Postgraduate - Politics and International Relations
Bachelor of Arts (Hons) First Class – UTAS
| Contact Campus | Sandy Bay Campus |
| Building | Social Sciences Building |
| Room Reference | 412 |
| Telephone | +61 3 62262947 |
| W.McLean@utas.edu.au |
Units Tutored:
· Introduction to International Relations
· Introduction to New Global Politics
· Introduction to Politics and Policy
· Great Power Foreign Policies
· Order, Violence and Justice
· Australian Foreign Policy
· Politics of International Relations
· International Security
International Studies Association (Member)
Australian Institute of International Affairs (Member)
Australian Postgraduate Award (2011-present)
Tasmanian Honours Scholarship (2010)
Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Prize for Most Outstanding Scholarship (2010)
Athol Townsley Prize for Most Outstanding work in International Relations
International Relations Theory, Securitisation, International Terrorism, Regional Security Complex Theory, Neoclassical realism, Central Asia, Turkey, Australia, Azerbaijan and Mexico, revolution in military affairs
My dissertation examines middle power behaviour and the relationship between systemic external pressures that are expressed within a domestic political context. It does so by developing a neoclassical realist framework to explain how elites frame debates over security policy, and examines this in Turkey, Mexico and Australia as the empirical case studies. Currently the constructivist literature in international politics fetishizes ideational and cultural factors as key variables in shaping state behaviour. Yet, as this thesis demonstrates, the opposite is often the case. Its major finding is that external pressures drive middle power behaviour. Furthermore, ideas and culture are simply tools exploited by elites within middle powers to achieve strategies that ensure state security.
• The debate over military technology: in defence of drones (The Conversation)
• ISA 2012 San Francisco - Sectoral Hierarchy: An Adapted Security Framework for Analysing Turkey
• AACaPCS 2012 - Structure and Resources as Harbingers of Authoritarianism in Azerbaijan
• APSA 2012 - Power and Ideas in Australian Politics
• Regional Security Complex Theory and Insulator States: The Case of Turkey
• Middle East and Central Asian ANU Conference 2012- Managing Change and Continuity in Turkish foreign policy: A neoclassical realist assessment
• The Rise of China and Australia's Foreign Policy (e-IR)