Policy-making in a ‘Cold Climate’ of Ruling Party Benefit: Party Government and the Regulation of Government Advertising in Australia

When analysing party government behaviour, attempts to detect opportunistic policy making (designed to benefit the incumbent) usually focus on electoral law and changes designed to advantage the ruling party in terms of potential votes. However, as Stein Rokkan (1966 Rokkan, S. 1966. “Norway: Numerical Democracy and Corporate Pluralism”. In Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, Edited by: Dahl, R. A. New Haven: Yale University Press.  [Google Scholar], 105) noted: ‘Votes count, but resources decide’. A laissez faire approach to regulating government advertising has allowed the federal government to spend over A$1 billion on advertising over 10 years despite ongoing accusations of misuse for partisan benefit and attempts by multiple actors to tighten the rules. This article, therefore, uses government advertising regulation as a case study of policy making ‘in a cold climate’ where, instead of seeking change, the ruling party benefits from existing rules and is extremely reluctant to change them. Using a hypothesis proposed by Richard S. Katz (2005) Katz, R. S. 2005. “Why Are There So Many (Or So Few) Electoral Reforms?”. In The Politics of Electoral Systems, Edited by: Gallagher, M. and Mitchell, P. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] [Google Scholar], it considers what (if anything) might propel policy reform in such a situation.     

Protest or Error? Informal Voting and Compulsory Voting

Some opponents of compulsory voting claim that rising rates of informal voting point to growing antipathy towards the institution. In order to test this claim we examine recent trends in informal voting, focusing upon some recent figures, particularly those of the 2004 Federal election when there was a sharp rise in informal votes. We suggest that it is not compulsion that is leading to informal voting but rather complexity and its interactions with sociological factors that are brought into play by near-universal turnout.     

Book Reviews

George, Alexander L., and Juliette L. George. Presidential Personality and Performance. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. Pp. x, 304. $75.00, hardbound; $25.00, softbound.

Epstein, David, and Sharyn O'Halloran. Delegating Powers: A Transaction Cost Politics Approach to Policy Making Under Separate Powers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xvi, 320. $59.95, hardbound; $19.95, softbound.

Kahn, Kim Fridkin, and Patrick J. Kenney. The Spectacle of U.S. Senate Campaigns. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 278. $57.50, hardbound; $18.95, softbound.

Michaels, Judith E. 1997. The President's Call: Executive Leadership from FDR to George Bush. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Pp. x, 348. $50.00, hardbound; $22.95, softbound.

Savage, James D. Funding Science in America: Congress, Universities, and the Politics of the Academic Pork Barrel. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xiii, 219. $49.95, hardbound.

Stid, Daniel D. The President as Statesman: Woodrow Wilson and the Constitution. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1998. Pp. xi, 231. $35.00, hardbound.

Steven Shull. American Civil Rights Policy from Truman to Clinton: The Role of Presidential Leadership. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. Pp. xv, 294. $64.95, hardbound.

Yalof, David Alistair. Pursuit of Justices: Presidential Politics and the Selection of Supreme Court Nominees. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Pp. x, 296. $27.95, hardbound.     

The Legacy of Nineteenth-century Replicas for Object Cultural Biographies: Lessons in Duplication from 1830s Fife

The St Andrews Sarcophagus and Norrie's Law hoard are two of the most important surviving Pictish relics from early medieval Scotland. The entanglement of their later biographies is also of international significance in its own right. Soon after discovery in nineteenth-century Fife, both sets of objects were subject, in 1839, to an exceptionally precocious, documented programme of replication through the enlightened auspices of an under-appreciated antiquarian, George Buist. This well-evidenced case study highlights how and why replicas, things that are widely prevalent in Europe and beyond, are a ‘thick’ and relatively unexplored seam of archaeological material culture that we ignore at our peril. These particular replications also offer new insights into the vision, intellectual and practical energies of early antiquarian societies, and their web of connections across Britain and Ireland.