Party politics and local government in Australia: Stability, change and implications for Australia’s polity

Dewhurst, C; Grant, B; Huuskes, L

Party politics and local government in Australia: Stability, change and implications for Australia’s polity

Dewhurst, C Grant, B

Huuskes, L

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Publication Type:: Conference Proceeding
Citation:: 2018
Issue Date:: 2018-12-05

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	Citable. Dewhurst. Grant. Huuskes. APSA:IPSA 2018.pdf	Accepted Manuscript version	834.82 kB	Adobe PDF	View/Open

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Dewhurst, C	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Grant, B https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8055-6046	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Huuskes, L	en_US
dc.date	2018-07-21	en_US
dc.date.available	2018-06-01	en_US
dc.date.issued	2018-12-05	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	2018	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/128872
dc.description.abstract	Local government and state-local government relations across Australia’s seven jurisdictions continue to be sites of robustly contested reforms. Both scholarly and media attention perennially focus upon several key types of reforms, most saliently [i] structural reform, or the threat of structural reforms, to whole jurisdictions or metropolitan regions; [ii] cost-shifting (in the parlance of North America, ‘unfunded mandates’); [iii] the enduring question of the financial sustainability of local government; and [iv] changes to arrangements for appointed and elected leaders. However, comparatively little attention has been paid to both the stability of, and changes to, party-politics in local government, which we define as the effect of party-political affiliation upon candidates for local government elections and their appointment, and the effect of party-political affiliation upon local government operations. While local government in Australia has infamously been labelled non-party political, recent research examining party-political affiliation in local government in New South Wales (NSW) for the elections held in 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2107 has revealed a marked increase in party-politicisation, particularly in metropolitan areas, accompanied by claims of political gerrymandering. The research presented for IPSA 2018 will examine these results. Specifically, the declared party-political affiliation of candidates and elected representatives are compared with self-described ‘independent’ candidates for recent local government elections are compared and mapped against the Australian Classification of Local Governments (ACLG) which is deployed as a measure of regionalism. The implications for, first, local government operations, second, state-local relations and third, the Australian federation are explored.	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	IPSA/IASP 25th Annual World Congress of Political Science	en_US
dc.title	Party politics and local government in Australia: Stability, change and implications for Australia’s polity	en_US
dc.type	Conference Proceeding
utslib.location	Sydney	en_US
utslib.location.activity	Brisbane, Australia	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/DVC (Research)
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/DVC (Research)/lnstitute for Public Policy and Governance
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - IPPG - Institute for Public Policy and Governance
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access
pubs.consider-herdc	false	en_US
pubs.finish-date	2018-12-25	en_US
pubs.place-of-publication	Sydney	en_US
pubs.publication-status	Accepted	en_US
pubs.start-date	2018-07-21	en_US

Abstract:

Local government and state-local government relations across Australia’s seven jurisdictions continue to be sites of robustly contested reforms. Both scholarly and media attention perennially focus upon several key types of reforms, most saliently [i] structural reform, or the threat of structural reforms, to whole jurisdictions or metropolitan regions; [ii] cost-shifting (in the parlance of North America, ‘unfunded mandates’); [iii] the enduring question of the financial sustainability of local government; and [iv] changes to arrangements for appointed and elected leaders. However, comparatively little attention has been paid to both the stability of, and changes to, party-politics in local government, which we define as the effect of party-political affiliation upon candidates for local government elections and their appointment, and the effect of party-political affiliation upon local government operations. While local government in Australia has infamously been labelled non-party political, recent research examining party-political affiliation in local government in New South Wales (NSW) for the elections held in 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2107 has revealed a marked increase in party-politicisation, particularly in metropolitan areas, accompanied by claims of political gerrymandering. The research presented for IPSA 2018 will examine these results. Specifically, the declared party-political affiliation of candidates and elected representatives are compared with self-described ‘independent’ candidates for recent local government elections are compared and mapped against the Australian Classification of Local Governments (ACLG) which is deployed as a measure of regionalism. The implications for, first, local government operations, second, state-local relations and third, the Australian federation are explored.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/128872