Malcolm Turnbull has downplayed calls for a royal commission into the banks, arguing that their operations are already well governed.
AAP/Richard Wainwright
The politics that Malcolm Turnbull and the big banks support is one in which people are robbed of their citizenship and reduced to economic functionaries.
Social media provides a way of answering back, and an alternative source of material, ideas and priorities.
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A classical political science debate focuses on whether democracy is dependent on development. The director of the Electoral Integrity Project revisits the issue using new data from African elections.
Unless councillors are helped to focus on their representative roles, local democracy’s effectiveness could be in danger.
AAP/Darren Pateman
Roberta Ryan, University of Technology Sydney and Su Fei Tan, University of Technology Sydney
If local councils are bigger and councillors represent more residents, it is important that they focus on understanding their communities’ needs and aspirations, rather than on day-to-day operations.
There are a number of disincentives for prime ministers to give up the power to set the date of an election.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Can anyone remember when federal politics wasn’t in campaign mode? Politicians, encouraged by the media, have given up the distinction between election season and governing season. The continuous campaign…
Election monitoring has become an international norm for maintaining electoral integrity. A new survey finds a world of difference between the high hopes and dire realities of poll-watching.
Science and innovation can improve the world –but scientists have to help ensure strong democracies too.
Reuters/Kumerra Gemechu
There are two concepts in education theory – the social construction of knowledge and the notion of self-efficacy for development –- that could help build a true democracy.
Unemployed graduates in Tunisia demonstrate to demand that the government provides job opportunities.
Reuters/Zoubeir Souissi
In the wake of the Arab Spring the international community lauded Tunisia’s political transition to democracy. But a plethora of challenges may threaten democratic consolidation in the country.
The Flemish historian and writer David Van Reybrouck has recently triggered a minor sensation in the Low Countries by insisting that Western democracies are suffering so much election fatigue (electoral…
Uganda’s president has ruled for three decades – and the opposition is getting stagnant too.
The century since the first world war is littered with the broken promises of Muslim rulers to bring about a transition to more representative forms of government.
AAP/Asmaa Abdelatif
The rise of Islamic State and its declaration of the caliphate can be read as part of a wider story that has unfolded since the formation of modern nation states in the Muslim world.
Ricky Muir makes up his mind based on how he thinks the proposed policy will affect ordinary Australians like himself.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Australia’s political system would be better off with more ordinary people and fewer career party politicians in the Senate. It would thus be more representative of ordinary Australians, not less.
Voting in Uganda’s Karamoja region.
Reuters/Goran Tomasevic
South Africans’ faith in the post-apartheid system of democracy is clearly slipping - and some even suggest that a return to apartheid would be a good thing.