Political Science Program
RSSS
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Political Science Program
RSSS
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The Political Science discipline specialises in political theory, Australian government and politics, public policy and administration and comparative government. Admission normally requires an Honours degree (at Honours 2A or above), or equivalent prior studies (such as a Graduate Diploma or a Masters degree) that include some research work. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) normally takes between three and four years full-time to complete a thesis of 100,000 words. The thesis must make a substantial contribution to learning and demonstrate a capacity to relate the research done by the candidate to the broader framework of the discipline or disciplines within which it falls. The political science program has a large area of expertise and can supervise PhDs in most areas of political science, public administration, public policy and some areas in political theory and sociology. The list below gives an indication of the willingness of staff to supervise in these various areas. If you wish to study at the ANU you might contact any of the academics listed below to gauge whether they might be prepared to supervise you given your area of interest. Or if you unsure who to contact you might contact the Graduate Adviser (currently Linda Botterill) who can pass your information on to all members of staff. Public Administration and Public Policy Linda Botterill: Public Policy, policy development processes, particularly with reference to rural policy, values in the policy process, interest groups and policy communities, policy making and federalism. Keith Dowding: all areas, especially politician-agency relations and public sector reform. John Dryzek: environmental politics and global governance. Paul ‘t Hart: bureaucratic and civic leadership, political-administrative relations, Janine O’Flynn: public sector reform, public management, government contracting, John Wanna: executives and civil service. Comparative Politics Keith Dowding: all areas especially electoral systems, comparative legislatures, comparative executives, comparative party systems, collective action and British politics. John Dryzek: theory and practice of democracy. Paul ‘t Hart: political leadership, senior executives, celebrity politics. Ian McAllister: voting, political behavior, political parties and electoral systems, internet and politics’ British politics, Northern Ireland politics. David Marsh: comparative governance, politics and the media, political participation. Australian Politics Linda Botterill: the National Party, the wheat industry, structural adjustment and drought policy. Keith Dowding: cabinet, career paths of politicians and federalism. Ian McAllister: all areas, but especially political behavior, political parties and electoral systems. John Wanna: federal and state politics. Political Sociology Keith Dowding: collective action/mass mobilization, agency-structure and choice. Ian McAllister: the social bases of party support and political participation. David Marsh:all areas. Urban Politics Keith Dowding: especially satisfaction with services, the Tiebout framework, competitive local government and fiscal federalism. Keith Dowding: analytic political theory, especially freedom, equality, power, John Dryzek: democratic theory and green political theory.
For further information go to this page on the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences website.
The Program provides strong institutional support for doctoral and post-doctoral research, with excellent scholarships, research resources, and Australia’s best research environment. The co-location in the Coombs Building of the ANU’s Research School of Social Sciences and the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies is a great benefit, given the wealth of political studies undertaken across both Research Schools. The Discipline has a strong research culture. We have a formal teaching agreement with the Crawford School of Economics and Government to teach jointly the Master’s degree in Public Policy (MPP). Joint teaching started in 2005. The intake in 2006 was some 70 students. Linda Botterill is our lead person, convening two courses while three colleagues teach regularly. We have conducted an extensive PhD program since 1961. Currently we have over 20 students in the program engaged in a wide range of topics employing different theoretical and methodological approaches. All staff are keen and willing to supervise - both in areas close to their topics of expertise and outside their research interests where they can still make a significant contribution. The program prefers to offer students a 'supervisory panel' of relevant experts - rather than a lone supervisor (although students may choose to work more closely with one senior supervisor). We have an active overseas visitor program attracting top international scholars who add to the intellectual life of the program. See visitors and their periods of visitation. Frank Castles (Edinburgh and Bremen) is our adjunct professor in residence. We run an active weekly seminar series, with 12 presentations each semester, and the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) public lecture series. We also organise several one and two-day workshops and conferences each year. Recent examples include: 'Us & Them: elites and anti-elitism in Australia', ‘Westminster in Asia and the Pacific’, 'Corruption: expanding the focus', ‘State Premiers’, ‘The ARC and ANZSOG Networks’, ‘Project Management’, and ‘Comparing Westminster’. Nationally, the Discipline houses two major Australian political science journals: Australian Journal of Political Science (edited by Ian McAllister since 2004); and Australian Journal of Public Administration (edited by John Wanna since 1996). Internationally, the Discipline houses two international journals. Public Administration: an international quarterly, edited by Rod Rhodes and Journal of Theoretical Politics is jointly edited by Keith Dowding.
The main scholarships available for study at the ANU are offered by the Australian government for Australian and New Zealand citizens (Australian Postgraduate Awards). The ANU also offers scholarships (for example, ANU PhD awards; Graduate School Scholarships; Re-entry Scholarships for Women)). A few International Postgraduate Research Scholarships are also available for people who are not Australian citizens. Deadlines for scholarship applications vary: 31 August for International Postgraduate Scholarships; 30 September for Re-entry Scholarships for Women; and 31 October for most other ANU and APA scholarships. Information about PhD scholarships is available from the ANU’s Graduate School’s web site.
Much of our research work is conducted through research centres and research themes. We are also founding members of GovNet, an ARC funded network. Below are brief summaries of their aims and activities.
ANZSOG is an initiative of seven governments - the Commonwealth of Australia, the New Zealand Government and the State Governments of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia - and fourteen universities and business schools. This consortium of governments and universities aims to provide world-class postgraduate programs to the emerging leaders and senior executives in the public sector and government-related sectors. Its research wing is headed by John Wanna, the Sir John Bunting Professor of Public Administration based at the ANU. In 2004, we were awarded $1.2 million over three years to pay for this chair and associated activities. In 2005, we launched its research program in partnership with Commonwealth departments. In 2005, the Commonwealth created a $10 million trust fund for ANZSOG and this fund guarantees the chair’s funding in perpetuity. In 2006, ANZSOG won its first major project; an ARC linkage award for $1.13 million on ‘Improving decision making in Government Service delivery using Third-Party providers’. ANZSOG also sponsors a book series, which had published seven titles by July 2006; runs a public lecture series; offers a series of workshops as agreed with the Australian Public Service Commission; and convenes national and international, network-based, research projects. Its last two national conferences on ‘project management’ and 'collaboration' attracted nearly 400 public sector executives and managers in each event.
CPS was set up in 2006 as a joint research initiative involving Political Science (RSSS), the Politics and Government Group (PoGo) in Crawford and the Centre for Democratic Institutions, with John Uhr as director. It will be Australia's primary centre for research on parliamentary and legislative issues, with a focus on Australia in the Asia Pacific region. The CPS’s links with international research are strengthened by a panel of international academic advisers, representing leading scholars in the UK, the USA, Canada and NZ. The CPS will strengthen the ANU's claim to be the main provider of research, consultancy and PhD supervision in parliamentary and legislative studies. John Uhr currently holds an ARC award on ‘Reconstructing Parliamentary Opposition’. The Commonwealth Parliament supports CPS and has signed an ARC Linkage application. This project will fund a fellowship scheme of visiting researchers, from research partner (the Commonwealth Parliament), from Australia and from overseas. GovNet also supports CPS, organising a series of research workshops later in 2006 to frame the research priorities. Further ARC applications will follow in 2007.
ANZSOG was one of the successful partners in the ARC 2004 round of Network Grants. It was awarded $1.5m for 5 years. GovNet unites three ARC Centres, two existing networks (RegNet, ANZSOG) and several other centres to create an interdisciplinary network of ethicists, lawyers, political scientists, economists and historians. It will tackle issues of institutional governance, from small firms to global institutions recognising both common governance issues and radically differing contexts. It will apply interdisciplinary, theory-driven, evidence-based research to governance issues in the region. So far we have taken the lead in running international workshops at ANU on ‘Whistle-blowers’, ‘Regionalism in Australian Government’, and ‘Comparative Policy Analysis’. A workshop on ‘Deliberative Democracy’ was held in December 2006.
Public policy is a major area of specialization in the Political Science Program. REPP is Australia's leading centre for the systematic evaluation and mapping of research outputs across all fields of scholarship. Our joint interest in policy analysis for government led to REPP joining the Discipline as one it is major research centres. The focus is research on the advanced quantitative analysis of scientific performance. REPP regularly conducts bibliometric analyses of scientific publications produced by publicly funded bodies such as the ARC, CSIRO and NHMRC. REPP also recognises the value of developing novel qualitative and quantitative approaches to research assessment. In particular, it seeks to find indicators sensitive to the research practices of the several fields, such as the social sciences, humanities and arts, which are not well served by standard bibliometric approaches. REPP currently holds two ARC Grants. Recently, it completed an ARC Linkage Grant with DEST as the Industry Partner, which led to REPP being retained as consultants by DEST. It will advise on developing guidelines on the quality and impact of academic research for the forthcoming RQF. Its involvement in this policy area is massive.
To support our work in political philosophy and theory, we intend to set up a Centre for Deliberative Governance with John Dryzek as director, which will focus on the empirical analysis and application of theories of deliberative democracy. We already hold two relevant ARC projects on the ‘micro-politics of deliberation’ and ‘theory and practice of deliberative democracy’. We also collaborate on projects about the community’s role in landscape management (with ForestERA, University of Northern Arizona) and on the impact of deliberation on policy (with CSIRO). There is one pending grant applications on 'Communicating Across Difference in a Democracy: Australian Muslims and the Mainstream'. We seek to consolidate and coordinate existing work and grow a centre of about five academics (including existing staff).
Students enjoy first-rate facilities. All students have an office computer with full IT support and Internet access. Resources exist to support students giving papers at academic conferences and we contribute to overseas fieldwork costs. A big plus of doctoral research in politics and policy at the ANU is access to and availability of resources. Canberra is where the Parliament is, where the national parties have their headquarters and where the lobbyists come to influence policy. Canberra is home to the federal government, the High Court, and ATSIC. The chances are that, whatever research you do on Australian politics and policy, most of the action is going on here in Canberra. The chances are good that most of the documents needed for research on Australian politics and policy will be found in Canberra. Apart from the ANU’s own extensive library collections, Canberra is the home of the National Library, the Australian National Archives, the Archives of Business and Labor, the Australian Social Science Data Archive, and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Finally, the national office of the Australasian Political Studies Association (APSA) is based in the Discipline and its web site provides useful information on political science research in Australia.
PhD students may enroll at any time of the year. The PhD is a thesis-only
program and may be undertaken on a full-time or part-time basis. The
duration of a full-time course of study is normally three years. Part-time
study is also available. For admission as a PhD student, an applicant
must normally hold at least an upper second-class honors degree or a
master's degree in political science, though graduates with comparable
achievement in cognate disciplines may be considered. Find out more about Political Science Research here. |
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Please direct all enquiries to: jeannie.haxell.anu.edu.au Page authorised by: Director, RSSS |
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