This paper on the changing role of mayors, and how that role might be strengthened, seeks to fill one of several significant gaps in research and discussion of political governance in Australian local government. It reviews relevant literature and recent developments in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and concludes that if local government is...

The report provides a detailed examination of Australia's judicial review system, which is an important avenue of appeal for those affected by government decision making, and makes a number of recommendations aimed at improving its accessibility and efficiency. The Administrative Review Council has examined in detail the various aspects of the federal judicial review system...

Australia has required all eligible electors to enrol (register) to vote now for one hundred years. In recent years, however, changing demographic patterns and citizen mobility have made it increasingly challenging to maintain the accuracy and currency of the federal electoral roll. These same social trends mean that strategies such as habitation reviews which have...

This book examines the roles, responsibilities and accountabilities of Australian cabinet ministers. It examines the sorts of jobs ministers do, what is expected of them, what they expect of the job and how they (are supposed to) work together as a team. It considers aspects of how they are chosen to become ministers; how they...

This paper empirically analyzes the joint impact of democracy and press freedom on corruption. Based in the theoretical literature, we argue that both institutional features are complements rather than substitutes in controlling corruption. Our regressions are based on a cross section of 170 countries covering the period from 2005 to 2010 as well as on...