This guest paper reveals patterns in ministerial leadership styles that have profound impacts on the relationship between ministers and civil servants. The paper identifies two distinct styles of ministerial management and leadership of civil servants – and finds evidence that male and female ministers adopt different approaches.

In this report, Jonathan Slater, who was the most senior civil servant in the Department for Education (UK) from 2016 to 2020, writes that while public engagement is a core part of the role of local government policy-makers, it is not seen as important for their counterparts in central government.

This report explores how the powerful fossil fuel, gambling and tobacco industries are attempting to take advantage of Australia’s weak integrity laws, thereby distorting the nation's democratic processes, to put profits ahead of society's wellbeing.

Much like what occurs in Australia, this paper argues that while creating a new department can be useful to focus on a high priority issue or to bring together related policy areas, most changes in the United Kingdom are rushed through either to send a political signal or to reward allies.

This report analyses the extent to which the coal industry is embedded in Australian federal politics. It demonstrates how coal’s pivotal position in key networks of influence has enabled its interests to remain central to the climate and energy policy agenda of the Morrison Government.