The Invisible State: The Formation of the Australian State
Cambridge University Press
Edition: 1st Edition, 4/26/1991
EAN 9780521366588, ISBN10: 0521366585
Hardcover, 329 pages, 25.4 x 17.8 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
In the modern State, power rests on the consensus of the citizens. They accord its institutions the authority to regulate society. State theory suggests that this authority is a right to speak on certain matters in certain ways and to have the audience agree with those statements. It is a matter of an authorised language; all others fall into the category of ratbaggery. In this 1991 book, the first major book applying State theory to Australia, Alastair Davidson shows how Australian citizens were formed in the nineteenth century, and how their particular characteristics led to the empowering of a certain language of power: legalism. He further shows that this made the judiciary the most powerful arm of government - unlike countries where the people arm sovereign and the legislature supreme - because the judiciary has the last say on all issues and in its own language.
Acknowledgments
Preface
Prologue
1. Private vices become public benefits
2. The under-keepers
3. Dispossession
4. The house that Jack built
5. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The sovereignty of the law
6. The Trojan horse
7. 'Suffer little children'
8. A state for a continent
9. '… the triumph of the people'
Epilogue
Notes
Select bibliography
Index.