CERC Public Seminar: 'The “Values Gap” in Transatlantic Relations: On Values and Value Judgements - “Other” or “Brother” in the New Transatlanticism?'

Wednesday 10 Oct, 1:00-2:00pm
at Room 211, Level 2, 234 Queensberry Street, The University of Melbourne

presented by

Dr David Dunn

(Reader in International Politics in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, UK)

Download audio mp3 (approx 15MB)

Abstract

Are common political and moral values the foundation of an enduring political relationship across the Atlantic or are they diverging to such an extent that they have become corrosive to that political community and indeed common identity? This question is at the centre of a sometimes heated debate within both Europe and North America at the start of the 21st century. Most often cited in this regard are the issues of crime and punishment – violet crime, gun ownership, penal policy and the death penalty; the role of the state and inequality; religiosity, belief in god, church attendance, Christian fundamentalism; and the notion of a new demographic divide. This paper seeks to understand whether there is a demonstrable difference in these values, if there is whether the trend is diverging, and what political significance should be attached to these results and indeed this debate.

Biography

David Hastings Dunn is Reader in International Politics in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. His main research interests are US foreign policy, security studies and diplomacy. He is the author of The Politics of Threat: Minuteman Vulnerability in American National Security Policy, co-author of American National Security Policy in the 1990s and editor of Diplomacy at the Highest Level: The Evolution of International Summitry. The former holder of both a NATO and a Fulbright Fellowship he has lectured extensively in the USA. He is currently writing a book on US-European relations entitled Rethinking Transatlanticism.