What do we expect of a companion? Above all, as the word suggests, it should be user-friendly in both organisation and style. This one measures up well on both criteria. The arrangement is alphabetical, beginning with the ABC and ending with the WTO, and covers almost every conceivably relevant topic in between. To give a flavour of the entries, take the twelve under the letter ‘T’: Talkback radio, Tasmania, Tasmanian premiers, Taxation, Terrorism, Think tanks, Third Way, Torres Strait Islanders, Trade policy, Trade union leadership, Trade unionism and Transport policy. There is, however, a note of alphabetical extremism in the appendices where, on alphabetical grounds, tables on justices of the High Court and New South Wales premiers are given priority over the table on prime ministers. The cross-referencing is thorough and typographically excellent. Despite the diversity of authors, the style of the entries is approachable and remarkably free of political science jargon.

We should expect a companion to be comprehensive without being exhaustive. The entries in OCAP are mostly thematic and institutional, and though some could perhaps name a pet theme or institution that is omitted, I suspect these would mostly be individual grouches, for the coverage is well nigh impeccable. There are, however, a few flaws. Élites, long a staple of analyses in political sociology and featuring more recently as a term of political abuse, receive little explicit attention. Moreover, while the triumphant phase of the pluralist paradigm is well past, the treatment of interest groups is rather cursory. Apart from entries for ACOSS and the Women’s Electoral Lobby, interest groups, except for the explicitly economic ones, are denied particular entries. I was surprised, too, that there were no specific entries for those much neglected instruments of fiscal federalism, the Commonwealth Grants Commission and the Loans Council.

A positive feature of the coverage is that the editors have tolerated little self-indulgence from their contributors, demanding that ‘theoretical and comparative issues [be] covered insofar as they are relevant to Australian politics’. Two rather esoteric articles by Alan Coram – one on game theory, the other on political modelling – appear to defy this injunction, and seem out of place in this companion. By contrast, an excellent article by Ian Marsh on cartel parties links theory to Australian empirical evidence. Another form of self-indulgence is three pages devoted to Malcolm Mackerras’s electoral pendulum. This seems excessive, and also highlights a missed opportunity to make more use of diagrammatic material (Mackerras’s is the only diagram in the book).

The editors rightly recognise that ‘an account of Australian politics needs to go beyond our national boundaries’, but relevance to Australian politics is again required. There are succinct and perceptive country-by-country essays on most of Australia’s major international relationships, as well as contributions on more general international themes: for example, Ralph Pettman’s masterly account of Australia in the Cold War. Not all contributions measure up to these high standards. Joanne Pemberton’s entries on the two Iraq Wars are disappointing, in that an Australian political perspective is missing, and you would not garner from either contribution that both wars, particularly the second, occasioned deep divisions in the Australian body politic. They should be contrasted with Peter Edwards’s exemplary account of the Vietnam War.

The editors recognise that comprehensiveness comes at the expense of depth and detail. They conceive of OCAP as ‘a starting point … the first port of call … a platform for further investigation’. Hence they promise ‘further reading[s] … for the main topics’. Yet their fulfilment of this promise is erratic and arbitrary. Why, for example, should the Australian Democrats and the Democratic Labor Party get substantial further readings, with nothing provided for the Greens? Independents do better; One Nation better still. Again, why does Judaism get a single reference, to Islam’s half dozen? Why do Liberalism and Marxism get further references but Conservatism and Radicalism none? Alone of the major countries with which we interact, the entries on the great powers of North America – Canada and, amazingly, the United States – provide no further reading. About half the prime ministerial entries contain none, either. Are they not worth further following up? Certainly, J.C. Watson, George Reid, James Scullin and Stanley Bruce all have biographies, while biographical material on Keating seems worthy of reference. The reader cannot escape the impression that here the editors have been derelict, leaving responsibility for further reading to their contributors. This may also explain the oddities of some of the bibliographies.

Lastly, a companion needs to be authoritative without being authoritarian, particularly in so contested a field as politics. Authority deriving from factual accuracy appears high, though I was surprised to learn from one entry that the Hawke government was still in power in 1992. But politics is as much about values as it is about facts. Sensitive to the contentious nature of politics, the editors seek to meet this challenge in two ways: first, by providing an overall diversity of viewpoints and approaches; secondly, by providing multiple entries on controversial topics, such as international relations, republicanism and Aboriginal policies.

One example of diversity is provided by the handling of economic rationalism and its associated themes. The main article is written by one of the doctrine’s most stringent academic critics, Michael Pusey, with a balance provided by cross-referenced articles on privatisation, globalisation and public management. Peter Coleman presents a distinctly conservative line on political correctness and political journalism. The former, always a slippery concept, segues in his hands from a critique of leftie absurdities to a list of most things he dislikes about the left. He appears to see political journalists mostly as ‘useful idiots’ of the left, detecting a left-progressive bias in the ABC and the Fairfax press while extolling the new conservative commentariat. However, there is no need to get hot under the collar about Coleman’s idiosyncrasies, for they are balanced by cross-referenced articles on the ABC, the Fairfax press, the media and politics, feminism, the republicanism and the ‘stolen generations’.

Republicanism, and its antithesis monarchism, is the classic example of OCAP’s handling of controversy by multiple entries. Republicanism has three entries: current, history, theory; monarchism, two. These enable a full spectrum of viewpoints to emerge from monarchist to radical republican. It is salutary to note how ideological commitments influence the authors’ interpretations of the 1999 referendum results. For the monarchist, the results were evidence that a substantive republic is unlikely to win majority support; for the moderate republican, the results suggest the minimalist republic remains the best electoral bet; for the radical republican, the results are evidence that only a substantive republic could win the day.

The companion is overwhelmingly thematic in its organisation; to political scientists, great men do not make politics. There are only forty-four entries for individuals. Over half of these are for our twenty-five prime ministers. Every prime minister, even stopgaps such as Earl Page, Frank Forde, Arthur Fadden, and John McEwen, get a succinct biography. The state premiers and territory first ministers do not get individual entries, but are dealt with as collective job lots under their respective jurisdictions.

In addition to the prime ministers, another ten national political figures are given individual entries. To select ten individuals from the hundreds of political figures who have played a significant role in Australian politics, and without any institutional definition, is a formidable, indeed a foolhardy, task. The criteria for their inclusion or at least the basis for the exclusion of comparable others is beyond me. Simply to list them suggests the problem: Bob Brown, Jim Cairns, Don Chipp, H.V. Evatt, John Forrest, Samuel Griffith, Lionel Murphy, Kevin Rudd, Catherine Spence, and Bob Santamaria. If the Founding Fathers of the Federation are to be included, why limit it to Griffith and Forrest (apart from founders who became prime ministers)? Surely at least H.B. Higgins, Isaac Isaacs, and Charles Kingston deserve guernseys. Why only two Opposition leaders? (I suppose that Rudd’s inclusion was simply a gesture to contemporaneity.) In the modern period, Arthur Calwell, Bill Hayden, and Kim Beazley all have claims. And if we are to have some leaders of minor parties, why not Pauline Hanson, or the abler of Don Chipp’s successors, or long-serving leaders of the National Party who did not become prime minister? If translation from politics to the bench explains Lionel Murphy, why not his more important predecessor, J.G. Latham? And given the emphasis on the modern in OCAP, is Catherine Spence the appropriate token woman?

Alongside the entry for George Reid, Australia’s fourth prime minister, is an entry for Gordon Reid, the most distinguished scholar of the Australian parliament. This entry is slightly longer than that for Prime Minister Reid. The entry for that veritable geyser of political science ideas, Professor Henry Mayer, is twice as long as the combined adjacent entries for Prime Ministers McEwen and William McMahon. Are these examples of political science hubris run riot? I think not. For one thing, the comparison is somewhat artificial, since, unlike the political scientists, references to the prime ministers occur throughout the volume.

Why not celebrate the outstanding figures of Australian political science? We celebrate our great historians but rarely our political scientists, yet both may have made greater contributions to the polity than any politician. Like the founders of the Commonwealth, the founders of Australian political science tend to have been neglected. In addition to the two already mentioned, OCAP names another seven: W. Macmahon Ball, F. A. Bland, ‘Fin’ Crisp, Alan Davies, Robert Parker, Geoffrey Sawer, and Richard Spann. In the eyes of OCAP, what is needed to be included in this select group? The first requirement is that one has to be a political scientist or at least a teacher of public administration. The one exception is the constitutional lawyer, Geoffrey Sawer, and it is perhaps a sign of his equivocal status that he gets the shortest entry of all. Secondly, one has to have reached maturity around the time of World War II when political science was being established in Australian universities. Thirdly, one has to be dead; academic jealousies being what they are, this was perhaps a necessary criterion.

How adequate is the list of founders? Rufus Davis, Sol Encel, and J.D.B. Miller would probably have been included, but fortunately these sprightly octogenarians are with us still. W.K. Hancock missed out, being an historian, despite the fact that his Australia (1930) is the work most frequently referred to in the Companion. And a good case could be made for including Donald Horne, the most influential commentator outside the academy during the foundation period.

I have perhaps dwelt unduly on the imperfections of this invaluable tome. None is particularly damaging, and all could easily be corrected in the inevitable second edition. The editors have done the Founding Fathers proud: in turn, the Founding Fathers would be proud of the Companion, representing as it does a splendid culmination of their work.