Postmaterialism and postmodernization in Australian electoral politics

In this paper we explore recent Australian electoral politics using both Inglehart’s ideas on postmaterialism and also a broader conception of postmodern attitudes. We begin by demonstrating that the widely-used postmaterialism measure based on Inglehart’s four-item question gives completely counter...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Charnock, David, Ellis, Peter
Format: Journal Article
Published: Elsevier 2004
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/5933
_version_ 1848744934378569728
author Charnock, David
Ellis, Peter
author_facet Charnock, David
Ellis, Peter
author_sort Charnock, David
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description In this paper we explore recent Australian electoral politics using both Inglehart’s ideas on postmaterialism and also a broader conception of postmodern attitudes. We begin by demonstrating that the widely-used postmaterialism measure based on Inglehart’s four-item question gives completely counterintuitive results for the most recent significant Australian party, the One Nation Party. This appears to support Warwick’s argument that this measure actually reveals pro-democracy propensity. Subsequently, we develop a much broader measure of postmodern attitudes and use this in conjunction with an index of left-right attitudes to explore the positioning of party supporters in the resulting two-dimensional space and the practical consequences of this. Among other things, this demonstrates that a single left-right dimension is inadequate to describe the positioning of minor parties in particular, but that it is overall of more significance in predicting vote than is the postmodern dimension.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T06:09:21Z
format Journal Article
id curtin-20.500.11937-5933
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T06:09:21Z
publishDate 2004
publisher Elsevier
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-59332017-09-13T16:02:18Z Postmaterialism and postmodernization in Australian electoral politics Charnock, David Ellis, Peter In this paper we explore recent Australian electoral politics using both Inglehart’s ideas on postmaterialism and also a broader conception of postmodern attitudes. We begin by demonstrating that the widely-used postmaterialism measure based on Inglehart’s four-item question gives completely counterintuitive results for the most recent significant Australian party, the One Nation Party. This appears to support Warwick’s argument that this measure actually reveals pro-democracy propensity. Subsequently, we develop a much broader measure of postmodern attitudes and use this in conjunction with an index of left-right attitudes to explore the positioning of party supporters in the resulting two-dimensional space and the practical consequences of this. Among other things, this demonstrates that a single left-right dimension is inadequate to describe the positioning of minor parties in particular, but that it is overall of more significance in predicting vote than is the postmodern dimension. 2004 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/5933 10.1016/s0261-3794(02)00055-0 Elsevier fulltext
spellingShingle Charnock, David
Ellis, Peter
Postmaterialism and postmodernization in Australian electoral politics
title Postmaterialism and postmodernization in Australian electoral politics
title_full Postmaterialism and postmodernization in Australian electoral politics
title_fullStr Postmaterialism and postmodernization in Australian electoral politics
title_full_unstemmed Postmaterialism and postmodernization in Australian electoral politics
title_short Postmaterialism and postmodernization in Australian electoral politics
title_sort postmaterialism and postmodernization in australian electoral politics
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/5933