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Examines the ways in which the Westminster system has influenced the shaping of responsible government and democracy across Asia, Australasia and the Pacific. It also examines the ways the Westminster system has been adapted in these different countries in the light of local practices and traditions.
This book explores how the governmental elites in Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa understand their Westminster system. It examines in detail four interrelated features of Westminster systems. Firstly, the increasing centralisation in collective, responsible cabinet government. Second, the constitutional convention of ministerial and collective responsibility. Third, the role of a professional, non-partisan public service. And finally, parliament's relationship to the executive. The authors explain the changes that have occured in the Westminster model by analysing four traditions: royal prerogative, responsible government, constitutional bureaucracy, and representative government. They suggest that each tradition has a recurring dilemma, between centralisation and decentralisation, party government and ministerial responsibility, professionalisation and politicisation, and finally elitism and participation. They go on to argue that these dilemmas recur in four present-day debates: the growth of prime ministerial power, the decline in individual and collective ministerial accountability, politicisation of the public service, and executive dominance of the legislature. They conclude by identifying five meanings of - or narratives about - Westminster. Firstly, 'Westminster as heritage' - elite actors' shared governmental narrative understood as both precedents and nostalgia. Second, 'Westminster as political tool' - the expedient cloak worn by governments and politicians to defend themselves and criticise opponents. Third, 'Westminster as legitimising tradition' - providing legitimacy and a context for elite actions, serving as a point of reference to navigate this uncertain world. Fourth, 'Westminster as institutional category' - it remains a useful descriptor of a loose family of governments with shared origins and characteristics. Finally, 'Westminster as an effective political system' - it is a more effective and efficient political system than consensual parliamentary governments. Westminster is a flexible family of ideas that is useful for many purposes and survives, even thrives, because of its meaning in use to élite actors.
"Since 2002 - and for the first time since Federation - all state and territory governments in Australia have been held by the Australian Labor Party." "Yes, Premier features a chapter on each state or territory, and in each case focuses on the leader who has led their party to power and so created this unprecedented and historical situation. It examines each Labor premier (and in Tasmania's case, two!) and territory chief minister's individual rise to power and their political and personal style." "The chapters are written by experts in the politics and political culture of their home state. Part personal and part political biographies, the chapters also assess the instruments of leadership any modern state or territory leader must master in order to remain in the top job."--BOOK JACKET.
Constitutional scholar Elliot Bulmer considers what Britain might learn from Westminster-derived constitutions around the world. Exploring the principles of Westminster Model constitutions and their impact on democracy, human rights and good government, this book builds to a bold re-imagining of the United Kingdom’s future written framework.
A raft of recent political scandals in Australia has generated widespread media and public interest in the role and accountability of ministerial staffers, and their impact on relations between ministers and their public service advisers. Such scandals include the notorious 'Children Overboard' affair and the more recent AWB imbroglio. In Power Without Responsibility Anne Tiernan describes the contemporary working environment of political staffers, their formal and less formal roles, the challenges they face, and the forces that have escalated the growth in their numbers and influence.
In this book, internationally renowned scholars and practitioners elaborate on political as well as managerial questions, e.g. how to make overriding Public Governance changes the ’guiding model’ for a now needed stronger strategic approach. More specifically, their focus is on how moves towards a re-positioning as an enabling authority are to be made drivers for adapting management systems across all levels. In accordance with present developments, the authors explain how changes in the overall governance structure have to be used to adapt leadership practices in a more output-oriented or even entrepreneurial fashion. Overall, the underlying idea is to provide some further basics for a public sector type of a design-oriented management science.
'Leadership' is routinely admired, vilified, ridiculed, invoked, trivialised, explained and speculated about in the media and in everyday conversation. Despite all this talk, there is surprisingly little consensus about how to answer basic questions about the nature, place, role and impact of leadership in contemporary society. This book brings together academics from a broad array of social science disciplines who are interested in contemporary understandings of leadership in the public domain. Their work on political, administrative and civil society leadership represents a stock-take of what we need to know and offers original examples of what we do know about public leadership. Although this volume connects scholars living in, and mostly working on, public leadership in Australia and New Zealand, their contributions have a much broader scope and relevance.
'Bargaining and puzzling; power and thought; dealing and agonising; compromise and commitment. These are two sides of political practitioners whether politician, public servant or campaigner. Understand the interplay and we can, just sometimes, make sense of the real world we seek to interpret.' Patrick Weller's observation comes from half a century of contemplating politics in action. The question of how government works lies at the heart of political science, and it has also been the career focus of this pioneer in the field. The Craft of Governing offers a tribute to the contribution of Patrick Weller to Australian political science, with chapters from leading political commentators including Michelle Grattan, Peter Shergold, Bob Jackson and James Walter. Contributors consider the role of the prime minister, approaches to studying executive government, the continuing significance of senior public servants and the nature of leadership in public bureaucracies. They also reflect on how insights from the study of domestic public policy can be applied to international organisations, challenges faced by Westminster democracies and approaches to political biography. The Craft of Governing is an invaluable resource for readers interested in approaches to studying politics and the development of political science as a discipline.
This book is dedicated to Joachim Jens Hesse, a scholar whose multi-faceted work may be characterised as an attempt at "crossing borders" in several respects. These primarily include fostering interdisciplinary cooperation between law, economics and social sciences, analysing public sector developments in an international and intercultural perspective as well as bridging the "gap" between academia and practical politics. Therefore, the volume deals with a subject that covers these features in an exemplary manner: the interrelationship between nation-state constitutions and their international environments. In this context, ongoing processes of transnationalisation have not only contributed to blurring the formerly clear-cut boundaries between these two domains, but also provoked a growing interest in and demand for comparative, interdisciplinary and applied research on constitutional developments. The authors of this Festschrift include eminent lawyers, economists and political scientists from Europe, the United States and East Asia who worked together with Joachim Jens Hesse in various contexts.