Showing papers on "Coalition government published in 2008"

Coalition Government and Political Communication

Abstract: One of the central challenges facing multiparty governments in parliamentary democracies is the need for coalition parties to communicate to their constituents that they have not strayed significantly from their electoral commitments when agreeing to policy compromises. We argue that one of the main ways parties attempt to make their case to constituents is through their behavior in legislative debate. Debate provides a unique opportunity—tied directly to the policy the government is implementing—to declare party positions on the coalition compromise. In an analysis of several hundred legislative speeches in two parliamentary democracies, we show that coalition parties communicate with constituents much more extensively on internally divisive issues, especially as the next parliamentary elections draw near. We also demonstrate contextual and institutional effects (including the impact of junior ministers) that complement emerging findings in the literature on coalition governance.

The first climate change election? The Australian general election of 24 November 2007

Abstract: Australia, under the leadership of John Howard and his Liberal-National coalition government, acquired notoriety as the only developed country other than the US to decline to ratify the Kyoto proto...

Perceptions and reality: Economic voting at the 2004 European Parliament elections

Abstract: . One of the most influential explanations of voting behaviour is based on economic factors: when the economy is doing well, voters reward the incumbent government and when the economy is doing badly, voters punish the incumbent. This reward-punishment model is thought to be particularly appropriate at second order contests such as European Parliament elections. Yet operationalising this economic voting model using citizens’ perceptions of economic performance may suffer from endogeneity problems if citizens’ perceptions are in fact a function of their party preferences rather than being a cause of their party preferences. Thus, this article models a ‘strict’ version of economic voting in which they purge citizens’ economic perceptions of partisan effects and only use as a predictor of voting that portion of citizens’ economic perceptions that is caused by the real world economy. Using data on voting at the 2004 European Parliament elections for 23 European Union electorates, the article finds some, but limited, evidence for economic voting that is dependent on both voter sophistication and clarity of responsibility for the economy within any country. First, only politically sophisticated voters’ subjective economic assessments are in fact grounded in economic reality. Second, the portion of subjective economic assessments that is a function of the real world economy is a significant predictor of voting only in single party government contexts where there can be a clear attribution of responsibility. For coalition government contexts, the article finds essentially no impact of the real economy via economic perceptions on vote choice, at least at European Parliament elections.

Competing priorities in professional development: an Australian study of teacher professional development policy and practice

Abstract: This paper argues that neoliberal and managerial pressures external to the teaching profession, as well as more progressive and democratic approaches internal to the profession, have simultaneously influenced professional development policy and practice in Australia. In making this case, the paper reviews the nature of the teacher professional development that is supported in federal Australian policies associated with the recently defeated Liberal/National Coalition government (1996–2007) and research into how professional development has been enacted in practice in Australia, during this government's tenure. While acknowledging the significant impact of more neoliberal and managerial approaches and how such policy emphases contribute to the continuation of traditional, systemic/employer provided workshops, the paper also provides evidence of competing, more teacher‐centred approaches.

Australia's History under Howard, 1996-2007

Abstract: This article argues that since the election of his Coalition government in 1996, John Howard and his conservative allies in government and the media have waged a long campaign to influence the representation and public understanding of Australian history. They have sought to play down the historical harm done to Indigenous Australians and to emphasize more affirming stories of the rise of a new, democratic nation. The conservatives' waging of the “history wars” has been motivated by neoconservative ideology imported from the United States, the political interests of the Coalition government, and the personal background and convictions of the prime minister. Despite sustained criticism of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as well as the National Museum of Australia and many academic historians, and despite attempts to institute a national history curriculum, this article concludes that the history wars, for all their smoke and fury, have had only transient effects on the practice of Australian history.

The Netherlands: Populism versus Pillarization

Abstract: Until recent times, populism was not a significant political phenomenon in the Netherlands. That all changed in February 2002, when Pim Fortuyn founded a populist movement that became the country’s second largest parliamentary party just three months later. Following its leader’s violent death and its entry into coalition government, however, the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF) rapidly disintegrated. This chapter will examine the swift and spectacular rise of Fortuyn’s movement in terms of (a) the structural conditions within which it emerged and (b) the agency of the LPF and its leader. In particular, the chapter aims to provide answers to the following questions: (1) can existing theories about the emergence of new parties explain the LPF’s sudden success? (2) how can we account for the equally rapid decline of the movement? (3) has Dutch populism disappeared or does it survive as a sleeping volcano that could erupt again at short notice?

Twenty years of Australia's engagement with Asia

Abstract: For the past two decades, ‘engagement with Asia’ has been a central theme in Australian public policy and public debate about Australia's place in the world. The commitment to Asian engagement has been shared by both sides of federal politics throughout this period; however, when in government the Labor Party (1983–96) and the Coalition (1996–2007) pursued radically different approaches to this common objective. This article contrasts and evaluates the differing approaches adopted by the Labor and Coalition governments, in the context of the domestic and regional debates and controversies that accompanied them. In particular, it seeks to explain why Australia is more engaged with Asia than ever before, in seeming defiance of the widespread criticism of the Coalition government's particular approach to Asian engagement.

The Background to the Election

Abstract: At 11 p.m. on Saturday 28 April 2007, journalists from the main news organisations received a call from government press secretary Mandy Johnston to be on standby to go to Aras an Uachtarain at two hours’ notice. At 6 a.m. the following morning the same journalists were alerted via text message or phone call from Ms Johnston advising them to meet her between 7 a.m. and 7.30 am at the Aras, the official residence of the President of Ireland. Just before 8 a.m., the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern turned up wearing his Sunday best at this rather unusual hour and went in to ask President Mary McAleese to dissolve the 29th Dail. He re-emerged at 8.10 a.m. and left without taking any questions. In the meantime news organisations had been issued a statement on behalf of ‘An Taoisech’ (sic) announcing that the general election would take place on Thursday 24 May, thus heralding a three and a half week campaign, unusually long by Irish standards. The misspelling of the title ‘Taoiseach’ was symptomatic of the rather frayed nerves of the government heading into what looked like being an extremely tight general election. The rather bizarre behaviour of the Taoiseach in calling the election in this manner was to continue a number of hours later when he made a brief statement in Fianna Fail election headquarters at Treasury Buildings and refused to take any questions. In his short statement the Taoiseach said that, once again, the moment had arrived for the people to decide Ireland’s future: ‘No one knows what the outcome of this election will be.

The making of Eurosceptic Britain

Abstract: Contents: Preface Introduction The post-imperial crisis Britain and the beginnings of European integration British membership and its opponents Eurosceptic Thatcherism A European crisis of the British state Labour in power: the rise and fall of Anglo-Europe The Eurosceptic challenge to the coalition government Conclusion Bibliography Index.

2000 Retrospective: Coup Coup Land - the Press and the Putsch in Fiji

Abstract: On 19 May 2000, an insurrection led by failed businessman George Speight and renegade members of the elite 1st Meridian Squadron Special Forces engulfed the Fiji Islands in turmoil for three months. Speight and his armed conspirators stormed Parliament and seized the Labour-led Mahendra Chaudhry Government, keeping members hostage for 56 days. On Chaudhry's release from captivity, he blamed the media in part for the overthrow of his government. Some sectors of the media were accused of waging a bitter campaign against the Fiji Labour Party-led administration and its roll-back of privatization. In the early weeks of insurrection, the media enjoyed an unusually close relationship with Speight and the hostage-takers, raising ethical questions. Dilemmas faced by Fiji and the foreign journalists were more complex than during the 1987 military coups. As Fiji faced a fresh general election in August 2001, this article examined the reportage of the Coalition Government's year in office, media issues over coverage of the putsch, and a controversy over the author's analysis presented at a Journalism Education Association (JEA) conference in Australia in December 2000.

Choosing not to choose: making superannuation work by default

Abstract: Since July 2005, the great majority of Australia’s ten million workers have been able to choose their superannuation fund. When it was introduced, the Coalition Government represented the Choice of Fund policy as a major victory for consumers. In reality, the majority of Australians have derived little benefit from greater choice and competition in the superannuation sector. In fact, the recent changes have benefited some sections of the community - the financial services industry and highly engaged consumers - but have failed to adequately protect those who choose not to choose.

Fianna Fáil and Irish party competition

Abstract: Whatever issues animate the campaigns of politicians and their parties, or mobilise and engage voters, once an election outcome is known analysts inevitably want to ask whether the election in question was one marked by continuity or by change. Of course, sometimes there is evidence of both and that has certainly been the case of judgements of recent Irish general elections. Writing of the 1997 election, Michael Laver argued it ‘was remarkable more for what didn’t happen than for what did’, but he then went on to conclude that it ushered in a ‘more or less permanent era of coalition government ... which meant a much enhanced role for the Labour party’.1 After the 2002 contest John Coakley suggested that ‘the Irish party system arrived in the twenty-first century with few signs of age’, although he also conceded that there was now ‘substantial support for new political forces’.2

The Howard government and regional development

Abstract: The demise of the Howard Coalition Government in Australia in late 2007 and the coming to power of a new Labor Government provides a timely opportunity to consider the fate of regional development under Howard and its prospects under the current administration. Much of the focus of debates over regional policy under Howard has been on the highly controversial Regional Partnerships Program, which was said by many to have (further) politicised regional policy. There is a need for a much broader and more comprehensive analysis of the period in question. The paper seeks to provide - or at least to commence - such an analysis, and to uncover both the key policy trends and the reasons for them. It argues that the principal development in regional policy was to further embed 'localism' as the preferred approach, and that this was broadly in line with developments in the States and Territories and overseas. The Howard Government's approach begs the questions whether this reliance on 'local solutions to local problems' is the best way of doing regional policy, and what it means for regional development. The paper makes some tentative suggestions for better regional governance in the light of the experience of the Howard Government.

Intra-Party Politics and Minority Coalition Government in South Korea

Abstract: This paper examines the internal dynamics of Korean political parties to understand why the minority coalition government of Kim Dae-jung suffered from political stalemate or deadlocks in the legislature. It shows that a focus on the size of the government in terms of a majority status in the legislature does not offer a convincing explanation of why the Kim Dae-jung administration slid towards ungovernability. Instead better insights come from an analysis of party organization, an aspect of party politics rarely examined through in-depth analysis. The paper shows that in terms of the key dimensions of organization (leadership type, factionalism, funding, linkage role) Korean political parties fail to connect citizens to the political system.

Filtering in Oz: Australia's Foray into Internet Censorship

Abstract: Australia's decision to implement Internet censorship using technological means creates a natural experiment: the first Western democracy to mandate filtering legislatively, and to retrofit it to a decentralized network architecture. But are the proposed restrictions legitimate? The new restraints derive from the Labor Party's pro-filtering electoral campaign, though coalition government gives minority politicians considerable influence over policy. The country has a well-defined statutory censorship system for on-line and off-line material that may, however, be undercut by relying on foreign and third-party lists of sites to be blocked. While Australia is open about its filtering goals, the government's transparency about what content is to be blocked is poor. Initial tests show that how effective censorship is at filtering prohibited content - and only that content - will vary based on what method the country's ISPs use. Though Australia's decisionmakers are formally accountable to citizens, efforts to silence dissenters, outsourcing of blocking decisions, and filtering's inevitable transfer of power to technicians undercut accountability. The paper argues Australia represents a shift by Western democracies towards legitimating Internet filtering and away from robust consideration of the alternatives available to combat undesirable information.

Australian Unions in 2007

Abstract: Australian unions will remember 2007 as the year that their `Your Rights at Work' campaign contributed to the defeat of the Coalition Government. Industrial relations dominated the election campaign and remained at the centre of public policy and media debates throughout the year. Employers used the Howard government's Work Choices legislation to refuse to bargain with unions and to prevent lawful industrial action. Union officials and members were prosecuted for unlawful industrial action. In response, unions conducted a highly resourced and professional campaign aimed at changing the government and repealing Work Choices. However, the Australian Labor Party under new leader Kevin Rudd announced it would keep certain contentious aspects of Work Choices. Notwithstanding the defeat of the Coalition, barriers remain to unions' future growth and strength.

Unfulfilled Promises? : German Social Democrats and their Policy Positions at the Federal and State Level between 1994 and 2006

Abstract: From day one, the German red–green coalition government was under high pressure in the electoral arena. Previous analyses of voting behaviour showed that mainly traditional supporters refused to vote for the Social Democrats due to their lack of left‐wing profile on economic issues, which was manifested by reforms implemented in economic and welfare policy. This paper argues that the SPD adopts a leftist position on economic policy issues in order to address its core voter clientele. The analysis of voter policy positions, federal and state party election manifestos as well as coalition agreements between 1994 and 2006 shows that there is empirical evidence for this expectation. Social groups affiliated with the SPD prefer a left‐wing profile of the party. When participating in government, however, Social Democrats implement a more liberal economic policy than originally promised before elections. This is expected to lead to a further alienation of the core voter clientele from the SPD.

Policy Fiascos, Blame Management and AWB Limited: The Howard Government's Escape from the Iraq Wheat Scandal

Abstract: In 1999, the Australian government privatised the statutory Australian Wheat Board and created AWB Limited, transferring the Board's assets and its export monopoly to a grower-controlled company. In 2000, allegations surfaced that AWB Limited had made payments to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime in order to secure lucrative wheat exports worth $500 million per annum. Such actions violated the terms of the United Nations' Oil-for-Food Programme and became one of the biggest corporate scandals in Australian history. It also placed considerable pressure on senior ministers in John Howard's coalition government who were vulnerable on a number of issues, including the existence of numerous warning signs and the extent of ministerial awareness. The purpose of this article is to outline and examine the federal government's role in managing the ensuing blame game. It utilises literature on policy fiascos and blame management to create a conceptual framework that is then applied to the unfolding dynamics of the AWB L...

The 2007 Australian Federal Election: The Story of Labor's Return from the Electoral Wilderness

Abstract: In an era of continuous campaigning, elections are seldom won in the final weeks of the formal campaign period. The 2007 Australian federal election saw voters dispatch a Liberal Party and Nationals Coalition government that had presided over a buoyant economy, and return the Australian Labor Party from the electoral wilderness it had occupied since 1996. The explanation of this revival in Labor's stocks can be traced to the Wheat Board scandal, the unpopularity of the labour market deregulation, and to a series of other political tribulations that the fourth Howard Government faced during 2005 and 2006. Initially their impact was masked by the failure of Labor's parliamentary leadership. But when caucus elected Kevin Rudd and freed him to position Labor as offering fresh ideas and a safe pair of hands, Labor seized a lead in the opinion polls and retained it throughout 2007. Rudd's tactical leadership of his party proved critical. This article describes how the 2007 campaign unfolded and the pattern of events which saw a refashioned ALP win an eighteen-seat lower house majority.

Citizen Journalism and Political participation: The Youdecide project and the 2007 Australian Federal Election

Abstract: The 2007 Australian Federal election not only saw the election of a Labor government after 11 years of John Howard's conservative Coalition government. It also saw new levels of political engagement through the Internet, including the rise of citizen journalism as an alternative outlet and mode of reporting on the election. This paper reports on the Youdecide 2007 project, an initiative undertaken by a QUT-based research team to facilitate online news reporting on the election on a 'hyper-local', electorate-based model. We evaluate the Youdecide initiative on the basis of: promoting greater citizen participation in Australian politics; new ways of engaging citizens and key stakeholders in policy deliberation; establishing new links between mainstream media and independent online media; and broadening the base of political participation to include a wider range of citizen and groups.

Populist fiscal policy

Abstract: Political economy explanations for fiscal profligacy are dominated by models of bargaining among organized interest groups over group-specific targeted benefits financed by generalized taxation. These models predict that governments consisting of a coalition of political parties spend more than single-party regimes. This paper presents an alternative model-that of populist pressure on political parties to spend more on the general public good, financed by costly income taxation-and obtains the opposite prediction. According to this model, public spending and taxes are lower under coalition governments that can win elections more cheaply. Indeed, in order to win elections, coalition partners need to satisfy a smaller share of swing voters than does a single-party government that enjoys narrower support from its core constituency. A coalition government therefore spends less on the public good to capture the share of the swing vote necessary for re-election. Using data from more than 70 countries during the period 1970-2006, the paper provides robust supporting evidence for this alternative model.

Explanations for party choice

Abstract: There were marked similarities between the elections of 2002 and 2007. Each followed five years of Fianna Fail-PD government; each followed a five-year period that saw considerable economic growth, but in which certain public services, notably health, seemed to be getting worse rather than better; each saw Bertie Ahern going into the election as the Fianna Fail Taoiseach; and each saw Fianna Fail winning just over 41 per cent of the vote and re-establishing a government with the PDs. Social scientists and historians are fond of counter-factuals: ‘what if questions. What would have happened in 2002 if Labour and Fine Gael had offered themselves as an alternative government rather than fighting the election independently; what if Michael Noonan had been a more popular leader of Fine Gael, and of an alternative coalition; what if the economy had been a little less strong, or if voters had been even more concerned with health; what if Mary Harney had not been leader of the PDs, and Labour had a more popular leader than Ruairi Quinn? The corresponding chapter to this one in How Ireland Voted 2002 explored the impact of some of these factors and suggested that Fine Gael would have done better if health had been more important and Fine Gael’s leader more popular, and Fianna Fail would have done worse — although the former not very much better, and the latter not very much worse.1 The 2007 election can be seen as another test of such ‘what if ...’ suppositions: Fine Gael and Labour ran as an alternative coalition government, Enda Kenny closed the gap on Bertie Ahern; more people were concerned about health and there was a greater degree of dissatisfaction with the government than at any time between 1997 and 2002.

Minority Government in Canada: The Stephen Harper Experience

Abstract: "The art of minority government is engineering defeat on the most favourable terms." (1) Canada's politics, consistent with Britain's history under the same plurality electoral system (known as "first-past-the-post," or FPP), considers majority governments to be the norm. The largest party in the House of Commons usually has more than half the members of Parliament (MPs). Through the quarter-century between 1980 and 2004, Canadians elected six consecutive majorities. Since Canada's voters reduced Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin to a minority position in 2004, and then replaced him in 2006 with a minority under a right-wing Calgary economist, Conservative Stephen Harper, Canadians once again have had to deal with minority situations. (2) The seven post--Second World War minorities before Harper's lasted less than two years on average; they took up barely twelve years of the six postwar decades. In Canada's majority-oriented plurality electoral system, the parties, the public, and the media perceive minorities, and expect them to operate, as "fragile constructs, capable of providing a short bridge between majorities but otherwise untrustworthy as governing instruments." (3) This self-fulfilling prophecy should not surprise us. The influence of electoral systems on party systems, electoral outcomes, governing styles, and political cultures is well attested in the literature on Western democracies. (4) Indeed, most European and other countries with proportional electoral systems regard at least one minority or coalition government model as normal. In this article, I do the following: * Assess and attempt to explain how and why Canadians operate under minorities, using Harper as the current case study. * Review proportional systems' performance, especially given that some Canadian provinces are considering a shift to New Zealand--style mixed-member proportional elections. * Consider Ontario's unusual two-party contract in its 1985-1987 FPP minority government. * Identify and weigh the strengths and weaknesses of the Canadian approach to minority government. * Argue that Prime Minister Harper, although he evidently covets a majority and wishes to trigger an election as soon as he thinks he can secure one, derives advantages from his minority position, and from the plurality electoral system itself. Harper might further his cause better in his FPP minority than with a majority or in a different electoral system; moreover, the circumstances of his minority afford him an opportunity, which he has been exploiting, to effect far-reaching changes to Ottawa's domestic and foreign policies. Minority and Coalition Politics under Proportional Representation Minority and coalition governments are common and often enduring outside plurality electoral systems. Under proportional representation (PR), large parties and one or more small parties negotiate coalition and support pacts. As European political scientists observe, they sometimes maintain long-term formal nexuses. According to Michael Gallagher et al., small European parties eagerly negotiate agreements with large parties in return for policy concessions. The smaller parties effectively exist for this very purpose. They harbor no ambitions or illusions that would make them aspire to lead the government themselves or to maneuver to attain that position. (5) Jorg Steiner and Markus Crepaz use the term "contract parliamentarism" for the post-election inter-party bargaining that regulates governing and support parties' roles and functions. (6) Under contract parliamentarism, a country's parties employ their understood "decision rules," or rules of the game, to secure coalition or minority agreements that often survive for a full parliamentary term. (7) Gallagher et al. point out that the small parties in coalition or minority pacts usually do not repudiate such an agreement, potentially forcing an early election, so long as the government honors the agreement's terms. …

Determinants of the Distribution of the Central-Government Budgetary Grants in Turkey

Abstract: Intergovernmental grants are the main revenue source of local governments. In the fiscal decentralization literature it has been argued that fiscal disparities across the regions are accounted for in the central-government grant distribution. However, some argue that grants are given to localities to increase the reelection chances of the incumbent or to increase the votes at election. To compete with the opposition parties the incumbent party may try to allocate the grants to aligned local governments. In this paper we analyze the grant allocation in Turkey. We test empirically whether central-government's budgetary transfers to the municipalities were made on the basis of economic criteria or in accordance with the political interest of politicians, and hence the coalition government. To test the hypothesis we followed the literature but we used additional variables. Using municipal data in sixty-one provinces, we find that the desire to secure reelection motivates politicians.

The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933: The Machtergreifung in a New Light

Abstract: On 30 January 1933, Alfred Hugenberg's conservative German National People's Party (DNVP) formed a coalition government with the Nazi Party, thus enabling Hitler to accede to the chancellorship. This book analyzes in detail the complicated relationship between Conservatives and Nazis and offers a re-interpretation of the Nazi seizure of power - the decisive months between 30 January and 14 July 1933. The Machtergreifung is characterized here as a period of all-pervasive violence and lawlessness with incessant conflicts between Nazis and German Nationals and Nazi attacks on the conservative Burgertum, a far cry from the traditional depiction of the takeover as a relatively bloodless, virtually sterile assumption of power by one vast impersonal apparatus wresting control from another. The author scrutinizes the revolutionary character of the Nazi seizure of power, the Nazis' attacks on the conservative Burgertum and its values, and National Socialism's co-optation of conservative symbols of state power to serve radically new goals, while addressing the issue of why the DNVP was complicit in this and paradoxically participated in eroding the foundations of its very own principles and bases of support.

Governmental Politics and the Dynamics of Multiparty Competition

Abstract: The politics of coalition government is a phase in a never-ending dynamic process of multiparty political competition. Most models of coalition government are static and focus on the making or the breaking of governments, ignoring or at least holding constant all other aspects of party competition. Here, the author considers some issues that are raised by locating the politics of coalition government in a more dynamic setting.

Divided We Stand: India in a Time of Coalitions

Abstract: This topical and absorbing book, written by two eminent journalists, explains why India has entered a new era of coalition politics. It analyses the consequences and implications of this relatively recent phenomenon. India has come a long way from the time since the Congress dominated the country's polity. The authors argue that the multi-party structure of government, or a coalition government, is neither temporary nor an aberration. Coalitions are here to stay, at least in the foreseeable future. The authors dismiss the view that India's polity is essentially bipolar, that is, led by either of the two largest political parties - the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party. They do not accede to the contention that other political parties have no option but to align themselves with either the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party.Continuing the analysis begun in their earlier work, "India in a Time of Coalitions: Divided we Stand" (Sage, 2004), both authors skilfully piece together the complex jigsaw of Indian politics. The authors point to the fragmentation of Indian polity with the rise of caste-based and regional parties and the formation of coalitions at the federal as well as provincial levels. This, they say, should not be perceived as a negative feature but as a positive influence on the working of the country's democratic structures. The authors take the view that coalition governments are in fact better equipped to deal with the tensions of India's deeply divided and highly hierarchical society. In comparison, governments dominated by single parties tend to both centralize and homogenize.Among the issues the book analyzes are: the impact of the April-May 2004 general elections that saw the dramatic decline of the National Democratic Alliance led by the BJP and its replacement by a government formed by the United Progressive Alliance coalition led by the Congress with outside support from four left parties; a gradual revival in the fortunes of the Congress after the party had witnessed its traditional supporters - including the minorities and the disadvantaged groups - deserting it in large numbers; and, the sudden rise and fall of the BJP from the time it was almost wiped out in 1984, and the party's faction-ridden character and its inability to quickly come to terms with its electoral defeat in 2004. This book also analyses issues such as: the growing importance and the changing tactics of the left parties, their internal differences and mainstreaming and their influence on the country's economic policies; the crucial question of whether coalitions can provide stable governments and under what circumstances; the possibility of alternate political formations - led neither by the Congress nor the BJP - coming to power at the centre; the extent to which political coalitions have led to better governance, brought about a greater degree of federalism and reduced the incidence of corruption; and, the manner in which successive governments have handled the new politics of economic liberalization and globalization together with the crucial issue of growth with equity. Challenging many commonly held views regarding India's political processes, this fascinating book will delight anyone interested in Indian politics at the beginning of the 21st century.

Retrospect and Prospects for Collective Regulation in the Australian Public Service

Abstract: The article examines changes in the collective regulation of employment relations in the Australian Public Service over the last three decades. While federal Labor Governments in the 1990s briefly experimented with agency bargaining before returning to a service-wide approach to wage bargaining, the Howard Coalition Government encouraged federal public sector managers to individualize employment relations through the widespread offer of Australian Workplace Agreements and non-union collective agreements. This agenda was reinforced by policy parameters overseen by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, which placed constraints on the flexibility available to managers to negotiate agency-specific employment arrangements. Despite concerted efforts to marginalize the role of the Community and Public Sector Union since 1996, the union has maintained approximately 70 percent collective bargaining coverage within the Australian Public Service. Nevertheless, the 2005 amendments to the Workplace Rel...

Voluntary Action, Social Welfare and the Australian Assistance Plan in the 1970s

Abstract: The Australian Assistance Plan (AAP), a little-remembered yet radical and imaginative program of social welfare reform, was introduced by the Whitlam government in 1973 and abolished three years later by the Coalition government of Malcolm Fraser. This article will chart the history of the short-lived AAP, its genesis and its demise, and argue that the AAP, while always controversial, helped to reinvigorate the voluntary sector in Australia and recast ways in which governments and voluntary organisations interacted, especially in terms of social welfare delivery.