Stability and change in Australia politics

301 p.; 23 cm

The Vexed Question of Research Priorities: An Australian Example

This paper discusses the nature of the research priorities debate in Australia, and traces the working out of that debate over recent years. The discussion is embedded in an account of how the institutional structure developed to allocate funds for research and how mechanisms were put in place to try to establish national research priorities. It is argued that the prioritising processes developed by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Australian Science and Technology Council (ASTEC) during the 1980s and early 1990s are adaptable enough for current and future use, but that by 1996-7, the possibility of a sustained effort to work out national research priorities appeared remote.research priorities, science policy, research coordination, foresighting,

Stability and change in Australian politics

The first edition of Stability and Change in Australian Politics was a landmark in the serious study of Australian politics. In this second edition Professor Aitkin assembles the results of a new survey carried out in 1979 which sought to discover what had been the effects of the Whitlam years and their aftermath on the political behaviour of Australians. The second, expanded, edition, in which seven new chapters deal with a survey taken in 1979, will remain a basic hand book of Australian politics for years to come

The Country Party in New South Wales: a study of organisation and survival

For more than half a century the Country Party in Australia has defied predictions that it would collapse or wither away, fates suggested by its small parliamentary numbers and the narrow basis of its electoral support. This book is a study of the anatomy of an unusual political party. Professor Aitkin pursues the twin themes of ideology and organisation to find out to what extent the Country Party owes its survival to the ideas and philosophy it espouses and to the nature of the organisation it has constructed for itself. Although he has concentrated on the party in New South Wales since World War II, the author has ranged widely, from the party's beginnings in the stresses of the developing Australian colonies of the nineteenth century to its reactions to the crisis in the rural industries which began in the late 1960s. This is a study in depth of a political party, rare in its command of original source material, that will undoubtedly interest the rural people for whose benefit the Country Party was formed and has remained in existence. It will be required reading for all those involved in Australian politics - practitioners, journalists, scholars. It is also a book for students concerned with the role of political parties in the modern world

The Country Party in New South Wales : membership and electoral support /

Mode of access: Internet

The colonel : a political biography of Sir Michael Bruxner

The Australian Country Party is a small group that has achieved a political success quite disproportionate to its size. That success, in the author{u2019}s opinion, is due largely to the quality of its leaders. The Colonel is the political biography of one of those leaders, Sir Michael Bruxner. Dr Aitkin presents Bruxner against the background of New South Wales politics between 1920 and 1960. He allows his subject{u2019}s words and deeds to speak for themselves: the reader watches the young Bruxner develop those qualities of leadership that distinguish him from his fellow actors on the political stage, qualities that made him unchallenged leader of his party for thirty years. This biography, one of a growing number of studies of notable Australians, is the story of a man of dignity, humanity, and unquestionable integrity that will appeal not only to political scientists interested in the problems of political leadership but also to the many, from city and country alike, interested in a distinguished man who served his country well in war and peace