CERC Fellow
Anthony Phillips

Anthony Phillips
CERC Fellow
e-mail: aaphil@unimelb.edu.au

Anthony (Tony) Phillips' current research areas are: the political economy of Russia; the specific nature of democracy in Russia; discourses of public policy in Russia and Australia and; the political use of cultural divisions in different polities. He has also pursued research into the nature of nationalism, and the importance of civil society in the post-communist areas of Europe.

The main focus of his research activity is the interaction between ideology and culture, and the way this structures the political terrain and those who act upon it. He has worked on the ways in which the transformation of ideological production and its content undermined legitimacy in the Gorbachev period, and the interaction of transition rhetoric with public policy and its outcomes in contemporary Russia. He has also analysed disciplinary change in transition and post-communist studies.

Tony has taught courses on: the transition in post-communist Europe; Soviet, Russian and Chinese politics; the political economy of Russia; Soviet history; Russian revolutionary history; Australian politics; Australian public policy; and modern political and social theory.

Recent papers

• The Russian Presidential Election: Orchestration, Facade or Choice? CERC Public Seminar Series 4 March 2008
• How managed was the “managed democracy?’ CERC Roundtable: Assessing the Results of the Russian State Duma Elections 4 December 2007
• ‘Yeltsin – an incomplete revolutionary’ CERC Public Seminar Series Roundtable on Yeltsin’s Legacy 22 May 2007.
• ‘Limits to political space – A defining logic of Russia’s transition?’ Bi-Annual Conference of The Australasian Association of Communist and Post-Communist Studies Contemporary Europe Research Centre, University of Melbourne 29-30 January 2007.

Publications include:

• Review of Richard Rose and Neil Munro, "Elections without Order: Russia’s Challenge to Vladimir Putin" Cambridge University Press 2002 Melbourne Journal of Politics Vol 32 2006
• "Just the Rhetoric of Reform? The `New Planning' in the Politics of the Yeltsin Era" in V. Tikhomirov (ed) Russia After Yeltsin (Aldershot: Ashgate 2001)
• '"Transition or Condition" The Political-Economy of Russia,' in Mike Bowker, ed., Russia Since the Cold War (Addison Wesley Longman, 2000) pp.52-78
• Review of Vera Tolz, Russian Academicians and the Revolution: Combining Professionalism and Politics, in Slavonica, vol. 6, no. 1 (2000), pp. 104-5
• 'Changing Characterisations of the Roots of Russia's Problems: A Look at the "Virtual Economy" Thesis,' Russian and Euro-Asian Bulletin, vol. 8, no. 2 (March 1999)
• "Travails in Identity - An Interpretation of Hanson’s Heat" in Bligh Grant (ed): Pauline Hanson. One Nation and Australian Politics (Armidale: University of New England Press) 1997 pp.145-67
• 'Notes toward a Russian Political-Economy' Russian and Euro-Asian Bulletin Vol.6 No.1 (January 1997)

Tony has also provided commentary on Russian and East European affairs for the ABC Radio and Television, Voice of America and Australian public radio stations. He has been a contributing correspondent for the Australian newspaper. He has also written for the Melbourne Age, The New Matilda, the Australian Financial Review and the Melbourne Herald-Sun. He worked as a freelance journalist in Russia in 1992-93.

He is currently on the Board of the Australiasian Association of Communist and Post Communist Studies.