This class will give students a look into the murky and ambivalent relationship between violence and political order, from the historical origins of the state to the violent breakdown of political order today. Most theories of political order begin with the perspective that state institutions set limits on the legitimate use of violence and so control the violent tendencies of an anarchic society. Yet state building is itself a deeply violent process. Moreover the state continues to be a prolific user of violence. Aside from the obvious case of war between states, both democratic and authoritarian states engage in varying levels of everyday violence. In some cases, this violence is perceived as legitimate, as in the use of imprisonment as a punishment for criminal activity. In other cases, states transgress norms of legitimate violence, engaging in activities such as torture, sexual violence, and even ethnic cleansing. This course will cover topics including state building, torture, civil war, and crime and punishment. We will read work from political science, political economy, political sociology and political theory. This is a reading intensive seminar.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion, students will have the knowledge and skills to:

1. Understand different empirical and theoretical approaches to the analysis of state formation and contested political orders
2. Develop appropriate conceptual, theoretical, and empirical research methods from political science, political economy, political sociology, and political anthropology
3. Compare and analyze variation in processes of state formation and in patterns of contestation over political order, both of which commonly involve very significant levels of violence
4. Apply the principles of good research design in developing their own research
5. Communicate knowledgeably on a range of topics within the area of state formation and contested political orders

Required Resources

Recommended Resources

Students may wish to purchase certain books after reviewing the course reading list.

Staff Feedback

Students will be given feedback in the following forms in this course:

• Written comments
• Verbal comments
• Feedback to the whole class, to groups, to individuals, focus groups

Student Feedback

ANU is committed to the demonstration of educational excellence and regularly seeks feedback from students. Students are encouraged to offer feedback directly to their Course Convener or through their College and Course representatives (if applicable). The feedback given in these surveys is anonymous and provides the Colleges, University Education Committee and Academic Board with opportunities to recognise excellent teaching, and opportunities for improvement. The Surveys and Evaluation website provides more information on student surveys at ANU and reports on the feedback provided on ANU courses.

Class Schedule

Week/Session	Summary of Activities	Assessment
1	Agriculture, Inequality, and the State	N.B. There is a substantial reading load in this course, and it is fully expected that each student will studiously keep up with the readings assigned for each class session. The convenor reserves the right to make substitutions in the reading assignments, as appropriate. There may be additional selections to augment the readings for certain sessions. James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), pp. 1-35, 116-182. Gintis, Herbert, Carel Van Schaik, Christopher Boehm, Bernard Chapais, Jessica C. Flack, Mark Pagel, Jill D. Pruetz et al. (2015) "Zoon politikon: The evolutionary origins of human political systems." Current Anthropology 56, no. 3: 327-340. It is also highly recommended that you read the critiques and response found on pp. 340-348. Recommended: Carles Boix, Political Order and Inequality: Their Foundations and Their Consequences for Human Welfare (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 1-54.
2	Climate, Disease, and the Rise and Decline of the State	John L. Brooke, Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 121-64, 183-212. Kyle Harper, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), pp. 6-22, 65-118, 259-275.
3	States and State Formation	Theda Skocpol, “Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research,” in Bringing the State Back In, ed. Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Reuschmeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 7-11. Michael Mann, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms, and Results,” European Journal of Sociology 25, no. 2 (1984): 185-213. Read pp. 185-92 and skim the rest. Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 973-75, 1028-31. Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1992). Read “Cities and States in World History” (Chapter 1), pp. 1-37; and “How War Made States, and Vice Versa” (Chapter 3), pp. 67-95. Recommended: “European Cities and States” (Chapter 2), pp. 38-66. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), Read “Political Modernization: America vs. Europe” (Chapter Two), pp. 93-139. Frances Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014). Read “Introduction: Development of Political Institutions to the French Revolution,” pp. 3-19; see also the three quotes in the front matter, p. v. Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). Read “War and the Rise of the Chinese State” (Chapter 7), pp. 110-127; and “The Functioning and Decline of the Ottoman State” (Chapter 15), pp. 214-228. Frances Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014). Read “Prussia Builds a State” (Chapter 4), pp. 66-80. Recommended: Thomas Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 1-34, 317-324. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944). “Man, Nature, and Productive Organization” (Chapter 11), pp. 130-134; and “Birth of the Liberal Creed” (Chapter 12), pp. 135-150. Douglass C. North. Structure and Change in Economic History. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981). “A Neoclassical Theory of the State” (Chapter 3), pp. 2-32. Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast, Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). “The Conceptual Framework” (Chapter 1), pp. 1-29.
4	Institutions and Political Order	Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968). Read “Political Institutions: Community and Political Order” (a portion of Chapter 1), pp. 8-32. Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). Read “The Necessity of Politics” (Chapter 1), pp. 3-25. Frances Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014). Read “What is Political Development?” (Chapter 1), pp. 23-39; “The Dimensions of Development” (Chapter 2), pp. 40-51; “Bureaucracy” (Chapter 3), pp. 52-65. Kathleen Thelen, “How Institutions Evolve: Insights from Comparative Historical Analysis,” in James Mahoney and Dietrich Reuschemeyer, eds., Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 208-240. Paul D. Hutchcroft and Erik Kuhonta, “Upending the ‘Rules of the Game’: Toward Greater Clarity in the Conceptualization of Institutions.” Presented at the American Political Science Association meeting, Boston, Massachusetts, September 2018. Frances Fukuyama, “The Pandemic and Political Order: It Takes a State,” Foreign Affairs, July-August 2020.
5	State Legibility and Territorial Dimensions of the State	James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 1-102, 183-91, 253-61, 342-57. Paul D. Hutchcroft, “Centralization and Decentralization in Administration and Politics: Assessing Territorial Dimensions of Authority and Power,” Governance 14, no. 1 (January 2001): 23-53.
6	Colonial State Formation	Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 1-76 (tbc). Paul A. Kramer, “Race, Empire, and Transnational History,” in Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco Scarano, eds., Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of a Modern American State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), pp. 199-209. Paul D. Hutchcroft, “The Hazards of Jeffersonianism: Challenges of State Building in the U.S. and Its Empire,” in Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco Scarano, eds., Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of a Modern American State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), pp. 106-115. Alfred W. McCoy, “Policing the Imperial Periphery: Philippine Pacification and the Rise of the U.S. National Security State,” in Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco Scarano, eds., Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of a Modern American State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), pp. 375-89. Reo Matsuzaki, “State Building Amid Resistance: Administrative Intermediaries and the Making of Colonial Taiwan,” Polity 51, no. 2 (2019): 231-260. Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, “Why Africa’s Weak States Persist: The Empirical and the Juridical in Statehood,” World Politics 35 (October 1982): 1-24
7	Wars, Militaries, and States	Brian M. Downing, The military revolution and political change: Origins of democracy and autocracy in early modern Europe (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 3-17, 56-83. Brian M. Downing, “War and the State in Early Modern Europe,” in Theda Skocpol, ed., Democracy, Revolution, and History (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1998), pp. 25-54. Muthiah Alagappa, “Investigating and Explaining Change: An Analytical Framework,” in Muthiah Alagappa, ed., Coercion and Governance. The Declining Political Role of the Military in Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 29-66. Recommended: Barry R. Posen, “Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power.” International Security 18, no. 2 (1993): 80–124. Tony Ingesson, Mårten Lindberg, Johannes Lindvall, and Jan Teorell, “The Martial Origins of Democracy: A Global Study of Military Conscription and Suffrage Extensions Since the Napoleonic Wars,” Democratization, 25, no. 4 (2018): 633-651. Marcus Mietzner, “Indonesia: The Military’s Transformation from Praetorian Ruler to Presidential Coalition Partner,” in Oxford Encyclopedia of the Military in Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2020). Eva-Lotta E. Hedman, “The Philippines: Not So Military, Not So Civil,” in in Muthiah Alagappa, Coercion and Governance. The Declining Political Role of the Military in Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 165-86.
8	State Power and Social Forces (including Oligarchs, Warlords, and Mafias)	Timothy Mitchell, “The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics,” American Political Science Review 85, no. 1 (March 1991): 77-96 Joel S. Migdal, Atul Kohli, and Vivienne Shue, “Introduction: Developing a State-in-Society Perspective,” in Migdal, Kohli, and Shue, eds., State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 1-4. Atul Kohli and Vivienne Shue, “State Power and Social Forces: On Political Contention and Accommodation in the Third World,” in Migdal, Kohli, and Shue, eds., State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 293-303. Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation, pp. 43-47. Paul D. Hutchcroft, Booty Capitalism: The Politics of Banking in the Philippines (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 16-23. Kimberly Marten, "Warlordism in comparative perspective," International Security 31, no 3 (1997): 41-73. David Skarbek, “Governance and prison gangs,” American Political Science Review 105, no. 4 (2012): 702–716.
9	State Power / Law’s Violence	Robert Cover, "Violence and the Word," Yale Law Journal 95, no. 8 (1986): 1601-1629. Walter Benjamin, "Critique of Violence, " in Reflections, ed. by Peter Demetz, translated by Edmund Jephcott (Schocken Books, 1978), pp. 277-300. Jacques Derrida, "Force of Law: The 'Mystical Foundation of Authority,'" Cardozo Law Review, 11, no. 5-6 (1989): 921-1045 (read certain English-language portions, tbd, from what is a bilingual text). Mary Hawkesworth, "Analyzing the State and the Nation," special issue on Gender and Political Theory: Feminist Reckonings, Polity, 2019: 118-151. Catharine A. MacKinnon, "The Liberal State," in Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 157-170. Marilyn Lake, "Equality and Exclusion: The Racial Constitution of Colonial Liberalism," Thesis Eleven no. 95 (2008): 20–32. Achille Mbembe, "The Banality of Power and the Aesthetics of Vulgarity in the Postcolony," Public Culture 4, no. 2 (1992): 1-30. Begoña Aretxaga, “Maddening States,” Annual Review of Anthropology 32 (October 2003): 393-410. Recommended: Paul R. Brass, “Foucault Steals Political Science,” Annual Review of Political Science 3 (2000): 305-330.
10	Locating Women and Children in the Gendered Politics of War and Conflict	Paul Kirby, “Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict: The Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative and Its Critics,” International Affairs 91, Issue 3 (May 2015): 457–472. Elizabeth A. Faulkner and Conrad Nyamutata, “The Decolonisation of Children’s Rights and the Colonial Contours of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” International Journal of Children’s Rights 28 (2020): 66-88 Rita Manchanda, “Difficult Encounters with the WPS Agenda in South Asia: Re-scripting Globalised Norms and Policy Frameworks for a Feminist Peace,” in New Directions in Women, Peace and Security, ed. by Soumita Basu, Paul Kirby, and Laura J. Shepherd, (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2020), pp. 61-82. Additional readings: Bina D’Costa, “Gender Justice and (In)security in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” Journal of Postcolonial Studies 19, no. 4 (2017): 409-426. Myriam Denov, Amber Green, Angela Atim Lakor, and Janet Arach, “Mothering in the Aftermath of Forced Marriage and Wartime Rape,” Journal of the Motherhood Initiative 9, no. 1 (2018). Augustine Park, S. J. “‘Other Inhumance Acts’: Forced Marriage, Girl Soldiers and the Special Court for Sierra Leone.” John Lowe, “Masculinizing National Service: The Cultural Reproduction of Masculinities and Militarization of Male Citizenship in Singapore,” Journal of Gender Studies 28, no. 6 (2019): 687-698. Lee Ann Fujii, "The Puzzle of Extra-lethal Violence," Perspectives on Politics 11, no. 2 (2013): 410-426. Darius Rejali, Torture and democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 1-31, 144-166, 405-479. Dara Kay Cohen, "Explaining Rape During Civil War: Cross-National Evidence (1980–2009)," American Political Science Review 107, no. 3 (2013): 461-477. Dara Kay Cohen, Rape during Civil War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016). Elisabeth Jean Wood, "Variation in Sexual Violence during War," Politics & Society 34, no. 3 (2006): 307-41. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (2nd ed.) (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), pp. 3-31. Lee Ann Fujii, “‘Talk of the town’: Explaining Pathways to Participation in Violent Display,” Journal of Peace Research, 54, no. 5 (2017): 661-673. Roxanne L. Euben, “Spectacles of Sovereignty in Digital Time: ISIS Executions, Visual Rhetoric and Sovereign Power,” Perspectives on Politics, 15, no. 4 (2017): 1007-1033. Paul Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth, and Resources in Sierra Leone (London: James Currey Ltd., 1996).
11	Sources and Patterns of Internal Conflict	Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War” (May 2000). World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 2355. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=630727 Stathis N. Kalyvas, “The Ontology of ‘Political Violence’: Action and Identity in Civil Wars,” Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 3 (2003): 475-494. Stuart Kaufman, “Symbolic Politics or Rational Choice? Testing Theories of Extreme Ethnic Violence,” International Security 30, no. 4 (Spring 2006): 45-86. Recommended: Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006) pp. 1-31, 52-209, 330-392 (skim 210-330). Paul Staniland, “States, Insurgents, and Wartime Political Orders,” Perspectives on Politics 10, no. 2 (2012): 243–264.
12	The Decline of Violence	Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Penguin, 2011), pp. 37-97, 139-154, 210-278, 322-334, 811-841 Recommended: Human Security Centre, Human Security Report 2005: War and Peace in the 21st Century. Vancouver, 2006. Edward Aspinall, Robin Jeffrey and Anthony J. Regan, eds., Diminishing Conflicts in Asia and the Pacific: Why Some Subside and Others Don’t (London: Routledge, 2013). Introduction (pp. 1-13) and conclusion (pp. 265-280), both jointly authored by the editors of the volume. Therése Pettersson and Magnus Öberg, “Organized violence, 1989–2019,” Journal of Peace Research 57, no. 4 (2020): 597–613

Assessment Summary

Assessment task	Value	Due Date	Return of assessment	Learning Outcomes
Critical seminar discussion	10 %	31/10/2020	31/10/2020	1, 2, 3, 5
Weekly Wattle Forum Discussion Contributions	10 %	31/10/2020	31/10/2020	1, 2, 3
Seminar presentation	10 %	31/10/2020	31/10/2020	1, 2, 3, 5
Mid-term Essay	25 %	21/09/2020	05/10/2020	1, 2, 3, 5
Final Essay	45 %	16/11/2020	03/12/2020	1,2,3,4,5

* If the Due Date and Return of Assessment date are blank, see the Assessment Tab for specific Assessment Task details

Policies

ANU has educational policies, procedures and guidelines, which are designed to ensure that staff and students are aware of the University’s academic standards, and implement them. Students are expected to have read the Academic Misconduct Rule before the commencement of their course. Other key policies and guidelines include:

• Student Assessment (Coursework) Policy and Procedure
• Special Assessment Consideration Policy and General Information
• Student Surveys and Evaluations
• Deferred Examinations
• Student Complaint Resolution Policy and Procedure

Assessment Requirements

The ANU is using Turnitin to enhance student citation and referencing techniques, and to assess assignment submissions as a component of the University's approach to managing Academic Integrity. For additional information regarding Turnitin please visit the ANU Online website Students may choose not to submit assessment items through Turnitin. In this instance you will be required to submit, alongside the assessment item itself, hard copies of all references included in the assessment item.

Moderation of Assessment

Marks that are allocated during Semester are to be considered provisional until formalised by the College examiners meeting at the end of each Semester. If appropriate, some moderation of marks might be applied prior to final results being released.

Participation

See above. If a student expects to be absent due to illness or emergency, he or she should (whenever practicable) email the convenor prior to the seminar.

Assessment Task 1

Critical seminar discussion

10% of total grade. Students are expected to attend all seminar sessions and actively participate in seminar discussions with consistent and intelligent contributions. If a student expects to be absent due to illness or emergency, he or she should (whenever practicable) email the convenor prior to the seminar.

Assessment Task 2

Weekly Wattle Forum Discussion Contributions

10% of total grade. Students will be required to submit brief comments on readings for ten of the twelve weeks of the semester. They should be roughly 200 words in length, and will be marked on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory scale. Should a student submit fewer than ten comments, a mark of zero will be given for each missing assignment. Submissions after the seminar will not be accepted.

 

The discussion contributions are to be turned in by 9:00 pm on the Tuesday evening prior to the Wednesday seminar. They should be submitted via Wattle, and thus be available for all participants to read. In addition, your discussion contributions should be sent to the course convenor at paul.hutchcroft@anu.edu.au; on those weeks in which we have a guest facilitator, he will then share them with the colleague that will be leading the seminar. Please note further that you should not submit a contribution for the week in which you are providing a seminar presentation.

 

Your contributions will examine the assigned readings for the week, and there are a range of directions in which your contributions can go. You can pose questions for discussion, highlight salient quotes, draw parallels with readings in other weeks, note particular strengths/weaknesses of an argument, etc. This should be viewed as a “rapid response” exercise rather than as a polished piece of work, providing some quick reflections in advance of the weekly seminar.

Assessment Task 3

Seminar presentation

10% of final grade. Each student will make one 10-12 minute presentation to open up a seminar. These presentations should examine major issues and arguments found in the readings, and raise important questions for discussion—focusing  more on the forest than the trees. In preparing presentations, students are expected to concentrate primarily on the assigned readings, but are of course welcome to supplement their analysis with the recommended readings and other relevant works.

 

Your task is not to summarize the readings, but rather to examine critically and comparatively some aspect of the author or authors' arguments, evidence, conclusion, theoretical contribution and/or interpretation. Some of the questions you might examine are: How does the analysis relate to other analyses assigned either for the same week or for previous weeks? What is the main argument of the author or authors? What evidence is brought to bear? Are you convinced by the conclusion? What do you see as particular strengths and weaknesses of the argument, or gaps that deserve further attention? What alternative explanations or interpretations might you find convincing? What interesting comparative insights come forth, and how applicable do you find them either in cross-national or cross-temporal terms? What are the key theoretical contributions that the author or authors are trying to make, and do they succeed? If the author were to join our seminar (even if this were to require coming back from the grave), what key question or questions might you want to pose to him or her?

 

These questions are intended to provide a sense of the many diverse ways in which you might structure your presentation, and you will of course need to choose a focus that is readily tractable within the time limits noted above.

Assessment Task 4

Mid-term Essay

1750 words, 25% of the final grade. The questions for the first essay will be distributed on Friday 4 September and be due on Monday 21 September. It will cover the readings and discussion in the first six weeks of the semester.

Assessment Task 5

Final Essay

3000 words, 45% of the final grade. The questions for the second essay will be distributed on Monday 2 November and be due on Monday 16 November. It will cover the readings and discussion across the entire semester.

Academic Integrity

Academic integrity is a core part of our culture as a community of scholars. At its heart, academic integrity is about behaving ethically. This means that all members of the community commit to honest and responsible scholarly practice and to upholding these values with respect and fairness. The Australian National University commits to embedding the values of academic integrity in our teaching and learning. We ensure that all members of our community understand how to engage in academic work in ways that are consistent with, and actively support academic integrity. The ANU expects staff and students to uphold high standards of academic integrity and act ethically and honestly, to ensure the quality and value of the qualification that you will graduate with. The University has policies and procedures in place to promote academic integrity and manage academic misconduct. Visit the following Academic honesty & plagiarism website for more information about academic integrity and what the ANU considers academic misconduct. The ANU offers a number of services to assist students with their assignments, examinations, and other learning activities. The Academic Skills and Learning Centre offers a number of workshops and seminars that you may find useful for your studies.

Online Submission

The ANU uses Turnitin to enhance student citation and referencing techniques, and to assess assignment submissions as a component of the University's approach to managing Academic Integrity. While the use of Turnitin is not mandatory, the ANU highly recommends Turnitin is used by both teaching staff and students. For additional information regarding Turnitin please visit the ANU Online website.

Hardcopy Submission

For some forms of assessment (hand written assignments, art works, laboratory notes, etc.) hard copy submission is appropriate when approved by the Associate Dean (Education). Hard copy submissions must utilise the Assignment Cover Sheet. Please keep a copy of tasks completed for your records.

Late Submission

No submission of assessment tasks without an extension after the due date will be permitted. If an assessment task is not submitted by the due date, a mark of 0 will be awarded. OR Late submission of assessment tasks without an extension are penalised at the rate of 5% of the possible marks available per working day or part thereof. Late submission of assessment tasks is not accepted after 10 working days after the due date, or on or after the date specified in the course outline for the return of the assessment item. Late submission is not accepted for take-home examinations.

Referencing Requirements

Accepted academic practice for referencing sources that you use in presentations can be found via the links on the Wattle site, under the file named “ANU and College Policies, Program Information, Student Support Services and Assessment”. Alternatively, you can seek help through the Students Learning Development website.

Extensions and Penalties

Extensions and late submission of assessment pieces are covered by the Student Assessment (Coursework) Policy and Procedure The Course Convener may grant extensions for assessment pieces that are not examinations or take-home examinations. If you need an extension, you must request an extension in writing on or before the due date. If you have documented and appropriate medical evidence that demonstrates you were not able to request an extension on or before the due date, you may be able to request it after the due date.

Privacy Notice

The ANU has made a number of third party, online, databases available for students to use. Use of each online database is conditional on student end users first agreeing to the database licensor’s terms of service and/or privacy policy. Students should read these carefully. In some cases student end users will be required to register an account with the database licensor and submit personal information, including their: first name; last name; ANU email address; and other information. In cases where student end users are asked to submit ‘content’ to a database, such as an assignment or short answers, the database licensor may only use the student’s ‘content’ in accordance with the terms of service — including any (copyright) licence the student grants to the database licensor. Any personal information or content a student submits may be stored by the licensor, potentially offshore, and will be used to process the database service in accordance with the licensors terms of service and/or privacy policy. If any student chooses not to agree to the database licensor’s terms of service or privacy policy, the student will not be able to access and use the database. In these circumstances students should contact their lecturer to enquire about alternative arrangements that are available.

Distribution of grades policy

Academic Quality Assurance Committee monitors the performance of students, including attrition, further study and employment rates and grade distribution, and College reports on quality assurance processes for assessment activities, including alignment with national and international disciplinary and interdisciplinary standards, as well as qualification type learning outcomes. Since first semester 1994, ANU uses a grading scale for all courses. This grading scale is used by all academic areas of the University.

Support for students

The University offers students support through several different services. You may contact the services listed below directly or seek advice from your Course Convener, Student Administrators, or your College and Course representatives (if applicable).

• ANU Health, safety & wellbeing for medical services, counselling, mental health and spiritual support
• ANU Diversity and inclusion for students with a disability or ongoing or chronic illness
• ANU Dean of Students for confidential, impartial advice and help to resolve problems between students and the academic or administrative areas of the University
• ANU Academic Skills and Learning Centre supports you make your own decisions about how you learn and manage your workload.
• ANU Counselling Centre promotes, supports and enhances mental health and wellbeing within the University student community.
• ANUSA supports and represents undergraduate and ANU College students
• PARSA supports and represents postgraduate and research students