Large portions of spending by national governments can be considered mandatory. Drawing on practices from eight OECD countries, this paper examines how governments define, monitor and review mandatory spending. The analysis suggests that mandatory spending should be reviewed regularly, included in fiscal rules and budget processes, and be subject to clear accountabilities to parliament.

An index focused on measuring the support and development of political leaders as key democratic infrastructure in 10 countries worldwide, including Australia. It offers an evidence-based starting point for analysing the presence, quality, nature and public perception of the leaders at the centre of democracies – a key element of democratic health that lacks consistent...

This evidence-based report aims to familiarise the reader with a wide array of AI in journalism use cases, provide grounding on the legal and ethical issues that journalists and audiences identify regarding this technology within journalism, and reveal news audiences’ expectations regarding how this technology should or should not be used.

Adopting digital commons can save governments money, increase interoperability for public services and digital infrastructure, and enhance a nation’s digital sovereignty where technical decisions are based on local laws, norms and values. This guide aims to provide interested policymakers and public service officials with best practices to support digital commons projects.

This article aims to study whether policy issue characteristics affect corporate lobbying behaviour. In doing so, it attempts to make a theoretical contribution to the interest group literature and more specifically on the behaviour of key business actors in the interest group system.