Overview: This edited collection includes eleven major case studies and one general review of rhetorical contest in Australian politics. The volume showcases the variety of methods available for studying political speech, including historical, theoretical, institutional, and linguistic analyses, and demonstrates the centrality of language use to democratic politics. The chapters reveal errors in rhetorical strategy...

‘Leadership’ is routinely admired, vilified, ridiculed, invoked, trivialised, explained and speculated about in the media and in everyday conversation. Despite all this talk, there is surprisingly little consensus about how to answer basic questions about the nature, place, role and impact of leadership in contemporary society. This book brings together academics from a broad array...

In this discussion paper John Uhr ranks parliaments against four key values - political equality, popular control of government, civil liberties and human rights and public deliberation. The Senate emerges in a positive light, particularly in relation to proportional representation, scrutiny of legislation and the committee system. Uhr rates negatively the low number of private...

Papers and audio from the 2005 Constitutional Law Conference and Dinner, held on 18 February, are now available online. Speakers include Anne Twomey, John Uhr, Senator George Brandis, Andrew Lynch, Arthur Glass and George Williams.

What can we make of the 'great debate' between Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition leader Mark Latham televised live on 12 September, asks John Uhr. Where does the Australian experience fit in the larger world of democratic politics? What lessons about the state of Australian democracy can be taken from Sunday's televised debate?