Social Democrats and NeoLiberalism: A Case Study of the Australian Labor Party (original) (raw)

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.

Beyond Labourism and Socialism: How the Australian Labor Party Developed the Model of 'New Labour'

This paper examined the way the policies and approach of the Australian Labour Party (1983-1996) prefigured a new political model not fully seen at that time in European social democratic and labour parties. The Left have always recycled theories and models from other countries—models which have either been un-exportable because they were too historically specific, or models which were failures even in their country of origin. The paper marked and theorised the turn of the Australian model to be imported by parties such as British Labour and its influence on 'New Labour'.

The Pattern ofthe Australian Labor Party's Foreign Policy Since 1900

Left History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Historical Inquiry and Debate

For more than a decade there has been a tendency for social democratic and labour parties in the developed capitalist world to move to the right. A variety of explanations have been offered. These include discussions of loss of political direction, sometimes underpinned by shifts in the class composition ofthe parties or the impact of a new stage of internationalized capitalism. l Far less attention has been paid to two other factors. One is the impact of the period of relative economic stagnation on a global level, which has affected all countries with significant social democratic parties since the mid 1970s. This has, through higher levels of unemployment, contributed to another widespread influence on social democratic politics, lower levels of working-class self-confidence and hence of trade union and other struggles with employers and governments, despite some impressive but short-lived upsurges, notably in France, Italy and Greece, during the 1990s.

How Labour Made Neoliberalism

Critical Sociology, 2016

Critical explanations of neoliberalism regularly adhere to a dominant narrative as to the form and implementation of the neoliberal policy revolution, positing neoliberalism in its vanguard period as a project implemented by governments of the New Right, imposed coercively on civil society by state elites and only subsequently adopted by social democratic parties. In such accounts, labour is typically posited as the object and victim of neoliberalising processes. In contrast, this article focuses upon the active role of labour within the development of neoliberalism. The period of social democratic government in Australia (1983–1996) is used as a case study to illuminate labour’s active role in constructing neoliberalism. Indicative evidence from the USA and UK is then presented to argue that the agency of labour can usefully be ‘written in’ to the presently dominant narrative regarding the rise of neoliberalism to provide a more satisfactory account of its nature and resilience ove...

Loading...

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.