.
Democracy won the Cold War. As East Germans breached the Berlin Wall in November 1989 to screams of joy, a young KGB officer watched the concrete crash to the ground. Systematically, he destroyed sensitive Soviet diplomatic papers in the East Berlin embassy. Ten years later, that KGB officer, Vladimir Putin, would launch his own quiet counter-revolution and re-establish dictatorship in Russia.
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‘History repeats itself,’ Karl Marx wrote presciently in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. ‘The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.’ The central themes of Hal Brands and Charles Edel’s The Lessons of Tragedy are clear. In the developed world, we are complacent about world order, democracy, and civil society. But the ancient Greeks knew, from endless wars with Sparta ... (read more)
There is a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail outside a castle, brimming with French men-at-arms, who taunt King Arthur and his knights remorselessly, while the Britons are convinced that the Holy Grail lies behind the drawbridge. The Grail was, of course, membership of the Common Market, to which President Charles de Gaulle had denied Britain entry for a decade. It was the Gallic ‘Non’ ... (read more)
In 1996 the pre-eminent political economist Susan Strange published her final book, The Retreat of the State. Strange had dedicated most of her career to studying the ability of the state to tame the power of international finance. The nexus between state and firm had empowered the United States for more than a century; Washington reconstructed the world order after 1945, resurrecting its former e ... (read more)
What’s an accountant’s favourite book? 50 Shades of Grey. But in a world of transfer pricing and Special Purpose Entities, suddenly accounting isn’t funny anymore. A 1976 Congressional report noted that the Big Eight accounting firms controlled ‘virtually all aspects of accounting and auditing in the US’. Multinationals, presidents, prime ministers, and pro tennis players hide their vast ... (read more)
Duumvirates frequently dominate politics, irrespective of whether they are partners or rivals: Napoleon and Talleyrand; Nixon and Kissinger; Mao and Deng. But few second bananas survive history’s vicissitudes. A dwindling portion of the Australian public might still recognise the names of Robert Menzies and John Curtin, but one doubts whether anyone outside the field of diplomacy still recalls R ... (read more)