Lowy Institute

In this episode, the Director of Lowy Institute’s Southeast Asia Program, Ben Bland, sits down with Hervé Lemahieu to discuss geopolitics and the coronavirus pandemic. Hervé is the Director of our Asian Power and Diplomacy Program and an expert in global politics. In this episode, our Institute experts discuss how coronavirus created a man-made pandemic of mistrust and chaos, which is testing soci...

In this episode, Lowy Institute’s Director of Research, Alex Oliver, sits down with Jonathan Pryke and Shane McLeod to discuss how the crisis of coronavirus is affecting Australia’s immediate neighbour, the Pacific Islands. Jonathan is the Director of our Pacific Islands Program and an expert on politics, economics and development in the Pacific. Shane directs the Lowy Institute’s Australia-PNG Ne...

In this episode, Lowy Institute’s Executive Director, Michael Fullilove, sits down with Ben Bland, Director of our Southeast Asia Program and resident expert on Indonesia’s political system, to discuss the depth of the challenge facing Australia’s largest neighbour and the response from President Joko Widodo. This episode focuses on how Indonesia, and the rest of Southeast Asia, is faring amid the...

In the second episode of The Director's Chair, Michael Fullilove speaks with Lord Mervyn King about COVID-19, global economic downturn, the UK's response to the virus, Brexit, and what Lord King terms the 'radical uncertainty' of economic forecasting during a global crisis. Lord King served as the Governor of the Bank of England from 2003 to 2013, including the period of the global financial crisi...

In this episode, Lowy Institute’s Director of Research, Alex Oliver, sits down with Richard McGregor, our resident senior China expert and author of several books on China’s politics and government. This episode focuses on the story of China. Our Institute experts discuss US-China power competition, including the recent expulsion of American journalists from China and Hong Kong, Chinese disinforma...

In the first episode of The Director's Chair, a new Lowy Institute podcast, Michael Fullilove speaks with Susan Glasser of The New Yorker and Peter Baker of The New York Times about COVID-19, the Trump administration and America. Susan Glasser is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes the weekly Letter from Trump’s Washington. Peter Baker is the Chief White House Correspondent for The...

Today, the liberal democratic model faces its biggest challenge in generations. Since the global financial crisis, democratic systems have faced a crisis of public confidence, and open economies have struggled to deliver the broad-based growth of the past. At the same time, in a number of nations around the world, an alternative model of ‘techno-authoritarianism’ has emerged in which mass surveill...

In this episode, Lowy Institute’s Executive Director, Michael Fullilove, sits down with Alex Oliver, the Institute’s Director of Research; Herve Lemahieu, Director of the our Asian Power and Diplomacy Program; and Roland Rajah, Director of the Institute’s International Economy Program. They discuss coronavirus anxiety, including #toiletpapergate, panic buying and hoarding; the effect of the virus...

Today Iraqis find themselves caught in an array of competing forces. Their country is a battleground for foreign actors, from militias to major powers. Their domestic politics are increasingly violent as the state reacts brutally to popular demands for better governance and accountability. Yet we rarely hear Iraqi perspectives on these turbulent events. One of the Middle East’s leading young polit...

The term ‘Indo-Pacific’ has gained wide use in recent years, including among the leaders of Australia, France, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. But what does it really mean? The name of a region is as much symbolic as physical – and can be a mental map that guides the decisions of leaders and the narrative of international order, war, and peace. The Lowy Institute was pleased to hos...

In this episode, Lowy Institute’s Executive Director, Michael Fullilove, sits down with Richard McGregor, Senior Fellow and a world expert on the Chinese Communist Party; Natasha Kassam, Research Fellow, expert in China’s domestic politics, and a former Australian diplomat in Beijing; and Ben Bland, director of the Institutes Southeast Asia Program and an expert in China-ASEAN relations. They disc...

Dr James Renwick CSC SC is Australia’s Independent National Security Legislation Monitor. In 2019, he was tasked by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security to review the controversial Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018 (Cth). As Dr Renwick moves to finalise his report of the review, he will discuss possible models for reconcil...

Last year saw a surge of civil unrest across the globe so widespread that 2019 has been dubbed “the year of the street protestor”. In places as diverse as Hong Kong, Chile, the United States, the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, people came together for a variety of causes and grievances. These included demands for economic, racial, and gender equality; the preservation of democracy against...

COVIDcast is a Lowy Institute pop-up podcast for anyone interested in understanding the effect of coronavirus on global politics. Each week for the next few weeks, Lowy Institute experts will sit down to discuss the implications of coronavirus for the world. In Episode 1, Lowy Institute’s Executive Director, Michael Fullilove, sits down with Richard McGregor, Senior Fellow and a world expert on th...

The spread of the novel coronavirus in and beyond China has potentially profound implications, for Xi Jinping's standing and China's global weight and prestige. For countries like Australia, the virus has already inflicted a sharp economic shock. The Lowy Institute hosted a panel discussion on the impact of the virus on Australia and the world. Natasha Kassam, Research Fellow at the Lowy Institute...

In his role as United States Indo-Pacific Commander, Admiral Philip S. Davidson is responsible for military operations in an area that stretches from the waters off the west coast of the United States to the west coast of India, and from the Arctic to the Antarctic – over 200 million square kilometres and more than half the world’s surface. Admiral Davidson is a surface warfare officer who has dep...

The Lowy Institute hosted a panel discussion with Institute experts in Melbourne on the key issues likely to dominate the international agenda in 2020. Managing Editor of The Interpreter Daniel Flitton chaired an expert panel including Dr John Edwards, Senior Fellow in the International Economy Program; Jonathan Pryke, Director of the Pacific Islands Program; Lydia Khalil, Research Fellow in the W...

The Lowy Institute hosted a panel discussion with Institute experts in Sydney on the key issues likely to dominate the international agenda in 2020. Director of Research Alex Oliver chaired an expert panel including Lowy Institute Senior Fellow Richard McGregor; Hervé Lemahieu, Director of the Asian Power and Diplomacy Program; Rodger Shanahan, Research Fellow, West Asia Program; and Shane McLeod,...

The new year has seen tensions between the United States and Iran increase to levels rarely seen before. The assassination of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the ballistic missile response from Iran, and then the tragic downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, have yet again focused the world’s attention on this region. The vision of enormous crowds that turned out for Soleimani’s funeral...

With the threat of armed conflict looming more seriously over Asia than it has in decades, Oriana Skylar Mastro discussed Asian approaches to diplomacy during war. Professor Mastro’s new book, 'The Costs of Conversation', covers the diplomatic decisions of China and India in past conflicts in Asia and provides signposts for crisis management and conflicts in the future. After a war breaks out, wha...

Digital authoritarianism is the use of digital technology by authoritarian regimes to monitor, manipulate and control both domestic and foreign populations. China and Russia are at the forefront, representing two distinct but related models. There are many dimensions to it, from the recent revelations China is developing facial recognition technology to sort people by ethnicity, to Russia’s attemp...

The elections in Taiwan in January promise to be one of the region’s most consequential polls in recent decades. With Beijing increasingly vocal about using force to unify the island with China, voters face a choice between a president determined to resist Beijing and an opponent struggling to articulate an alternative. The polls on the self-governing island, which has a pivotal role in high-tech...

Rules Based Audio takes a look at China's interests, influence and intentions in the Pacific. Reports of a planned Chinese naval base in Vanuatu in 2018 helped focus policy makers’ attention on China’s strategic intentions and economic influence in the island nations of the south Pacific. But in many ways, the debate in Australia and the US lagged far behind the reality on the ground. These days t...

Australia faces no more difficult international challenge than managing its relationship with the People’s Republic of China, our largest trading partner and a peer competitor of our great ally the United States. Former prime minister Tony Abbott gave an address on China, followed by a Q&A session chaired by Dr Michael Fullilove, Executive Director of the Lowy Institute. The Hon. Tony Abbott was t...

Hyperpartisan and foreign-state sponsored disinformation targeted at voters through social media is undermining democracy and interfering with elections from the US to India, from Indonesia to Taiwan. Authoritarian adversaries, partisan domestic actors, and weak democratic governments are using the platforms and the extensive data they hold on individuals to manipulate voters and spread false narr...