The Presidentialisation of Australian Politics? Kevin Rudd's Leadership of the Australian Labor Party

The presidentialisation debate centres on the question of whether contemporary political leaders in parliamentary systems are more powerful than their predecessors. This article applies the presidentialisation thesis of Poguntke and Webb (2005) to the period in which Kevin Rudd led the federal parliamentary Labor Party in Australia. Their model identifies three distinct faces of presidentialisation: the executive face, the party face and the electoral face. This article argues that the evidence of presidentialisation under Rudd's leadership is mixed. The most compelling evidence is reflected in how Rudd interacted with the Labor Party, rather than his interaction with the executive or impact on voting behaviour.

关于总统化的辩论集中于当前国会的政治领袖是否比他们的前任更有权力。本文将普刚克和韦博（2005）的总统化理论应用于陆克文领导澳大利亚联邦议会工党的时期。他们二人总结了总统化的三个方面：行政面、党派面、选举面。本文指出,陆克文领导时期总统化的证据含混不清。最有说服力的证据倒是反映在陆克文与工党而不是与政府的互动或对选举行为的影响上。     

Born in Melbourne? Considerations on the origins of Australian political science

In a pioneering academic discussion of Australian politics written just before the First World War, William Harrison Moore reinforced the image of Australia as an increasingly autonomous part of a slowly evolving but essentially liberal British Empire. In this 34-page account of ‘Political Systems of Australia’ published in George H. Knibbs, ed., Federal Handbook (Melbourne, 1914), the Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Melbourne arguably created the ur-text of the Australian Politics textbook. It is argued that there is an unbroken thread of Cambridge-inspired political science teaching and writing at Melbourne from Harrison Moore onwards. The early Australian politics textbooks and ‘Political Systems of Australia’ are cut from the same cloth, making the latter an important precursor.     

Paul Keating and leadership: Was the ‘personal’ political?

This article proposes three possible reasons why political leaders abide by policy decisions in the face of vigorous opposition – because they perceive the policy to be ‘right’, because abiding by a decision is necessary to appear ‘strong’, or because of personal motives arising from the leader themselves. The article applies this framework to Paul Keating's apparent refusal, as Treasurer in 1989, to consider mortgage relief in the midst of prohibitively high interest rates arising from monetary policy at that time. The article concludes that it is the ‘personal’ dimension that most explains Keating's decision-making on this issue. This is a significant finding given that such personal motives are incapable of legitimation in liberal democratic terms, yet policy decisions arising from them can have an immense impact.

政治领导人在强大的反对力量面前坚持其政策决定。本人分析了三种可能的原因：认定其政策正确;欲显示强大需坚持政策;领导者个人方面的动机。本文根据这个思路分析了保罗齐丁。保罗1989年任澳大利亚财长时面对当时货币政策造成的利率奇高的局面而拒绝考虑抵押减免。笔者认为,个人因素可以解释保罗的决策。这个发见很重要,因为个人动机在自由民主那里虽无合法性,但由此做出的决定却能产生广大的影响。     

Political parties at critical junctures: explaining the decisions to offer referendums on constitutional change in the United Kingdom

This article investigates the Labour and Conservative parties’ decisions to offer referendums on constitutional change. We focus on Labour’s Scottish devolution referendum and the Conservatives’ EU referendum. Rather than responding to public demand, we argue each party offered referendums based on short-term electoral calculations. Both parties believed their commitments would resolve intra-party dissension, neutralise emergent electoral threats and expand their electorate. While each party won the subsequent election, the referendums produced long-term unintended outcomes counter to their initial objectives: an invigorated Scottish National Party and an impending EU exit. Ultimately, the consequences of both may lead to Scottish independence.     

Did the minority Gillard government keep its promises? A study of promissory representation in Australia

When the Gillard government formed a minority government in 2010 many commentators argued that the government would be unable to fulfil its mandate. Despite this, the Gillard government was able to pass a record amount of legislation – comparable to previous majority-led governments – suggesting the government was effective at negotiating legislative passage. Less understood is whether the Gillard government was able to keep its election promises given the constraints of minority government. This is an important empirical and normative question. In their most basic form elections are designed to allow the public to hold politicians and political parties to account for their past performance. Central to this is whether parties have fulfilled the promises they made at the previous election. But how do parties express election promises to citizens and are they likely to fulfil these promises? Does minority government status make a difference? We examine these questions in the first contemporary Australian study of promise fulfilment, examining promises made and promise fulfilment of the Gillard minority government (2010–2013). We adopt the methods of the Comparative Party Pledges Project (CPPP). Consistent with the international literature, we find that the Gillard government fulfilled most of its election promises suggesting minority government status did not have a large effect on promise fulfilment.     

Australian political studies and the production of disciplinary innocence

ABSTRACT

While Australian political studies often appears to have neglected engagements with Indigenous peoples and politics, we argue this is not a simple question of omission. In fact, the discipline is deeply implicated in imperial knowledge production and the authorisation of racialised colonial governance. As non-Indigenous scholars working within Australian political studies, in this paper we reflect on our own discipline in light of several decades of critical scholarship, identifying the production of disciplinary innocence through a theoretical and institutional analysis of Australian political studies knowledge practices. We explore this production via canonical knowledges, institutional processes that contain Indigenous people and knowledge to subjects of policy, and the operation of disciplinary divisions which neutralise scholarship on policy and political institutions.     

Australian politics in the Australian Journal of Political Science: A review

This article examines how contributors to the Australian Journal of Political Science (AJPS) have conceptualised Australian politics over 50 years. It undertakes this task by examining key events in Australian politics that prompted vigorous debate. These include the election of the Whitlam government in 1972, its dismissal in 1975, and how this in turn generated discussion about the nature of responsible government in Australia. The republican debate of the 1990s shifted the focus. Since 2000, however, a few contributors to the journal have attempted to find a central focus for Australian politics in the controversy over the idea of the Australian settlement. Much recent discussion about Australian politics has been influenced by the ‘cultural turn’, and become particularistic. It is argued that despite their diversity, articles in the AJPS generally do not usually contribute to a narrative that sheds light on the larger, longstanding, structural issues of Australian politics.     

The Italian political system after the 9 – 10 April 2006 elections

Abstract

All recent Italian elections have produced important electoral consequences. In this brief introduction, the author highlights some of the problems, difficulties and perspectives for the Italian political system following the electoral victory of the centre-left. More precisely, he suggests that there are two complex issues in need of being analyzed and politically tackled: the revisions to be introduced into the Italian Constitution and the transformation of some Italian parties and the reorganization of the party system. In conclusion, at least in this phase, the Italian political system is bound to remain in a situation that can still be defined as an ongoing political and institutional transition.     

Party Policy Positions in Newfoundland and Labrador: Expert Survey Results in the Buildup to the 2011 Provincial Election

In this article, we present the estimates of the party policy positions derived from two surveys: an expert survey and a voter survey, which were conducted in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador immediately prior to the October 2011 provincial election. The experts and the sample of voters were asked to situate the major political parties on eight policy dimensions and to rank the importance of each policy area. The results of the study present not only a map of party policy space and voter preference in Newfoundland and Labrador but also an indication of party policy awareness in the province.     

The Ruini system and ‘Berlusconismo’: synergy and transformation between the Catholic Church and Italian politics in the ‘Second Republic’

This article aims to correlate the political rather than the pastoral action of Cardinal Camillo Ruini with the rise and consolidation of the politician Silvio Berlusconi from 1994 to 2007, set in the context of the major changes that occurred in the Catholic Church and in Italian republican politics during the 1980s and 1990s. The main theme is an ‘instrumental interaction’ between the two systems, Ruinismo and Berlusconismo, which only coincided at the level of political opportunity and gave rise to important synergies between two men who otherwise had nothing in common.     

Why ethnic parties? A new theory of ethnic minority political strategy in Europe

Why do some ethnic minority groups in Europe form ethnic minority parties (EMPs), while others work within established, mainstream parties? I argue that an ethnic minority group's historical background influences its political engagement strategies. I propose that native groups (those that inhabited the territory of the modern‐day state in which they reside prior to that state's establishment), groups with territorial attachment (historical concentration in particular regions of the state) and groups with historical experiences of autonomy are more likely to form successful parties. Groups perceiving themselves as native to their state and that have enjoyed autonomy are more likely to feel entitled to the unique form of representation provided by an EMP. I test my theoretical expectations on an original data set of elections in European states in the period 1990 to 2012, finding that the three historical variables working in conjunction exert a strong positive influence on EMP entry and success.     

The Campbell Committee and the origins of ‘deregulation’ in Australia

The 1981 Australian Financial System Inquiry, known as the Campbell Committee, is widely seen as the start of the reform movement of the 1980s and 1990s. Accounts of its origins have been dominated by a debate about which policy actor can take credit. This paper utilises cabinet and Reserve Bank archives to reassess the origins of the Campbell Committee. The inquiry had its origins in an earlier attempt by the Whitlam government to take federal control of the regulation for non-bank financial institutions and the building society crisis of the mid-1970s. In its response to these political and economic challenges we can identify the moment in which the Fraser cabinet turned towards market-based reform. The political decisions made in the context of crisis set the path for regulatory change in subsequent decades, particularly in the area of prudential regulation, where we have seen regulatory consolidation and expansion rather than ‘deregulation’.