Australia

Datasets

The Australian Policy Agendas Project collects and organizes data on Australian legislation, executive speeches, opposition questions, public opinion, media coverage, and High Court decisions. Some details are listed below. Data is forthcoming.

Decisions of the High Court of Australia

This dataset contains information on every case decided by the High Court of Australia between the years 1970 and 2015. Cases serve as the unit of analysis. Each case was coded in terms of its policy content and several other variables controlling for the nature of the case and the nature of the court. In coding for policy content, we utilized the Comparative Agendas Project’s topics coding scheme, where each case was assigned both a major topic and a sub topic depending on its policy content. A full description of these categories and their corresponding codes may be found in the codebook.

Sydney Morning Hearld - Front Page Articles

This dataset contains information on each article published on the Sydney Morning Herald's front page for each day from 1990 through 2015. Front page articles serve as the unit of analysis. Each article was coded in terms of its policy content and other variables of interest controlling for location, political context, and key actors. In coding for policy content, we utilized the Comparative Agendas Project’s major topics coding scheme, where each article was assigned a major topic code. A full description of the policy content categories and their corresponding codes may be found in the major topics codebook.

Media

• Media: The Australian Newspaper

  The aim of this exercise is to code front-page news articles from The Australian newspaper. These articles can be accessed via Lexis Nexis Academic Archive. Please follow the link below, and then click the link to the ‘All News’ section on the webpage: http://www.lexisnexis.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/hottopics/lnacademic/?

  
  This dataset is not available in the trends tool.
  download dataset   download codebook

Parliamentary & Legislative

• Legislation

  Coding of legislation was based largely on information from the ComLaw website — a comprehensive online database of Australian legislation.

  
  This dataset is not available in the trends tool.
  download dataset   download codebook
• Opposition Questions

  The aim of this exercise is to code questions asked by MPs in the House of Representatives during the Questions without Notice session which takes place most days parliament sits.  You can find the questions via http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard/Hansreps_2011

  
  This dataset is not available in the trends tool.
  download dataset   download codebook

Prime Minister & Executive

• Governor-General Speeches

  Speeches coded are those given by the Governor-General of Australia.

  
  This dataset is not available in the trends tool.
  download dataset

Research

Policy Agendas in Australia

Keith Dowding and Aaron Martin's Policy Agendas in Australia was published by Palgrave in 2017. This book contributes to and expands on the major international Comparative Policy Agendas Project. It sets the project in context, and provides a comprehensive assessment of the ... Read more

Staff

Keith Dowding

Title: Professor
Institution(s): Australian National University

Keith Dowding is Professor of Political Science in the School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University.  He has published twenty books most recently The Philosophy and Methods of Political Science (Palgrave 2016) and The Selection of Ministers Around the World (edited with Patrick Dumont) (Routledge). He has published widely in the fields of political philosophy, philosophy of social science, urban politics, public policy and administration, and comparative politics.  He edited the Journal of Theoretical Politics 1996-2013 and is now associate editor of Research and Politics.

Aaron Martin

Title: Lecturer
Institution(s): Melbourne University

Aaron Martin was educated at the ANU, the Institute of Political Studies (Paris), Stanford University and the University of Melbourne. He returned to Melbourne University as Lecturer in Political Science Research Methods in 2010. Aaron’s research focuses on young people and politics, public opinion and policy and citizens' agendas. He is the author of Young People and Politics: Political Engagement in the Anglo-American Democracies (Routledge). He is currently wording on an ARC-funded project, ‘Policy Agendas in the Australian Commonwealth' with Keith Dowding (ANU).  Aaron sits on the Australian Electoral Commissioner’s Advisory Board on Electoral Research, is a member of the Steering Committee for Vote Compass and in 2014 was a Visiting Researcher at McGill and Princeton.

Rhonda Evans

Title: Director, Clark Center for Australian & New Zealand Studies
Institution(s): The University of Texas at Austin

Rhonda Evans is Director of the Edward A. Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is also a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government. Holding both a J.D. and Ph.D., her research focuses on the politics of law and courts, with special emphasis on Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. She has published in the Australian Journal of Political Science, Congress and the Presidency, and Journal of Common Market Studies. She is also co-author of Legislating Equality: The Politics of Antidiscrimination Policy in Europe with Oxford University Press (2014).

Christine Bird

Title: Graduate Research Assistant
Institution(s): Edward A. Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies

Christine Bird is a Ph.D. student in the Government Department at The University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in Public Law and American Politics. She holds a juris doctorate and a license to practice law in her home state of Oklahoma. While in law school, she completed a variety of internships including a year of service at the Oklahoma Supreme Court for Justice Tom Colbert. Additionally, she served on her law review’s board of editors. She currently serves as the Graduate Research Assistant for the Australia and New Zealand Policy Agendas Projects. Her research interests include the intersection of law and society, judicial politics, constitutional law, and civil rights.

Maraam Dwidar

Title: Graduate Research Fellow
Institution(s): Edward A. Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies

Maraam Dwidar is a Ph.D. student in Government at The University of Texas at Austin, specializing in American Politics and Public Policy, and the Director of Undergraduate Research for the U.S. Policy Agendas Project. From 2015 to 2017, she served as the Graduate Research Assistant for the Australian and New Zealand Policy Agendas Projects. Her research examines interest groups, coalitional lobbying, minority politics, and agenda setting. Maraam received her B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Davis and her M.A. in Government from The University of Texas at Austin.