Publications title
The School of Politics and International Relations has a long history of excellence in research both by faculty members and its graduate students. The publications pages provides you with a list of all of the Schools, including the various Centres associated with the School, major publications in recent years. The SPIR publications are those publications not necessarily associated with a particular Centre.
Workshop Report: Women's Advancement in Australian Political Science (Professional News)
Author/editor:Mhairi Cowden|Kirsty McLaren|Alison Plumb|Marian Sawer
Year published:2012
This report provides a summary of the discussions, presentations and recommendations arising from the workshop, ‘Women’s Advancement in Australian Political Science’. The workshop was prompted by the continuing under-representation of women in the discipline of Australian political science and…

A Critical History of the Economy
Author/editor:Ryan Walter
Year published:2011
Drawing on recent debates in critical International Political Economy, this book mobilizes the idea that the economy does not exist separately from society and politics to develop a detailed intellectual history of how the economy came to be seen as an independent domain. In contrast to typical…
A way forward in kidney procurement (Platform Papers)
Author/editor:Mark Fabian
Year published:2011
Many of you will have come across advertisements encouraging you to talk to your loved ones about organ donation. This is a manifestation of the government’s latest set of initiatives to increase the organ donation rate. The plan is to optimise our system for procuring organs from deceased…
ABC talk: Majority Rule - is that democracy?
Author/editor:John Passmore
Year published:2011
Another piece from Eddy's collection of wartime Australian political discourse. A sneak peak: 'Our tendency is to think that the growth of democracy implies an ever-increasing uniformity. More and more, we take liberty to mean freedom to have what we call ‘a good time,’ equality to mean reducing…
Australian Business Politics from an Anglo-American viewpoint
Author/editor:Michael Moran
Year published:2011
It would be ridiculous for a short term academic visitor to Australia to pretend to be able to offer insights to Australians about their politics. But what a visitor can do is bring to bear experience and knowledge of foreign systems to ask how far they apply in the Australian case – and…
Australian Politics from a Distance
Author/editor:Toby Miller
Year published:2011
As a child growing up in London, I remember going to places like Australia House on the Strand to read the Australian and the Canberra Times. This was a means of keeping in touch with Australian politics and cricket. Now, I visit the Sydney Morning Herald’s iPad application, which I greatly admire…

Comparing Westminster
Author/editor:Rod A. W Rhodes|John Wanna|Patrick Weller
Year published:2011
This book explores how the governmental elites in Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa understand their Westminster system. It examines in detail four interrelated features of Westminster systems: firstly, the increasing centralization in collective, responsible cabinet…

Encyclopedia of Power
Author/editor:Keith Dowding
Year published:2011
Power is a central concept in many disciplines in the social sciences, including political science, sociology, social-psychology, organization studies, urban politics and planning. Where the term is less often used, such as in economics, it has been reduced to other concepts. Despite, or perhaps…
Everything We Need to Know about Compulsory Voting
Author/editor:André Blais
Year published:2011
For someone like me who studies elections and electoral rules, the first thing that comes to mind when I hear ‘Australia’ is …compulsory voting, and Australia is the first country that comes to mind when I hear ‘compulsory voting’.For someone coming from Noth America, the idea of forcing people to…

Federalism, multilevel governance and Australia
Author/editor:Doug Brown
Year published:2011
To study Australian politics is, for many, to study the national government: its institutions, its parties, leaders, elections, and policy outcomes. For others, the focus is on Australia in the world, not just because globalization brings that world ever closer, but also because foreign policy is…