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Economy and Polity in Australia: A Quantification of Commonsense

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Roger Douglas
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Extract

One of the most firmly established pieces of Australia’s political conventional wisdom concerns the influence of the economy on the level of support for the government. When all is well, the government can look forward to continued office by courtesy of a grateful electorate. When unemployment is high or inflation galloping, its prospects become gloomy and political leaders are tempted to delay the date of the next general election as long as possible in the hope that something will turn up.

Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , July 1975 , pp. 341 - 361
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

1 The longest gap is seven months; there is one five-month gap.

2 Support for the Government

3 Goodhart, C. A. E. and Bhansali, R. J., ‘Political Economy’, Political Studies, XVIII (1970), 43–106.Google Scholar

4 Kramer, Gerald K., ‘Short-term Fluctuations in U.S. Voting Behavior, 1895–1964’, American Political Science Review, LXV (1971), 131–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Goodhart and Bhansali, ‘Political Economy’.

6 Goodhart, and Bhansali, , ‘Political Economy’, pp. 67–8.Google Scholar

7 Kramer, , ‘Short-term Fluctuations’, pp. 138–9.Google Scholar

8 See e.g. Mitchell, Neil, ‘Defiant Group Ends Power Strike’, Melbourne Age, 18 11 1972.Google Scholar

9 This is similar to the ‘post-election euphoria’ variable used by Goodhart and Bhansali and found to be neither significantly nor positively related to support between 1951–1964. ('Political Economy’, pp. 61‘5). However, their variable was not weighted.

10 There does appear to be a tendency for by-elections to go against the government. In eighteen out of twenty-four elections between 1955 and 1973, in which there was both a government and an opposition candidate, there was a swing against the government. In ten of those there was a swing back to the government at the next federal election. In five there was a further swing against the government, but in each case the swing was far less than at the by-election. In three cases, comparison is impossible, owing to redistributions and (in one case) the absence of a subsequent election. See Butler, David, ‘Aspects of Australian elections’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, XIV (1968), 19–23Google Scholar; and Australian Parliamentary Handbook, 1973, passim.

11 Goodhart, and Bhansali, , ‘Political Economy’, 61 ff.Google Scholar

12 Kramer, , ‘Short-term Fluctuations’, pp. 137–9.Google Scholar

13 Goot, Murray, Policies and Partisans: Australian Electoral Opinion 1941–1968 (Sydney: University of Sydney Department of Government and Public Administration, 1969).Google Scholar

14 For evidence of this, see e.g. Rawson, D. W., Australian Votes: the 1958 Federal Election (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1961), pp. 170–1, 188–92.Google Scholar

15 Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957).Google Scholar

16 The correlations between the relevant economic variables and support during the two periods were as follows: Correlations between unemployment (lagged seven months), inflation and unrest, 1956–64 and 1964–72