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Australia and the United States face very similar challenges in dealing with drought. Both countries cover a range of biophysical conditions, both are federations that provide considerable responsibility to state governments for water and land management, and both face the challenges in balancing rural industry and urban development, especially in relation to the allocation of water. Yet there are critical differences in their approaches to drought science and policy. Drought, Risk Management, and Policy: Decision Making under Uncertainty explores the complex relationship between scientific re.

In his work on policy development, John Kingdon discusses the role of "policy entrepreneurs" in advocating particular solutions to policy problems. This article discusses a group of policy entrepreneurs in the US who have been actively seeking to shift drought policy away from a crisis response towards an approach based on risk management. The case is discussed by comparison with the development of Australian drought policy which has taken a risk management approach since 1992. Drought policy in Australia has largely been developed in a top‐down fashion while in the US policy advocacy has been more bottom‐up. This case highlights a key point that Kingdon and others have made, that policy entrepreneurs cannot succeed alone in achieving policy change, and raises the question as to whether the concept of "policy entrepreneurs" is useful beyond being an appealing descriptor of influential but not decisive agents in the policy process.

Since the 1980s, there has been renewed interest among political scientists in the role of institutions. An important strand of this 'new institutionalism' is historical institutionalism. Recent theoretical developments have sought to address the most obvious criticisms of the historical institutionalist approach, particularly the critique relating to its tendency to focus on explanations of stability. However, the institutional histories under consideration are generally incomplete as they do not include the entire life of the institution. Drawing on the history of collective wheat marketing in Australia, this article seeks to address this gap by considering a case in which strategies of institutional reproduction initially appeared to have managed change successfully but ultimately sowed the seeds of institutional demise. By considering the death as well as the life of an institution, we can gain a clearer picture of the effectiveness of institutional strategies of adaptation and change. Adapted from the source document.

In June 2004, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) announced changes to the guidelines and protocols of some 40 ministerial councils and intergovernmental fora which comprise the web of intergovernmental consultative arrangements. This article examines the impact of the guidelines on the operation of the oldest of the sectoral ministerial councils, those relating to agriculture. The COAG guidelines aim to increase the strategic focus of the councils. However, in the case of agricultural policy there appears to have been a centralising of policy control, both within state governments and towards the Commonwealth, which undermines that objective and leaves the ministerial councils focusing on the more technical issues which they are more effective at addressing.

In May 2005, the Commonwealth announced changes to the eligibility criteria for a number of farm welfare payments which have resulted in farmers receiving such payments on more generous terms than other disadvantaged groups in the community. The changes passed largely unremarked by the media or political commentators. Farm welfare programs are developed independently of the general welfare safety net and are based on assumptions about the nature, extent and causes of farm poverty. No comprehensive empirical research has been conducted into farm poverty since the Henderson Inquiry of the 1970s. This paper discusses the issue of farm poverty in Australia and how it fits into the broader welfare debate, and proposes a way forward to develop more effective and equitable farm welfare programs. Adapted from the source document.

The obesity epidemic has become an issue of major public concern in recent years, with dire predictions of its impact on public health budgets and the long‐term health of populations in the developed world. Governments are being urged to act to improve our eating habits and make us more active. Policy proposals range from education campaigns to banning junk food advertising to more extreme measures such as 'fat taxes'. Although the debate has included discussion of public policy solutions to the problem, there has been little input from public policy specialists. This article explores some of the leaps of faith that are currently being made in the obesity debate and suggests that policy‐makers need to be cautious about how they respond to calls for action. It is suggested that public policy research may provide some useful frameworks for considering the nature of the problem and assessing possible solutions.