Australia is on the eve of receiving one of its most anticipated budget announcements. Wayne Swan and the team within the Treasury have put together a pillar from which the Labor Party will draw strength…
Speaker of the House of Representatives Peter Slipper has stepped aside following allegations of sexual harassment and the misuse of cab-charge vouchers. Slipper’s former adviser James Ashby accused the…
The by-elections held throughout Burma/Myanmar on 1 April initially look to have produced a stunning result for the National League for Democracy (NLD) and its leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. It was stunning…
The Russian presidential elections, held on 4 March, gave a solid electoral win to the President-elect Vladimir Putin. But much of the Western press saw it as a tainted victory. With allegations of election…
Australians are in a unique place today – we are witnessing our democracy being called to account. The nature of Australian democracy is being debated by on the one hand, its Treasurer and on the other…
Today marks the 50th anniversary of military control over the Burmese state, marking half a century of the Junta’s tight, often brutal grip on power. But within the last year, there have been shifts towards…
If the current leadership tussle in the labor party has demonstrated anything, it’s that politics in Australia is not the most impressive affair. And if we needed any further confirmation, we need only…
“If I Ruled The World” was a tune made famous decades ago by English comedian and singer Harry Secombe who sang of making every day the first day of spring as well as other miraculous improvements. It…
Those who call for the Occupy movement to have a coherent set of demands at its birth ignore the history of social and protest movements. Often, the coherence to the programs of protest movements is only…
It has been a tumultuous week in the life and times of democracy in the Mediterranean. Seven days punctuated by joyous hope and its ugly opposite, sullen despair. The promising news came from Tunisia…
CHOGM As the meeting between Commonwealth Heads of Government kicks off in Perth, a row is brewing over the idea for a new Commissioner on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Holly Cullen from…
The skepticism of contemporary China’s multilayered and painful efforts to achieve legal and political reform makes many wonder if democracy can really grow in the Chinese soil. This is such a haunting…
Australians are more dissatisfied with the way democracy works now than they were after the Rudd government was elected, a poll has found. According to the ANU poll of 2001 people, there has been a 13…
Sarah Palin’s voice, both in sound and content, still has the power to stop me dead in my tracks with fear and bewilderment. Her game of will she/won’t she run for the US Presidency has ended, but not…
This weekend Spain will see the return of its “revolution”. Those involved in the 15-M movement will once again take to the streets en masse to demand urgent reforms. Under the motto “united for a global…
The carbon tax bills passed by the Australian House of Representatives on October 12 were a small vindication of climate science. But we should be concerned about the corpses of science, reason and expertise…
Imagine a country in which politics is not a struggle among ambitious individuals for power, but the community’s way of resolving conflicts and advancing its common interests. Voters are well-educated…
One hundred and fifty years ago, the South Australian House of Assembly handed down the report of its first committee into the running of elections. Its main purpose was to find the causes of two troubling…
There is an old joke in Canada, one that every university student is told early in the Introduction to Politics class. It goes like this: three students - one British, one French, and a Canadian - are…
Managing Director of the McCourtney Institute of Democracy, Associate Research Professor, Political Science, Co-host of Democracy Works Podcast, Penn State