EssayOver the last thirty years I have sought to explore how our top political executives exercised their power, whether they were prime ministers, ministers or departmental secretaries. My books include a study of the ways that the Australian Cabinets have changed over the past hundred and fifteen years, and two books on particular prime ministers, one from each side of the political divide. My interest has always been on how they do the job, how they define their responsibilities, what being prime minister means. Perhaps inevitably, when current circumstances are compared to, and placed in the context of, past leaders, it is the continuities rather than the differences that strike me as the most significant.

EssayTHE WORLD TRADE Organisation (WTO) suddenly gained notoriety in Seattle in 1999 when demonstrations against it appeared on every television screen: in the sitting rooms of the rich, the lobbies of global corporations and the crowded slums of the...