A leading United States think tank has published a piece posing the question, "Is Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott the most incompetent leader of any industrialised democracy?" and answering, quite comprehensively, in the affirmative.

Published on the Council on Foreign Relations website before Mr Abbott survived a spill motion on Monday, the piece argues that he has proven so "shockingly incompetent" that he deserved to lose his job.

"Abbott has proven so incapable of clear policy thinking, so unwilling to consult with even his own ministers and advisers, and so poor at communicating that he has to go," wrote the CFR senior fellow Joshua Kurlantzick, a US specialist in south-east Asian politics.

"Abbott's policies have been all over the map, and the lack of coherence has often made the prime minister seem ill-informed and incapable of understanding complex policy issues," he wrote.