ABSTRACT
In early February 2015, Australian politics was once again rocked by speculation that a third successive incumbent prime minister was about to be dumped by his own party colleagues. It had happened to Australian Labor Party Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd (elected November 2007, toppled June 2010) and his replacement Julia Gillard (toppled June 2013). And now Liberal Party Prime Minister Tony Abbott came perilously close to undergoing the same fate, just fteen months after having been elected with a large margin by an electorate deeply weary of the unsavory spectacle of three years of factional warfare and political rivalry within the Labor Party. Had all these leaders failed so comprehensively so soon as to compel their colleagues to turn o their political oxygen? What were their colleagues hoping to achieve in making a leadership change? And why keep going down this road in the face of clear evidence that dumping a leader is a self-defeating strategy for a party keen on winning the next election (Tien, 2015)?
