Since the rise of the Australian Labor Party in the early 1980s, the Australian political landscape - the parties and the ideological climate in which they operate, the institutions of government, and the policy outcomes if not the behaviour of the electorate - has changed considerably. Some see the changes as both necessary and exciting; for others, what is paramount is the level of economic dislocation and social distress.

Developments in Australian Politics sets out to map some of the most important of these changes; to examine the different, often competing, explanations for them; and to place both the changes and the various attempts to account for them in a wider historical context. In doing so, it offers a more wide-ranging, better informed, and up-to-date coverage of key Australian political institutions and public policy arenas than any other academic text in the market.

While designed with university students in mind, Developments in Australian Politics contains much that should prove invaluable to the interested general reader.