Abstract: This article provides an introductory overview of themes raised in this special edition of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. We suggest that, while recent work such as Michael Barnett’s Empire of Humanity has begun to explore the history of western humanitarianism, academic researchers can do more to address the intricate framework of relations between humanitarianism and empire, and that the history of humanitarianism can usefully be viewed as a fundamental component of imperial relations, a way of bridging trans-imperial, international and transnational approaches. We set the papers in this collection within the wider historiography of nineteenth and twentieth century humanitarianism, and outline how the humanitarian ‘impulse’ intersected with debates around anti-slavery, colonial administration and the protection of indigenous peoples. We also outline the ways in which twentieth-century international ‘networks of concern’ engaged with, and built upon, the discourses of imperial humanitarianism. Finally, we briefly consider the benefits of a ‘transnational’ approach in sketching the history of empire and humanitarianism.

Abstract: This paper examines the interrelationships between institutional change and entrepreneurship development in countries that until recently were operating under the rules of central planning. The evidence presented in the paper shows important differences in state-entrepreneurship relationships between former Soviet republics, where the slow pace of institutional change and major institutional deficiencies has constrained the development of productive entrepreneurship; Central European countries that are now part of the European Union (EU), where institutional changes associated with accession to the EU are associated with the state becoming an important agent of formal and informal institutional change; and China which presents something of a conundrum, since entrepreneurship has developed rapidly despite major formal institutional deficiencies. Yang's concept of double entrepreneurship is used to explain the so-called Chinese puzzle, where enterprise takes on a socio-political as well as a purely economic...

Abstract: Commonwealth is the third book co-authored by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. As with the previous two books, Empire and Multitude, the task of this book is to both critique the present order and provide the concepts for a radical transformation of that order. This review examines how this third, and final book in the series, changes the argument of the other two, specifically examining the role that the concept of the common plays in restructuring the idea of critique, politics, and political economy.

Abstract: Cicero's On the Commonwealth and On the Laws were his first and most substantial attempts to adapt Greek theories of political life to the circumstances of the Roman Republic. They represent Cicero's understanding of government and remain his most important works of political philosophy. On the Commonwealth survives only in part, and On the Laws was never completed. The new edition of this volume has been revised throughout to take account of recent scholarship, and features a new introduction, a new bibliography, a chronological table and a biographical index. James E. G. Zetzel offers a scholarly reconstruction of the fragments of On the Commonwealth and a masterly translation of both dialogues. The texts are further supported by notes and synopsis, designed to assist students in politics, philosophy, ancient history, law and classics.

Abstract: Through a focus on “consumer-citizenship” this paper foregrounds the class practices inherent in urban regeneration. Using Glasgow's 2014 Commonwealth Games (CWGs) as an illustrative example of regeneration, it seeks to highlight the market-led processes that underpin state interventions. The paper demonstrates how these processes are implemented to transform “problem people, and problem places” (Damer 1989, From Moorepark to “Wine Alley”) into sites of “active” consumption and “responsible” citizenship. Yet, access to this “consumer citizenship” is stratified. In doing so, we synthesise conceptual insights from the Marxist-influenced gentrification literature and the Foucauldian-inspired housing renewal literature. We forward this to initiate further academic debate and empirical enquiry on the specific issue of mega sporting events.

Abstract: The No Child Left Behind legislation was signed into law to ensure children in the United States receive quality education and learn the skills needed to be successful. Career and technical educati...

Abstract: Acknowledgment Introduction 1. THE MAKING OF AN OEUVRE A Humanist Education The Dutch Debate The Making of an Oeuvre Conclusion: Politics as a Ballgame 2. THE RHETORIC OF THE MARKET Persuading the Passions In the Public Arena: Rhetoric in Action Fables and Frankness Conclusion: The Rhetoric of the Market 3. WISE MERCHANTS Hobbes and the Foundation of the Commonwealth Citizenship in Theory and Practice The Ethics of Self-Interest Representing the Wise Merchant Conclusion: Commercial Citizenship in Perspective 4. THE COMMERCIAL COMMONWEALTH The Batavian Athens The Politics of Free Trade Monarchy Dethroned Towards a Merchant Democracy Conclusion: The Radical Republic 5. CONCORD AND TOLERATION The Erasmian Moment The Relation between Church and State Toleration: Pluralism for the Sake of Unity Epilogue: From Freedom of Religion to Freedom of Speech? CONCLUSION The Brothers De la Court and the Commercial Republican Tradition Bibliography Index

Abstract: Accommodating Australians explores the rise and fall of public housing during a prolonged period of generous Government support for home ownership while forcing the poor to pay more for their accommodation. The book discusses the way in which Commonwealth initiative led to the States adopting town planning processes that due to State departure from historic approaches to the provision of urban infrastructure services has helped fuel a massive rise in dwelling prices. This book explores the response of the Australian Government during the bleakest years of WWII when it took stock of the situation facing the housing of the people and the way it developed a housing program in the post war period to improve the way they were accommodated. The ambitions of those who witnessed the extremes of housing deprivation during the Depression and resolved to improve the quality of housing, to make it more affordable and the nation fairer are outlined. It is a story about the rise and fall of public housing and helps explain why Australian housing has now become one of the most expensive in the developed world. It is also about the way Commonwealth initiatives built on the reforming agendas of critics within the States of the prevailing mode of and approach to urban development led to the introduction of town planning in Australia. It is also a sad tale about the way principle and mature consideration of the rational way to develop our cities gave way to pre-occupation with accommodating the short term wishes of developers. This history is an important aspect of Commonwealth-State relations over the last 70 years and explores the way interpretations of the Constitution have evolved to result in the Commonwealth gradually assuming greater authority over the States in the development and management of our accommodation (as in other areas). It in, large measure, documents the fragile and limited nature of the idea of the Federation and the few opportunities taken to see things as a nation rather than a loose coalition of States.

Abstract: This study brings to light the problem of identifying, and of determining the status of, ethnic Korean migrants who assert membership in the Korean national community. The influx of members of the ethnic diaspora in China and the former Soviet Union has posed challenges to South Korea's legal definition of national membership and its practice of keeping the boundaries of nationhood. In response to the challenges, South Korea has calibrated its administration for admitting those coethnics and devised novel categories of membership. It has enacted executive rules and guidelines for the acquisition of citizenship by members of Korean minorities in China and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, and extended ethnizenship (non-citizen ethnonational membership) to members of the kin-minorities by way of two immigrant status categories (F-4 and H-2). This study gives an account of these legal strategies and inquires into the administrative practices of identifying and recognising applicants for cit...

Abstract: It is often said that the legal touchstone of agency independence is whether the agency head or heads are removable at will, or only for cause. Yet this test does not adequately describe the landscape of agency independence. There are many important agencies who are conventionally treated as independent, yet whose heads lack for-cause tenure protection. Conversely, there are agencies whose heads enjoy for-cause tenure protection, yet are by all accounts thoroughly dependent upon organized interest groups, the White House, legislators and legislative committees, or all of these. Legally enforceable for-cause tenure protection is neither necessary nor sufficient for operational independence. The crucial consideration, largely neglected in the literature, is the role of what Commonwealth lawyers call conventions. Agencies that lack for-cause tenure yet enjoy operative independence are protected by unwritten conventions that constrain political actors from attempting to remove their members, to direct their exercise of discretion, or both. Such conventions may be generated by a variety of mechanisms; the common feature is that norms arising within relevant legal and political communities impose sanctions for violations of agency independence or create beliefs or internalized moral strictures protecting that independence. Conversely, where agencies enjoy statutory independence yet lack operative independence, the reason is that the interaction among relevant political actors has failed to generate any such set of protective conventions. The lens of convention helps resolve a range of puzzles about the behavior of Presidents, legislators, judges and other actors with respect to agency independence – including the Supreme Court’s puzzling treatment of SEC independence in Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB.By bringing the conventional character of agency independence to the surface, U.S. courts may begin to incorporate ideas from the courts of Commonwealth legal systems – such as the United Kingdom and Canada – that are familiar with the promise and problems of conventions and with the methods for harmonizing conventions with written rules of law. My principal suggestion is that U.S. courts interpreting statutes and constitutional rules that bear on agency independence should adopt the leading Commonwealth approach, according to which judges may indirectly “recognize” conventions and incorporate them into their interpretation of written law, although they may not directly enforce conventions as freestanding obligations.

Abstract: Since the beginning of market reforms in 1989, countries of the South-Eastern Europe (SEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) trade significantly less with the world economy than those Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries which later joined the EU. To explain why this is the case, a number of hypotheses have been proposed in the literature. The key novelty of our study consists in a simultaneous assessment of the contribution to trade from geographical, policy and institutional factors, during the EU pre-accession period (1997–2004). An augmented gravity model is proposed and estimated for a reference group of 82 countries employing the Poisson and Tobit estimation techniques. We find that the low quality of economic institutions in the SEE and CIS countries contributed to a considerable proportion of their below potential international trade. We perform policy simulations using institutional data up to 2008 to identify channels for increasing international trade of the SEE and CIS.

Abstract: The Suez crisis is widely believed to have contributed significantly to Britain's decline as a world power. Eden's miscalculation of American reaction to the attack on Egypt was damaging to Britain's reputation and fatal to his career. However, his actions were contrary to received wisdom in Whitehall. The crisis merely confirmed Britain's dependence on the United States and had no lasting impact on Anglo-American relations. Britain's relationship with its informal and formal empire was already changing before 1956, and the turn from the commonwealth to Europe owed little to Suez. Examination of policy reviews in Whitehall before and after the Suez crisis shows that the Foreign Office, Commonwealth Relations Office, and Colonial Office were slow to accept the need for change in Britain's world role. Insofar as they did from 1959 it was because of Treasury arguments about the effect of high defence expenditure on the economy, and slow growth of the United Kingdom's population compared with the United States, the European Economic Community, and the Soviet Union.

Abstract: An overriding assumption has long directed scholarship in both European and Slavic history: that Kievan Rus' in the tenth through twelfth centuries was part of a Byzantine commonwealth separate from Europe. Christian Raffensperger refutes this conception and offers a new frame for two hundred years of history, one in which Rus' is understood as part of medieval Europe and East is not so neatly divided from West. With the aid of Latin sources, the author brings to light the considerable political, religious, marital, and economic ties among European kingdoms, including Rus', restoring a historical record rendered blank by Russian monastic chroniclers as well as modern scholars ideologically motivated to build barriers between East and West. Further, Raffensperger revises the concept of a Byzantine commonwealth that stood in opposition to Europe - and under which Rus' was subsumed - toward that of a Byzantine Ideal esteemed and emulated by all the states of Europe. In this new context, appropriation of Byzantine customs, law, coinage, art, and architecture in both Rus' and Europe can be understood as an attempt to gain legitimacy and prestige by association with the surviving remnant of the Roman Empire. "Reimagining Europe" initiates an expansion of history that is sure to challenge ideas of Russian exceptionalism and influence the course of European medieval studies.

Abstract: In 1998 the British Army stepped up recruitment from Commonwealth countries, a strategy that simultaneously addressed a chronic labour shortage and the new legal obligations to diversify its workforce. Through forthright interviews with soldiers across all ranks, this book documents the stories of men and women from Fiji, Ghana, St Vincent, South Africa, Nepal and many other countries represented within Britain’s multinational armed forces. Chapters deal sequentially with the initial recruitment processes and early training to questions of cultural and religious diversity, before looking at internal reforms tackling institutional racism. The penultimate section examines the implications of migrant status for soldiers and their families, concluding that they have borne the brunt of the Ministry of Defence’s failure to anticipate what it might mean to employ military migrants.

Abstract: This article explores the intersection of internationalist and imperial humanitarian ideals in the aftermath of the First World War via a case study of a hitherto overlooked humanitarian organisation—the Imperial War Relief Fund. In an era of increased international collaboration between humanitarian organisations, the Imperial War Relief Fund instead promoted an imperial approach, seeking to unite the ‘efforts of the dominions and mother country’ for the relief of Europeans suffering the effects of the First World War. The Fund was enthusiastically supported in Britain by a number of leading conservative public figures, who hoped that an empire-wide humanitarian campaign might guard against imperial disintegration and reverse Britain's perceived loss of prestige in the postwar order. Despite its initial successes, the Imperial Fund was subsequently usurped by British humanitarian organisations which were more internationalist in their outlook and rhetoric, most significantly the Save the Children Fund. T...

Abstract: The conventional wisdom has been that the Canadian Citizenship Act and the British Nationality and Australian Citizenship Act demonstrated the growth of a local nationalism after the Second World War. In reality, the situation was more complicated. Both English-speaking Canada and Australia still regarded themselves as British nations. The passage of the Canadian Act was an illustration of the bicultural nature of that country, which developments during the war had brought to the fore. The Australian Act was simply a reaction to the Canadian Act, as the latter had undermined the common code of British subject status across the Commonwealth. Meanwhile, the British Nationality Act was primarily an attempt to preserve the common status of British subjects throughout the Commonwealth and maintain the integrity of this organisation during a period when it was being rapidly transformed.

Abstract: Introduction 1. Cromwell and the Sin of Achan 2. Providence and Politics 3. Toleration and the Protectorate 4. Politics, Piety, and Learning: Cromwellian Oxford 5. Cromwell and his Councillors 6. Cromwell and the Protectorate 7. Kingship and the Commonwealth 8. Civil and Religious Liberty 9. John Milton: Life and Writing 10. Clarendon: History, Religion, Politics

Abstract: This thesis analyses how the British public’s interactions with the peoples and places of the empire and Commonwealth changed as a result of decolonization. Its central concern is to determine how issues relating to the empire and its decline became part of everyday ‘local’ experiences within British associational life between 1960 and 1970. It links a rich scholarly tradition of research on the domestic experience of Britain’s empire to a new and emerging field of research that seeks to understand the institutional and associational makeup of the interconnected postwar world. Chapter One looks at the activities of the Royal Commonwealth Society to assess the afterlife of empire as it was lived by those who had been the most involved. Chapter Two looks at the international work of the Women’s Institute in order to consider how groups without a specific Commonwealth remit engaged with the spaces of the declining empire. Chapter Three focuses on an individual enthusiast, Charles Chislett, assessing how the personal experiences of one man might resonate across local networks of sociability and public service. Chapters Four and Five on the United Nations Freedom from Hunger Campaign and Christian Aid consider humanitarian engagements with the decolonizing empire, analysing how international and imperial frameworks overlapped in religious and secular practices of aid and development. Using these case studies, the thesis questions the extent to which the impact of decolonization was necessarily traumatic for the British public by considering alternate, optimistic experiences of international friendship, philanthropy and education taking place within civil society. It argues that we must be wary of overstating the importance of empire and decolonization in the lives of the British public and therefore situates its analysis of civil society firmly within the context of globalization and the sense of living in a ‘shrinking world’ that characterized many engagements with foreign peoples and places.

Abstract: Antony Polonsky provides a comprehensive survey of the history - socio-political, economic, and religious - of the Jewish communities of eastern Europe from 1750, when the Polish - Lithuanian Commonwealth was the dominant political unit, to the present. Until the Second World War, this area was the heartland of the Jewish world: almost all the major movements which have characterized that world in recent times had their origins here, and it was home to the majority of the world's Jews. Nearly three and a half million lived in Poland alone, while nearly three million more lived in the Soviet Union. Although the majority of the Jews of Europe and the United States, and most of the Jews of Israel, originated from these lands, the history of their Jewish communities is not well known. Rather, it is the subject of mythologizing and stereotypes that fail both to bring out the specific features of the Jewish civilization which emerged here and to illustrate what was lost in the passage across the Channel and the Atlantic. Jewish life in these parts, though often poor materially, was marked by a high degree of spiritual and ideological intensity and creativity. Antony Polonsky recreates this lost world - brutally cut down by the Holocaust and less brutally but still seriously damaged by the Soviet attempt to destroy Jewish culture - in a way that avoids both sentimentalism and the simplification of the east European Jewish experience into a story of persecution and martyrdom. Wherever possible, the unfolding of history is illustrated by contemporary Jewish writings to show how Jews felt and reacted to the complex and difficult situations in which they found themselves. It is an important story whose relevance reaches far beyond the Jewish world or the bounds of east-central Europe. Polonsky establishes the context with a review of Jewish life in Poland and Lithuania down to the mid-eighteenth century, describing the towns and shtetls where the Jews lived, the institutions they developed, and their participation in the economy. He also considers their religious and intellectual life, including the emergence of hasidism, and the growth of opposition to it. He then describes government attempts to integrate and transform the Jews in the period from 1764 to 1881 and the Jewish response to these efforts. He considers the impact of modernization and the beginnings of the Haskalah movement, and looks at developments in each area in turn: the problems of emancipation, acculturation, and assimilation in Prussian and Austrian Poland; the politics of integration in the Kingdom of Poland; and the failure of forced integration in the tsarist empire. The third part of the book considers the deterioration of the position of the Jews in the period from 1881 to 1914 and the new Jewish politics that led to the development of new movements: Zionism, socialism, autonomism, the emergence of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature, Jewish urbanization, and the rise of Jewish mass culture. Galicia, Prussian Poland, the Kingdom of Poland, and the tsarist empire are all treated individually, as are the main towns. The final part deals with the twentieth century. Starting from the First World War and the establishment of the Soviet Union, it deals in turn with Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Union up to the Second World War. It then reviews Polish - Jewish relations during the Second World War and examines the Soviet record and the Holocaust. The final chapters deal with the Jews in the Soviet Union and in Poland since 1945, concluding with an epilogue on the Jews in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia since the collapse of communism.

Abstract: This study examines the news coverage of the Commonwealth Games in India in major newspapers in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. Textual analysis of news articles reveals a heavy focus on issues of mismanagement and deficiencies in game preparations, and the use of negative stereotypes of India. The article draws attention to the bias in coverage of events in developing countries and calls attention to the hegemonic function of the Western press in perpetuating old social attitudes and prejudices that undermine the success and achievements of events in developing countries like India.

Abstract: This article analyzes the dynamics of the foreign policies implemented by post-Soviet states during their two decades of independence. An essential feature of these foreign policies is how they address the main, pivotal, geopolitical centers of gravity within the post-Soviet space: Russia, the United States, the EU, and-especially in the case of Central Asia countries-China.All post-Soviet states implement two main types of foreign policy: univectorism and multi-vectorism. A univectoral, Western-oriented, foreign policy predominates in the Baltic states, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine (during Yushchenko's tenure), and Moldova. Several Central Asian countries and Belarus have pursued a pro-Russian univectoral policy, at least until the early 2000s. In its pure form, the pro-Russian policy now prevails in three of four existing de-facto states (Abkhazia, North Ossetia, and Transnistria, but not Karabakh) as well as in Belarus, though with some reservations.The alternative foreign policy approach is multi-vectorism. This approach prevailed in the case of Azerbaijan and the Central Asian states (beginning from the late 1990s to the early 2000s). A version of multivectorism, usually described as complementarism, dominated Armenia's entire post-Soviet foreign policy. Complementarism is a non-official foreign policy doctrine that Armenia uses in order to balance the often conflicting interests of various players including Russia, the United States, Europe, and Iran.This article will analyze the multi-vector foreign policies in comparison with complementarism. Additionally, the article will briefly compare and contrast Armenia's foreign policy doctrine with the one implemented by Finland during the Cold War in order to maneuver between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.Armenia's Complementarism-Twenty Years of Sitting on the Fence?Complementarism was the basis of Armenia's foreign policy from 1991 through the present. The essence of this policy, which was atypical for most of the newly independent post-Soviet countries in the early 1990s, was an attempt to combine and maintain a balance between the interests of all international and regional powers that are actively involved in the South Caucasus region. The idea was to avoid a pro-Western, pro-Russian, or pro-Iranian bias. According to the National Security Strategy of the Republic of Armenia (adopted in 20071), Armenia's strategic partnership with Russia, its adoption of a European model of development, mutually beneficial cooperation with Iran and the United States, membership in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and intensification of cooperation with the NATO alliance, all contribute to Armenia's policy of complementarity.Despite increasing anti-Russian stereotypes in the West, Armenia-Russia's ally and a CSTO member-has never been regarded by the West as an exclusively pro-Russian actor. Over its first two years of independence, 1991 and 1992, Armenia's policies were the most effective manifestation of complementarism. During this period, Armenia was locked in a war over Karabakh and was able to take advantage of a unique foreign policy conjuncture. Yerevan received arms from Russia for military operations, funds from the United States for state building and to purchase arms, food from Europe, and fuel from Iran. Thus, the equidistance in Armenia's foreign policy reached its greatest effectiveness during the first term of Levon Ter-Petrosyan's presidency and is the most illustrative phase of complemetarism (although this term was only applied later).The new stage of Armenian complementarism, when it became more balanced, began in the late 1990s, during President Robert Kocharian's term, and is associated with the name of its chief architect and ideologue, Vardan Oskanian, who served as Armenian foreign minister from 1998 to 2008. Since the late 1990s, Armenia, through incremental steps, turned complementarism into a balanced policy of "sitting on the fence. …

Abstract: Purpose – This paper aims to examine one primary stakeholder (i.e. athletes) and how they experienced the mega‐sport event environment of the XIX Commonwealth Games in the developing nation of India and the city of Delhi. A further objective was to identify key factors of the Games outside of athletic performance that shaped athletes' experiences.Design/methodology/approach – A multi‐dimensional instrument was created with an expert panel of Commonwealth Games Federation board members and sport management academics to examine athletes' experiences. Data was collected after the start of competition up until three weeks after the completion of the Games.Findings – Overall, the athletes had a positive experience. Factors such as ceremonies (e.g. opening), ancillary areas (e.g. fitness facility) and sport venues (e.g. environment) in particular were rated by the athletes as positive. Certain aspects of the Games were identified as requiring improvements such as accommodations (e.g. housekeeping, laundry) and ...

Abstract: In its most exemplary radical democratic moments, populism has cultivated unexpected collaborative networks across vast differences to organize powerful and transformative action for a flourishing pluralist commonwealth. Such politics addresses a broad range of issues and involves diverse modalities that stretch from "everyday politics to outrageous resistance."2 Cultivating civic agency is both the means and an end of such politics, through which a diverse and dynamic 'we' becomes more capable of responding to the grievances, needs, dreams, and well-being of people and the earth.

Abstract: Recent Commonwealth rights charters, various scholars have argued, represent a new “weaker” model of constitutional rights protection than the U.S. constitutional model: unlike the U.S. Bill of Rights, they give legislatures broad formal power to override rights, and therefore also court decisions. The article argues, however, that in practice such powers have rarely if ever been used by Commonwealth legislatures, and therefore, that if judicial review is in fact weaker in Commonwealth countries, compared to the U.S., it is only because Commonwealth courts have been more willing than the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold ordinary legislative attempts to override court decisions. While this may be connected to the greater availability of a formal power of legislative override in the Commonwealth, it also far from given response by Commonwealth courts to the existence of such powers. This more limited – and contingent – view of the difference between Commonwealth and U.S. constitutionalism in this context also has clear practical implications for processes of constitutional “borrowing” across countries.

Abstract: This paper presents a range of data illustrating the level of women's representation at the Commonwealth, state and territory, and local government levels, with a particular focus on the Commonwealth Parliament. A key measure of women’s empowerment in society at large is their participation in politics. There are currently more women parliamentarians in the Senate than at any other time since Federation. For the first time since the creation of the Commonwealth Parliament in 1901, women hold the Commonwealth leadership positions of Prime Minister and Attorney-General in the Commonwealth Parliament. In the states and territories, there is a female Premier in Queensland and Tasmania respectively and, for the third time, a female Chief Minister in the Australian Capital Territory. Despite these high-profile roles, women comprise less than one-third of all parliamentarians in Australia and occupy less than one-quarter of all Cabinet positions. The number of women in the Senate reached its highest point after the 2010 Commonwealth election, while the number of women in the House of Representatives declined. When comparing the proportion of women in national parliaments internationally, Australia’s ranking has slipped from 21 to 38 over the past decade. This Background Note presents a range of data illustrating the level of women’s representation at the Commonwealth, state and territory, and local government levels, with a particular focus on the Commonwealth Parliament. It presents statistical information about women parliamentarians, women in parliamentary leadership positions and ministries, women as chairs of parliamentary committees, and female candidates. It also includes some comparative data relating to women’s representation in the state and territory parliaments, identifies current and historical trends, and refers to recent research on structural, social and cultural factors influencing women’s representation in parliament. This paper is a timely contribution to the significant and ongoing debate about the nature and level of women’s representation in Australia’s parliaments. Since Prime Minister Julia Gillard became the first woman to hold this office in 2010, the issue of gender and leadership in parliament has assumed even greater focus and attracted extensive public commentary. Whilst it is beyond the scope of this paper to analyse the views and perceptions of women parliamentarians held by their colleagues, the media and the electorate, it does draw attention to relevant research and articles by other writers who have examined gender issues in Australian parliamentary and political life.