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Political processes are shaped by the gendered ways in which women and men are selected to run for political office. This paper examines the increase in women entering the parliamentary arena and employs a feminist historical institutionalism approach to understand how and why change in female representation occurs. We examine the interplay between formal rules and informal practices on candidate selection through the case of Queensland, Australia. Drawing on policy developments and analysis of election reports, we explore the difficulties in changing the gendered nature of political parties, the formal and informal processes, the pace of change and the political struggles and opportunities along the way. Factors supporting increased representation included leadership, sanctions, placement mandates, as well as vacancies and a 'glass cliff' political environment. Support for formal rules and quotas – despite resistance at the informal level – has gradually improved opportunities for women in one political party in this jurisdiction and achieved very positive outcomes. In contrast, the other major party has opposed quotas relying instead on informal practices and rules, which result in less positive outcomes for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ascertaining which interest groups are considered relevant by policymakers presents an important challenge for political scientists. Existing approaches often focus on the submission of written evidence or the inclusion in expert committees. While these approaches capture the effort of groups, they do not directly indicate whether policy makers consider these groups as highly relevant political actors. In this paper we introduce a novel theoretical approach to address this important question, namely prominence. We argue that, in the legislative arena, prominence can be operationalised as groups being mentioned strategically - used as a resource - by elected officials as they debate policy matters. Furthermore, we apply a machine learning solution to reliably assess which groups are prominent among legislators. We illustrate this novel method relying on a dataset of mentions of over 1300 national interest groups in parliamentary debates in Australia over a six-year period (2010-2016). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the relationship between the growing dominance of career politicians in the Australian federal legislature and models of party organisation. Using data on MPs in the Australian federal parliament, this study maps changes in models of party organisation to the occupational profiles of MPs between 1949 and 2007. The findings show a correspondence between the phenomenon of cartelisation and the appearance of legislators whose previous occupation was in the political sphere. The authors suggest that there is a relationship between different modes of party organisation and both the supply of candidates and the demand-side factors influencing party selectors. The paper concludes that theories of recruitment should include a greater emphasis on models of party organisation to explain better the uniformity of recruitment outcomes across advanced democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The elusive concept of post legislative scrutiny (PLS) is slowly starting to capture the attention of Westminster inspired Parliaments around the world with its promise of improving the implementation and quality of law making through systematic review, with benefits of the citizen on the ground. Assumptions are made within the idea of PLS about who should be responsible for the scrutiny (the Parliament) and how it should occur in practice (often led and supported by Executive agencies). However, in many jurisdictions, including Australia, the term 'PLS' is not well known because the act of post-legislative scrutiny occurs on an ad hoc basis, without any clear systematic or prescribed framework for monitoring how, when or why it might occur. This gives rise to concerns that the quality of PLS occurring in jurisdictions like Australia might be lacking and demands for a more structured approach. This article shares these concerns but argues that the experience of PLS in Australia offers important insights how to invest PLS systems with the type of deliberative features that are necessary to ensure that scrutiny of implementation and lawmaking delivers meaningful outcomes for citizens on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, John Howard's coalition government responded to the attacks of September 2001 by introducing a series of bills that would grant the executive and the security services unprecedented new powers in its 'war on terror', and by committing troops to Afghanistan and, later, Iraq. Australia governments normally dominate the lower House of Representatives whereas the Senate, with near co-equal powers, elected by proportional representation, and thus usually denying the government or opposition an overall majority, proved to be a more significant obstacle, often requiring the government to make substantial concessions in order to secure passage of its legislation. Following the 2005 General Election, however, Howard's coalition secured a rare Senate majority, which it was anticipated would curtail parliament's ability to block or amend legislation. In the event, the Senate continued to play a role, albeit a diminished one, in shaping Australia's 'war on terror'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article details the distinctive style and political commitments that Green members of parliament (MPs) bring to representative democracy in Australia. Based on in-depth interviews with 16 sitting federal and state Green MPs, it examines the extent to which the political culture, grassroots organisation and values of this left-libertarian party influence the parliamentary role orientations and legislative behaviour of its MPs, and how this fits with existing research on parliamentary representatives. The analysis reveals mixed results: while the legislative priorities and representative focus of MPs appear to be influenced more by previous social movement and parliamentary experience rather than overarching party orientations, the party's culture has had a strong impact on MPs' views regarding issues of conscience and their style of representation. Drawing on the comparative experience of Green parties throughout Western Europe, this article utilises the prism of role orientations to assess the conflicting imperatives Australian Green MPs face in staying true to their movement origins while their party becomes increasingly professional and influential in the parliamentary arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an actor-centred institutionalist approach, parliamentary oppositions in Westminster democracies are analysed through three dimensions. Firstly, through institutional opportunity structures for opposition parties: in all four countries there are comparatively few opportunities for the opposition to affect policy-making. However, there are variances between the four countries and they change over time. Secondly, they are analysed through the parties' policy positions and the potential for cohesive behaviour by non-governmental parties. Within this aspect, there are different constellations. In most cases, opposition parties do not coordinate their strategies. Thirdly, they are viewed through bicameralism and federalism, as external veto points that may be employed by opposition parties in Australia and in Canada. Therefore, there is not only one pattern of parliamentary opposition in Westminster democracies, rather, a considerable diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of Australia's Commonwealth parliament have been paid since its creation in 1901. The 'parliamentary allowance' had been discussed during the protracted discussions leading to Federation and was established by the Constitution, but the administrative and legislative mechanisms that governed it were left to later generations of politicians to determine. As a result, successive Australian governments and parliaments have sought a way to remove parliamentarians' salaries from public scrutiny and thus deflect criticism. By 2005, they seemed to have succeeded by first moving responsibility to an independent tribunal and then by creating a statutory link between MPs' and senior public servants' pay. This success was, however, only partial as it relied on public criticism being deflected from the salary itself to other entitlements. Even the partial success is now threatened by major changes to Australia's industrial relations system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]