A comparative study of electoral behaviour in Australia and New Zealand

Abstract

Studies which make explicit and substantial cross-national comparisons of electoral behaviour are rare. This thesis involves an intensive and extensive empirical analysis of electoral behaviour in Australia and New Zealand set in a wider cross-national framework. Relying principally but not wholly upon sample survey data, the study investigates trends in mass political attitudes and behaviour since the 1960s against a background of the electoral histories of Australia and New Zealand since the Second World War and also giving consideration to the initial development of their modern political party systems. The primary focus, however, is on the period at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. The thesis considers a wide range of macro-level and micro-level influences on political choice, including such factors as electoral laws, federalism and regionalism, social structure, and parental partisanship as well as the more immediate determinants of voting behaviour such as party identification, attitudes to party leaders and local candidates. The comparison of two such similar nations allows the investigations to be pursued in greater depth in many instances than would be the case were the comparison of political behaviour in more disparate nations. Major conclusions are that, of the system-level constraints which cause cross-national variations in political behaviour, it is the political party elites and the political culture of a nation that have the most consistent and prominent influences. Social structure, the rules of the political system and geographical considerations are less influential. The system-level factors, by and large, alter the degree of influence of some micro variables on mass political behaviour but not the essential nature of political responses to various stimuli. Political behaviour, it is argued, displays a high degree of consistency in different national contexts. Show more