Mungo MacCallum - The Good, the Bad & and the Unlikely: Australia's Prime Ministers (Reviews)
Author/editor: Mungo MacCallum
Year published:2012
MacCallum thinks that in recent years the 'most significant' leaders have been those who were 'the most courageous, the ones who burst through the roadblocks not only in society but within their own parties'. Examples are Gorton, Whitlam and Keating. These are called the 'heroes', often unsung in…
Raewyn Connell - Confronting Inequality: gender, knowledge and global change (Reviews)
Author/editor:Raewyn Connell
Year published:2012
On the international stage Raewyn Connell is Australia’s best-known social scientist. This collection of loosely linked essays tells us why. Connell combines fine-grained empirical research on class, gender and organisational life with acute political observations and persuasive theory-building.…
'Prospects for Democracy', Introduction by John Anderson
Year published:2012
In the spring of 1943 the Australian broadcasting commision and the Sydney Daily Telegraph collaborated in the production of series of articles, talks and discussions, under the general title: 'After the War then what about a real democracy in Australia?' Since many of the issues raised are of…
Accounting for Ministers
Author/editor:Keith Dowding|Samuel Berlinski|Torun Dewan
Year published:2012
Accounting for Ministers uses the tools of modern political science to analyse the factors which determine the fortunes of Cabinet ministers. Utilising agency theory, it describes Cabinet government as a system of incentives for prime ministerial and parliamentary rule. The authors use a unique…
Amin Saikal (ed.) - 'The Afhganistan conflict and Australia's role' (Reviews)
Author/editor: Amin Saikal
Year published:2012
Leaving aside questions about Australia’s historical predilection for fighting other people’s wars, the relevance of the US alliance and the very morality of the US-led invasion of this wretched and dismal land, the issues raised in this collection by a diverse range of distinguished experts make…
Australian politics and the study of regional integration
Author/editor:John Leslie|Annmarie Elijah
Year published:2012
One thing that makes the study of Australian politics interesting and important is that a set of Australian political institutions-the Council of Australian Governments (COAG)-sits at the heart of a functioning trans-Tasman Single Economic Market.Since signing the Australia—New Zealand Closer…
David Reiff - Against Remembrance (Reviews)
Author/editor:David Rieff
Year published:2012
It takes a brave man to speak out against remembrance these days. Journalist David Rieff has identified remembrance as one of the pieties of our age and in this slim volume seeks to think through an alternative means of creating and sustaining justice when dealing with past tragedies,…
Diane Austin-Broos - 'A Different Inequality: The Politics of Debate about Remote Aboriginal Australia' (Reviews)
Author/editor:Diane Austin-Broos
Year published:2012
Diane Austin-Broos is one of Australia’s most eminent anthropologists, an emeritus Professor at the University of Sydney and author of the well-regarded monograph, Arrente Present, Arrente Past, Invasion, violence and imagination in Indigenous Central Australia (Chicage, 2009). Yet, her latest…
Exits, Voices and Social Investment
Author/editor:Keith Dowding|Peter John
Year published:2012
To be published May 2012Over fifty years ago, Albert Hirschman argued that dissatisfied consumers could either voice complaint or exit when they were dissatisfied with goods or services. Loyal consumers would voice rather than exit. Hirschman argued that making exit easier from publicly provided…
Geoff Gallop - Politics, Society, Self: Occassional Writings (Reviews)
Author/editor:Geoff Gallop
Year published:2012
Professor, Politician or Public Servant?Jennifer Rayner Geoff Gallop’s Politics, Society, Self is an oddly passionless book. This is surprising, given that the topics he covers—globalisation, religious fundamentalism, reform of Parliament, an Australian Republic, social inequality and…