Social Democrats and Neo-liberalism: A Case Study of the Australian Labor Party
Author(s)
Lavelle, Ashley
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2005
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
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 ...
View more >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.
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View more >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.
View less >
Journal Title
Political Studies
Volume
53
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© 2005 Blackwell Publishing. The definitive version is available at [www.blackwell-synergy.com.]
Subject
Political Science