Australian and Canadian prime ministers Tony Abbott and Stephen Harper operate in political cultures where all-out warfare is now the norm.
AAP/Steve Christo
In recent years, a political “state of nature” has replaced what had been the civilised practice of political life in Australia.
Like Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi (right), PUP leader Clive Palmer heads up what can be termed a ‘personal’ party.
AAP/EPA/Alan Porritt/Angelo Carconi
While Silvio Berlusconi has shown himself to be adept at transferring business organisational and marketing skills to politics, Clive Palmer has appeared completely out of his depth in this sense.
The march towards equal marriage rights in Ireland is well ahead of Australia, yet the level of public support in each nation is remarkably similar.
William Murphy/Flickr
Support for equal marriage rights in Ireland and Australia is remarkably similar: 71% in Ireland and 72% in Australia. The key difference is that Australian politicians are choosing not to listen.
The Labor Party that Bill Shorten leads is much more professionalised in its MP make-up than its earlier incarnations.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
For British Labour leader Ed Miliband, defeat was yet again snatched from the jaws of victory. With the UK general election less than six months away, the recent Rochester and Strood by-election was a…
Nigel Farage and UKIP are faced with a political dilemma – whether to become ‘insiders’ in Westminster or remain ‘outsiders’, criticising the key political actors.
EPA/Facundo Arrizabalaga
UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage now has a problem. In the wake of his party’s success in the recent European Parliament election, Farage and his UKIP colleagues need to determine how best…
Higher-income Americans are much more likely to vote than the poor, which reduces political parties’ incentive to tackle inequality.
EPA/Michael Reynolds
Recent weeks have been all about elections and broken promises: from early April to mid-May, half-a-billion Indians went to the polls in what many described an astonishing display of democratic prowess…
One political scientist recently claimed that the evidence isn’t strong enough for lowering the voting age in Australia to 16. What are the arguments to the contrary?
AAP/Lukas Coch
Richard Berry, London School of Economics and Political Science
Pressure is building in democracies around the world to lower the voting age to 16. For national elections, Brazil (in 1988), Austria (2007) and Argentina (2012) have led the way. For local elections…
British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband has embarked on sweeping internal reform of his party. Should his Australian counterpart Bill Shorten follow suit?
EPA/Andy Rain
In the wake of the ALP’s poor result in the recent Western Australia Senate election, The Conversation is publishing a series of articles looking at the party’s brand, organisation and future prospects…
France’s Front National under Marine Le Pen could be described as ‘right wing’, but in a global context what does that even mean?
EPA/Guillaume Horcajuelo
The rise of the Tea Party in the US and the electoral success of both nationalist populists in Europe and the Abbott government in Australia demonstrates there are many parties with positions described…
Within eight months of taking office, South Korean president Park Geun-Hye embraced her predecessor’s green growth strategy and now champions the so-called Green Growth 2.0 policies.
EPA/Kim Min-Hee
Like Australia, South Korea had a change of government last year. And like Australia’s, Korea’s new government was keen to distance itself from its predecessors’ legacies – particularly its “Green Growth…
Bill Shorten is the new ALP leader, after an election contest where the votes of the rank and file party members were included for the first time.
AAP/Lukas Coch
So the election between two middle-aged, middle class, white men with broadly shared policy agendas is over. In this case, it is not the federal election between Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott, but the month-long…
Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Discipline of Politics & International Relations, Macquarie School of Social Sciences, Macquarie University