Even decentralised parties aren’t immune from the instinct to centralise

Green Parties are often decentralised and highly internally democratic. But how do decentralised party arrangements respond to power, or proximity to power? Looking at the case of the Australian Greens, Narelle Miragliotta and Stewart Jackson find that there has been gradual growth of the party’s national level, even in spite of formal provisions which guarantee the autonomy of the state organisations

How and when constitutional conventions change in Westminster democracies

Westminster democracies incorporate numerous constitutional conventions – the uncodified, informal rules and practices by which political institutions operate. Nicholas Barry, Narelle Miragliotta and Zim Nwokora identify some key patterns for when and how different types of conventions are modified, and suggest further research is needed to develop a fuller understanding of the dynamics of change for political conventions

Leaving the Minors : The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand and the 2011 General Election

The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand has emerged as a successful environmentally focused party with a solid base. The 2011 General Election represented a high-point for the party, distancing it from the other minor parties. This article explores examples of factors affecting the success of Green parties, and examines the strategy of the New Zealand Green Party prior to the 2011 election. The findings indicate that the party has developed stable support through the development of a consistent policy base and pragmatic approach to its role in parliament. This has allowed the Greens to establish a position following the 2011 election as the third party in New Zealand politics

Savings provisions in Australian electoral law : their forms, functions and historical development

The introduction of universal suffrage in 1902 established voting as a right for adult Australians who were British subjects and over 21 years of age. However, parties, parliaments, and electoral authorities have not been content with merely ensuring that citizens are entitled to vote. They have also enacted measures that aim to maximise citizen participation in elections. Turnout was made compulsory in 1925, which largely solved the ‘problem’ of voluntary abstention from the ballot box. A second concern has been disenfranchisement caused by incorrectly completed ballot papers. This situation arises when a voter submits a ballot that fails to comply with the legal requirements for a formal vote. Since the introduction of compulsory voting, debates about how to improve electoral turnout have largely concentrated on how to reduce rates of informality.The ‘problem’ of informality has long occupied the attention of electoral authorities and policy makers. This is due, in part, to the fact that rates of informality in Australia have been consistently high relative to other mature democracies. Moreover, the prevailing view in much of the Australian literature is that most informal voting is the result of mistakes and therefore ‘accidental’ or ‘unintentional’. Estimates of unintentional informal voting at national elections vary, but usually fall within the range of 80 to 85 per cent of informal votes cast. Even by the more conservative estimates of the Australian Electoral Commission (‘AEC’) the average rate of unintentional voting in the four national elections conducted in the period between 2001 and 2010 was 60.45 per cent

Where now for the Greens?

THE 2013 election outcome could only be described as mixed for the Australian Greens. The party achieved something rare among minor parties – having not only won a lower house seat at the previous election, it also successfully defended it this time around. But the jubilation of Adam Bandt’s victory in the seat of Melbourne was offset by the realisation that the party’s nationwide share of the primary vote had declined significantly. In the House of the Representatives, the Greens hemorrhaged more than a quarter of their 2010 vote; in the Senate, around a third of voters opted to move their vote elsewhere. The outcome sparked the usual speculation about the Greens’ longevity, and grist was added to the mill when six of Christine Milne’s senior members of staff quit within weeks of the election. Importantly, the result raised the question of whether the Greens might go the same way as the now (almost) defunct Australian Democrats… Read the full articl