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John Power

After completing his first degree in political science in the University of Melbourne, John Power undertook graduate studies at Harvard University. He then took up teaching positions at the University of Sydney and the Canberra College of Advanced Education, before returning to the University of Melbourne in 1977. Upon his transfer to The Australian National University in 1993 to set up the Australian National Internships Program, he was made a Professor Emeritus of his first University.

He has published widely on local, state and commonwealth executive and legislative branches. His current central concern is to do with the governance roles that heads of state could perform in an Australian republic.

Fiducial Governance »

An Australian republic for the new millennium

Authored by: John Power

Publication date: July 2010

Fiducial Governance: An Australian republic for the new millennium represents an attempt to grapple with the challenges of designing governance regimes suited to the new millennium. Power’s monograph asserts the need for the reform of Australian governance and charts Australia’s fitful progress towards a republican future. Along the way he sketches a framework for constitutional reform, mindful of the strengths and weaknesses of the current system of government and the contest of ideas about the role and configuration of Australian Heads of State. Long a frustrated Australian republican, Power contends that the republican log jam is due in significant part to a lack of respect shown by the republican policy community to the contribution long made to good governance by monarchical heads of state. This monograph seeks to draw lessons from this experience, so as to make the republican venture one of substance for the Australian public. In so doing, Power draws on a range of republican, indigenous and feminist writings in order to develop a new framework of ‘fiducial governance’ aimed at enhancing the trustworthiness and integrity of our institutions of governance, thereby paving the way for the replacement of the monarch by a directly elected head of state. This is an erudite and thoughtful book that will be of interest to those with an interest in systems of governance and to constitutional scholars, whether they be republicans or monarchists.

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