Does who wins matter more or less? An analysis of major party candidate views on some aspects of economic policy, 1987-1996

Abstract

As Australia becomes increasingly absorbed into the global economy, the intensity in the debate over the desirability of the trend towards free market policies has been growing. Under particular scrutiny has been the redistribution of income and wealth via both direct means (such as welfare spending) and indirect means (for example, labour market regulation). In this paper, data collected by the Social Science Data Archives (SSDA) at the Australian National University (ANU) are used to show that the views of Coalition (that is, Liberal and National Party) and Australian Labor Party (ALP) candidates on some of these economic issues have converged over the past decade. As a group, ALP candidates have become more inclined to support free market policy prescriptions, and Coalition candidates less so. However, Coalition candidates are still substantially more likely to support free market prescriptions than are ALP candidates. By developing a regression model based on some personal characteristics of the surveyed candidates, it is shown that these characteristics have little relationship with the holding of free market views by candidates, disputing suggestions made elsewhere that such individual characteristics are significant determinants of views on the economic issues considered here. The conclusions are: * the convergence between the parties in the overall view can be explained by an increasing acceptance by candidates of both parties in redistribution via employment opportunities rather than by the direct funding of services; that is, ALP candidates have become more accepting of the means (the focus on providing employment) and Coalition candidates of the ends (the desirability of redistribution itself); and *there is no evidence that changes in the personal characteristics of major party candidates over time will affect this growing convergence. Hence, in the late 1990s, it matters less which party forms government than it did a decade earlier, in terms of the approach to the redistribution of income and wealth.