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There is a distinct rural flavour to contemporary political discontent. Studies in the United States have found that rural populations feel politically neglected and resentful of city dwellers, resulting in significant partisan cleavages. Rural discontent and difference are enduring features of Australian federal politics, with rural populations often frustrated by their treatment from policy-makers in Canberra. To understand better contemporary rural discontent this article considers the views of those elected to represent rural people, rural MPs. It presents findings of an empirical study into how Australian federal rural MPs understand their role, their constituents, and the issues they face. Interviews reveal that the role of a rural MP is shaped by distance, by diverse people and localities, and by a sense that their constituents are misunderstood by urban Australians and policy-makers. The article considers how these interpretations of rural MPs intersect with sentiments of rural discontent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of party- and party-system stability have often explored the connection between the party-level property of Party Institutionalization (PI) and parties' electoral performance and organizational longevity, yet scholars still have not agreed on a standard measure for this concept. This article argues that the length of party statutes could provide part of such a measure, specifically for the extent to which parties have become routinized (a key dimension of PI) through the formalization of their rules and practices. We validate the plausibility of this measure using data on 303 parties from 49 countries, demonstrating that party statute length varies systematically and in ways predicted by our knowledge of how party organizations reflect their institutional environments and the complexity of internal coalitions. We also show that statute length varies in expected ways with attributes often associated with higher or lower levels of party institutionalization. We conclude that statute length offers a conceptually congruent and objective indicator of formalization, one that could be used either alone or combined with measures of parties' informal practices to advance our understanding of the relationship between PI and democratic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative analysis as to the extent to which party law can influence the internal organization of parties in four Commonwealth common law states namely Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. is presented. It is felt that the parties shaped legislative regulation to their advantage by taking good amount of financial support from the state and minimizing the degree of legislative intrusion into their internal activities.

The operation of participatory within the Australian Democrats with reference to the development of the party's 1998 Goods and Services Tax(GST) policy and its subsequent application to debate in the Senate is analyzed. The study extends beyond the evaluation of the formal participatory mechanisms codified in the party's Constitution, to their operation in practice-revealing the tensions faced by a small participatory party within a competitive electoral system.

Countries with populist radical right governments are the exception rather than the rule. This paper uses the Australian case of Pauline Hanson's One Nation (PHON) and the UK case of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) – and its effective successor, the Brexit Party – to help explain a puzzle: how do populist radical right parties in the absence of any likely route to winning office or even holding legislative influence achieve policy payoffs? Tracing the political factors that have driven policy influence in these two cases reveals that an entrepreneurial leader with agenda-setting influence can have policy impact, despite disadvantageous structural conditions, through the following: leveraging electoral influence over both social democratic and mainstream right parties; gaining credibility through sub-national elections; and achieving (or threatening to achieve) defections from centre-right parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the attitudes and experiences of participants in the 2017 Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey through an interdisciplinary collaboration joining insights from the humanities and social sciences. Prior analyses of the Survey results, both in academic scholarship and media commentary, have focused on particular social characteristics of those who supported or opposed the legalisation of same-sex marriage. Building on this foundation, we analyse the differential attitudes and experiences of heterosexual and non-heterosexual participants who voted – or declined to vote – in the Survey. Our analysis draws on original data from a representative survey of Australian voters conducted in 2019 in which we asked participants to reflect on their reasons for voting, their experience of the campaign and their attitudes towards the result. Our data indicate that heterosexual and non-heterosexual voters had distinct and different experiences of the Survey and were motivated to participate for different reasons. The statistical evidence also prompts further reflection on qualitative and quantitative methodologies and the role they play in describing social experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political parties have been studied as organizations for more than a century. Over time the focus of party research has shifted, from normative concerns with organizational democracy to the comparative analysis of organizational evolution and party functions. In this article we document the trajectory of party organization research, analyzing the value of the comparative method and evaluating the predictive power of research in our field to consider how it may add value to the study of other types of organizations. We focus on four established fields: party leadership, candidate selection, party membership and party regulation, but also present some of the newest and most promising research themes in the field, including personalization, evolving forms of participation and affiliation, and the relationship between political parties as organizations and social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although membership is declining, parties continue to perform roles central to democratic governance in modern societies. Given this seeming paradox, we suggest that partisan identification, in complementing studies of formal membership, is a promising way of assessing the strength of parties' democratic linkage. Using data from an original survey of voters in Australia and the United Kingdom, we analyse the participatory and demographic profiles of party supporters. We show that there are significant differences between supporters and those not committed to any party, as well as between supporters based on the strength of their party identification, substantiating the idea that parties can be conceptualized as a series of concentric circles of increasing engagement but declining representativeness. Stronger supporters are more likely to engage with parties online, volunteer and donate, but are older, more likely to be male and less likely to be foreign-born. Our findings have important implications for democratic practice as parties seek to expand and rejuvenate their networks of affiliates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between partisan organisation outside a country of origin and the voting rights and migration patterns of its citizens. Using Australian political parties operating overseas as case studies, it examines the extent to which the electoral context of expatriate voting influences why and how parties establish organisational structures abroad. Electoral law in Australia allows citizens to vote while living overseas only for a limited period—as long as they intend to return to Australia within six years. Because of this relatively limited opportunity, we might expect party organisations abroad to exist primarily to mobilise support at election times in areas where there are high concentrations of Australian expatriate voters, rather than create lasting communities of partisan supporters. The article finds, in line with this expectation, that 'parties abroad' are relatively modest, geographically rooted in cities with large expatriate populations and facilitated by online and social media technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is the Australian Labor Party (ALP) one party, or eight? Academic accounts of the ALP throughout its history have emphasised the importance of state‐based policy‐making and organisation as evidence that the "life of the party" occurs within state and territory branches. However, over the last three decades, changes to the national conference and constitution, the increasing prominence of national leaders and the professionalisation of campaigning practices have arguably created the conditions for a far more centralised organisation, raising the question of whether, in 2019, there is anything distinctive about the ALP state and territory branches beyond the jurisdictions in which they operate. In this article, we investigate the distinctiveness of state Labor branches in terms of their formal organisational diversity and the characteristics and attitudes of their supporters. Using data from an original survey of Australian party supporters conducted in 2016, as well as undertaking an analysis of formal party rules, we show that the ALP exhibits a high degree of organisational uniformity across its branches, and supporters of the party in all states and territories very closely resemble each other. We conclude that even though the party maintains a federal structure it is possible to study its supportership and formal structure as a national organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political finance regulations require political parties to engage with a complex and multi-faceted regulatory environment. This article develops a framework to understand how political finance regulation impacts on party organisation and applies it to a diverse grouping of six parties from the Australian State of New South Wales. We find that all parties seek to capture the benefits of compliance, and minimise their exposure to the risks of non-compliance, by centralising and professionalising their organisation. However, the intensity of these responses is moderated by party characteristics, including levels of institutionalisation, party family type and incumbency status. The research thus highlights the intended and unintended consequences of regulation on party organisation, and illuminates the mechanisms through which change occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the regulation of political finance in Australia has moved from systems of laissez‐faire to systems of enhanced regulation, which aim to curb the scale and influence of donations. This article examines political finance regulation in New South Wales — the jurisdiction that has seen the most significant transformation of its regulatory setup — to assess whether and how the new regulations have affected donations to political parties in the state. We find, based on analysis of the pattern of donations before and after the reforms, that the regulations have made the financing system fairer and thus improved the quality of democracy in the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of money in politics has been a concern internationally with strong calls for stricter regulation of such funds. In Australia, this has resulted in a shift from laissez‐faire to increased regulation. Yet, there has been little research into the impact of this shift. To address this gap, this article examines the impact of four New South Wales political finance laws enacted from 2008 to 2012, which reflect the emergent regulatory approach. Focusing on the total number and value of political donations made to New South Wales political parties, it assesses the effects of the four Acts individually, as well as their overall impact, to test the assumption of legal effectiveness. It finds strong support for two key expectations resulting from the assumption: first, the raft of legislation will reduce the total number and value of political donations to the parties and second, that the 2010 legislation, which imposed caps on political donations and election spending, and substantially increased public funding, would be the most significant of the four Acts in terms of impact due to its scope and depth. This article examines the impact of major New South Wales political finance laws on the total number and value of political donations made to New South Wales political parties to test the assumption of legal effectiveness. It finds strong support for two expectations resulting from the assumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the first findings of the Political Party Database Project, a major survey of party organizations in parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies. The project’s first round of data covers 122 parties in 19 countries. In this article, we describe the scope of the database, then investigate what it tells us about contemporary party organization in these countries, focusing on parties’ resources, structures and internal decision-making. We examine organizational patterns by country and party family, and where possible we make temporal comparisons with older data sets. Our analyses suggest a remarkable coexistence of uniformity and diversity. In terms of the major organizational resources on which parties can draw, such as members, staff and finance, the new evidence largely confirms the continuation of trends identified in previous research: that is, declining membership, but enhanced financial resources and more paid staff. We also find remarkable uniformity regarding the core architecture of party organizations. At the same time, however, we find substantial variation between countries and party families in terms of their internal processes, with particular regard to how internally democratic they are, and the forms that this democratization takes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the extent to which the Australian Labor Party (ALP) engaged in a process of policy transfer, learning from the UK Labour Party, when it reformed its federal leadership selection process in 2013. Bringing together insights from both the public policy and party organisations literature, the article develops an empirical framework for identifying instances of policy transfer (or contagion effects) that consists of three criteria: intention, motivation and implementation, which can examined through various types of empirical data (including interviews, documentary, and network analysis). Applying this framework to the ALP reforms, the article concludes that while it is possible to see evidence of a general shift to a similar, more inclusive selection process, policy transfer is more difficult to substantiate. There were clear differences in the specifics of how the process would work, and a temporal disjoint between when actors sought information about UK practices and when the reforms actually occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A review of the article “Australian politics in the Australian Journal of Political Science: A review" by Gregory Melleuish, which appeared in the periodical “Australian Journal of Political Science", is presented.

In an era of widespread party membership decline, there is debate over the utility, within the ‘European’ tradition, of conceptualising party membership as the locus of individual party engagement, and of maintaining membership and supportership as distinct categories in analysing party activism. This debate is particularly relevant to Green parties, which, through their particular social movement origins and emphasis on grass-roots democracy, bring into question the assumption that the activities and profile of members and supporters are functionally different. Using original data gathered from two surveys of Australian Greens party members and supporters undertaken in 2012 and 2013, the political activity, associational membership, ideological position, and demographic characteristics of these two groups are compared. While active party members are distinctive in their party-specific political activities and their ideological positioning, there is much less difference between the rest of the formal party membership and the party’s active supporter base. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this research note we test the argument that centralised and exclusive nomination methods result in more diverse lists of candidates than do those organised with a more inclusive, decentralised selectorate. We do so using a database of candidate information compiled for the 2010 and 2013 Australian federal elections and an analysis of the House of Representatives selection rules for every state and territory branch of the Labor and Liberal parties. The Australian parties provide an excellent opportunity to examine this proposition as there is significant diversity in the types of selection methods used, both within and between the major parties. Our findings reveal significant differences between the two parties, even when similar methods of selection are used. We show that methods of preselection where authority is shared between local members and the central party are more likely to select female candidates, but only when this is supported by a willing party culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way in which political parties use state resources indirectly (e.g., parliamentary expenses) receives substantial attention in public debate, particularly when surrounded by perceptions of misuse. However, scholarly studies of resources indirectly available to parties through their functions in the state, how they are used and regulated, are rare. This article presents an analytical framework that identifies and categorizes the range of indirect resources linked to parties' institutional roles. It locates these resources within a four-fold matrix of regulation, distinguishing regimes that vary in their detail and whether compliance is externally monitored. Undertaking comparative case studies of parliamentary resource use in the United Kingdom and Australia, we argue that the blurring of party-political and parliamentary roles can impede the effectiveness of regulatory regimes that democracies adopt, regardless of detail and external enforcement. These findings have important implications for regulatory reforms that seek to constrain parties' behavior to depoliticize democratic governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the collapse of party membership in the last half-century has consumed much of the focus of party scholarship, the notion of membership itself is surprisingly under-theorised. This article presents a tripartite framework for understanding party membership as a constructed concept: from the perspective of the state, the individual and the political party. As organisational mediators and strategic electoral actors, political parties construct varying notions of membership in order to mobilise resources and gain legitimacy, while balancing the participatory demands of citizens with the legal and normative expectations imposed by the state. Using a number of illustrative examples from Europe and beyond, the article analyses the development of supporters' networks and the extension of participatory opportunities to non-members. Designed in part to address this membership decline and to offer individuals a different way of engaging with political parties, these initiatives are seen as a crucial step in the evolution of modern parties towards looser, more individualised and amorphous networks of affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia, like many other democracies, has not escaped the climate of disaffection and disillusionment with representative politics that has permeated academic and public discourse in recent years. This essay explores why this might be the case, by evaluating the current state of representative government and politics in Australia and by looking at four sets of ‘challenges’ to the current system. Each of these areas has sparked salient debate in the last few years: challenges to voting and elections, the character of Australian parliamentary and political culture, the future of political parties in Australia, and the world of politics beyond parliament. Salient examples include guaranteeing effective electoral administration, regulating the role of ‘micro-parties’ in elections, addressing the continuous underrepresentation of women and minorities in the parliament, acknowledging the decline of political parties as mass-membership organisations, and recognising the extent of political engagement taking place beyond the realm of formal representative institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Highlights and Abstract This article Applies the theoretical framework of 'individualisation' to political parties and policy participation., Suggests a new model of policy development in social democratic parties where increased prominence is given to ordinary citizens and supporters., Presents illustrative case studies of new forms of policy participation, including community consultations and online forums in the UK Labour Party and the Australian Labor Party., Assesses the implications of individualisation on political parties as sites for policy-making, participation and representation., This article examines the changing nature of the connection between citizens, party members and elites in the creation of party policy through the theoretical prism of individualisation. Using qualitative case studies of recent policy-making initiatives in the Australian Labor Party and the UK Labour Party, the article develops a new model of policy transferal that is not built upon the mass-party model of parliamentary politics, but rather upon organisational evolutions such as community consultations, online participation and supporters' networks. These evolutions, or reforms, typically emphasise the individuality of policy-making and accountability, promote new technologies for facilitating decision-making, and attempt to engage with a new style of politically active citizen. Each of these developments carries implications for how political parties facilitate participation, accountability and responsiveness in modern forms of representative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like parties elsewhere, the Australian parties have witnessed a decline in membership activism in recent years and some have suggested that near memberless parties may become the norm. Drawing on elite interviews, party documents and examination of recent organisational reforms, we argue that parties continue to need members and view their involvement as essential to achieving their objectives. In response to declining rates of activism parties have begun to experiment with different forms of membership, such as policy branches, and to expand the traditional notion of membership to include 'supporters'. We show that membership is a flexible concept that is used by parties to fulfil their institutional functions and electoral objectives, and is defined in unique ways in each sphere of activity. We suggest that accounts of party decline relying on formal membership numbers may be inaccurate. 同其他国家的政党一样，澳大利亚的政党近年来也经历了党员参与的滑坡，以至有人认为无党员政党会成为常态。笔者根据对精英的访谈、政党的文献以及对近年组织改革的考察，指出政党还是要有党员的，党员的参与对于实现政党的目标至关重要。针对参与率走低的情况，一些政党开始尝试不同的参与形式，如政策支部，并延展传统的党员概念，把支持者也包括进来。党员是一个灵活的概念，一些政党用它来实现其体制功能和竞选目的，在每一个活动范围内都有独特的定义。根据正式成员人数统计出来的政党参与走低，是不准确的。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale issue-advertising by third parties appears to be increasing in Australia. This article analyses recent official data on political expenditure, and situates such campaigning in historical perspective with case studies of the bank nationalisation, Medibank, WorkChoices and mining tax campaigns. The success of the latter two campaigns illustrates the potential for well-resourced sectors to employ what has traditionally been seen as an 'outsider' tactic. The various drivers of the phenomenon are discussed, including evolving trends in political engagement and the media, and fluctuations in perceptions of governmental strength or weakness. The most distinctly Australian aspect of the phenomenon is the tendency in recent decades for governments and third parties to engage in a 'call-and-response' cycle of issue-advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processes political parties use to select their candidates for public office constitute a crucial element of political recruitment in representative democracies and provide important insights into how power is distributed within party organisations. In this article, we develop a typology for understanding the diversity of preselection mechanisms in Australia's major parties that is based on degrees of influence between the central and local components of the party organisation. The typology in turn reflects preselection rules as public expressions of intra-party power sharing arrangements. We also identify the institutional, strategic and normative factors (including electoral systems, the accommodation of intra-party groups, candidate quality, efficiency and social norms) that influence the choices parties have to make when selecting and implementing a particular system. 政党用以选举候选人出任公职的过程构成了代议制民主国家政治遴选的一个关键因素，并提供了理解政党组织内权力分配的一个重要角度。本文根据中央和地方党组织之间影响的不同程度，提出了一种分类法以理解澳大利亚主要政党预选机制的多样性。这种分类法本身反映了作为表达政党内权力分享安排的预选规则。我们还找到了体制、战略以及规范性因素（包括选举制度、党内不同群体的相互适应、候选人品质、效率、社会规范等等），这些因素会影响政党选择和实施某种制度时的决策。 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]