Labour, UKIP and the Greens all gained much bigger swings than the Conservatives, but were election losers. The first-past-the-post system let the Tories pick up a swag of seats with a 0.8% swing.
It was a novelty when Conservative leader David Cameron had to enlist Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg’s support to govern, but Britons may have to get used to minority government.
EPA/Andy Rain
The UK is poised for another minority government, this time possibly with a hung parliament. Australia’s long experience of such arrangements offers lessons in how to manage minority government.
The UK general election could go either way. The one certainty is that the numbers of seats won won’t match the votes for each party.
AAP/Newzulu/Stephen Chung
This week the “mother of parliaments” faces a general election in the UK. The ‘first past the post’ electoral system means we can’t predict the result with certainty, nor expect it to match the vote.
UK politics is no longer a political tango for two, as this party leaders’ debate illustrated.
EPA/Ken McKay/ITV/Rex
Patrick Dunleavy, London School of Economics and Political Science
Voters in the UK are again looking beyond the traditional two-party system and look set to put paid to a famous proposition of political science.
At one climate change conference after another, leaders of the developed democracies solemnly pledge action, then return to the gridlock of political systems with 19th-century origins.
EPA/COP20
Even as the challenges of climate change grow ever more obvious, what remains largely unacknowledged is the crisis in liberal democratic politics that is preventing an effective response.
On many major issues, Labor’s Bill Shorten and the Liberals’ Tony Abbott are essentially two wings of the same bird.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
The crisis of public confidence in politics is not limited to Australia, but public disengagement, retail politics and lack of vision are crippling our ability to tackle long-term and wicked problems.
In the Anthropocene, human-driven forces are shaping the planet in ways that may risk the collapse of human civilisation.
Damián Bakarcic/flickr
The Anthropocene, as an epoch of human-driven planetary change, poses huge environmental and political problems. But it could also force us to develop proper ecological and democratic accountability.
Under former president Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan was little more than a ‘vertically integrated criminal organisation’, according to a new book.
EPA/Parwiz Sabawoon
Even by recent standards, the last few weeks have seen new levels of dysfunction, volatility and even chaos within federal and state governments. As the voters of Queensland demonstrated, there is little…
With just eight MPs to back her campaign for government, Queensland ALP leader Annastacia Palaszczuk relied heavily on local community organising and decision-making.
AAP/Dan Peled
The “new politics” of 21st-century Australia is much clearer after the extraordinary result in the Queensland election on January 31. Australia’s new politics consists of three elements that they will…
John Howard sealed his fate by going too far with WorkChoices, but he got the balance right and succeeded with the GST reform.
AAP/Andrew Brownbill
The distinction between the global and the local is collapsing under the pressure of climate change, economic restructuring, global migration and jihadism on the one hand and the populist and information…
A core problem for Treasurer Joe Hockey is that the public doesn’t share the Abbott government’s fervour for budget cuts and market policies.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
The recent losses of first-term governments in Queensland and Victoria suggests that some of the assumed verities of political process are being challenged. These results and the rapid shifting legitimacy…
Actor and activist Russell Brand’s solution for what ails us is nothing less than a revolution.
EPA/Hannah McKay
Three things about the present era are especially striking. First, problems persist. For those fortunate enough to have grown up in post-war Australia in particular, this is a somewhat surprising reality…
President Xi Jinping has a PhD in Marxism and recently directed more resources to the study of the works of Marx and Mao Zedong.
AAP/Jason Reed
How does one come to understand China? Many wish to do so, especially in light of China’s growing global influence. For some, language is the key that opens the door. With Chinese language, one is able…
The wealthy can ensure their voices are heard via advertising, publicists or lobbyists, by owning media outlets or even by setting up their own political parties.
AAP/Julian Smith
To have a healthy democracy, it is not enough to hold regular elections, or for every person to get one – and only one – vote. At the heart of democracy is the idea that by voting for a particular party…
Hong Kong’s digitally connected protesters are mounting a thoroughly modern campaign for democracy, but the state too has updated its mechanisms of control and surveillance.
EPA/Alex Hofford
In the closing decades of the last century, many political and business elites were swept up in a global wave of policies favouring free markets, deregulation of business and finance and privatisation…
Referring long-term issues to ‘depoliticised’ processes such as commissions of audit does not solve the challenges of political management for governments.
AAP/Lukas Coch
The 2014 federal budget was informed by the need to think long term and was accompanied by austerity rhetoric. Regardless of where you stand on the merit of austerity policy in affecting economic recovery…
Students who are marginalised from formal politics use what is left to them, their bodies, to protest against decisions that have direct impacts on their lives.
AAP/Julian Smith
Political participation is about more than voting. But when young people engage in politics their actions are deemed illegitimate. This is the supposedly apathetic generation that never gets off the couch…
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…
Professor of Comparative Political Science and Democracy Research at the Humboldt University Berlin; Associate of the Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney; Director of Research Unit Democracy: Structures, Performance, Challenges, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.