Social democratic parties have been agents in the neo‐liberal transformation of public policy in recent decades. There has been debate about the reasons why social democrats have embraced market policies, with particular emphasis given to ideological trends, globalisation and electoral factors. This paper aims to shed further light on this debate by examining the case of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), which was a prominent social democratic exponent of neo‐liberalism during its time in office in the 1980s and 1990s. In Labor's case, the primary cause of the shift from pledging social reform and interventionist government to neo‐liberalism was the lower levels of economic growth that followed the end of the post‐war boom in the 1970s. Social democrats rely on strong economic growth to fund redistributive policies. Thus when recession occurred in the 1970s it eroded the economic base to Labor's programme. While this paper focuses on the story of the ALP, it may provide some answers as to why social democrats elsewhere have adopted neo‐liberalism.
The mining industry has consistently maintained that 'native title' is a major impediment to mineral exploration and development and that it is a key factor in recent industry trends. Yet there is little evidence to justify these claims. This article suggests that this contradiction is less a re ection of ideological opposition to native title on the part of industry leaders than a case of political posturing aimed at ensuring that government policy better re ects mining interests. Government policy is an investment determinant over which the industry can exert some in uence, unlike other determinants such as commodity prices and exchange rates. In addition to the industry's self-interest in pressuring government to circumscribe native title rights by overstating its detrimental economic impact, the peculiar intensity of the campaign is explained by its concerns about its role in the policy process, its popularity in the community and its comparative power as an interest group.
The phenomenon of radicals and leftwing political activists recanting earlier allegiances to shift in a rightwards direction has often been commented upon, with explanations that veer from identifying a convergence between extreme-left and extreme-right positions; to wider social and economic changes; to psychological factors intrinsic to each particular individual. One of the most startling examples of such a change in political orientation – and made not once, but on numerous occasions – is that of Eldridge Cleaver, the former Black Panther party leader. What lay behind the startling transitions in Cleaver’s story is here discussed with reference to a psychohistorical framework that can help explain the broader phenomenon of Left-Right political conversion.
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