This study provides an empirically-valid response to the two questions for empirical research which were formulated in Chapter 1. Its results are consistent with the contention that the Australian Country Party arose in the years immediately following the First World War because rural voter dissatisfaction (engendered by maladjustments in the economic attributes of agricultural and pastoral production) with the Nationalist Party and Australian Labor Party, together with the salience to voters of the collapse in agricultural commodity prices between 1921 and 1922, discouraged voting for one of the major parties or abstaining from electoral participation. The theory set out in Chapter 3 suggests that the Canadian
Progressive Parly and the New Zealand Country Party arose in these years at least in part for these same reasons.
This study demonstrates that the Australian Country Party fielded candidates (and, by implication, concentrated organisational and electoral resources) in states in which the combined magnitude of voter dissatisfaction with major parties and issue salience was most marked (i.e., in states such as New South Wales), and that it withdrew these resources from other states in which the combined magnitude of these variables was least marked (i.e., from states such as Tasmania). The theory set out in Chapter 3 suggests that, for these same reasons, agrarian party formation has been most prevalent in Canada’s Prairie Provinces (particularly Alberta and Saskatchewan) and least prevalent in Canada’s Maritime Provinces, Quebec and British Columbia.
This study indicates that the Australian Country Party continued to exist (particularly in New South Wales and at least until 1928) because (1) it fielded candidates in constituencies in which voter dissatis faction with the major parties was most prevalent, because (2) voter dissatisfaction with the major parties and issue salience remained appreciable and because (3) the Nationalist Party (consciously or as a result of tactical error) granted the Country Party electoral preserves within which it was the sole non-Labor party. This study thus suggests that the Canadian Progressive Party and the New Zealand Country Party disintegrated because (1) they did not field candidates in constituencies in which voter dissatisfaction with the major parties was most prevalent (i.e., because these parties’ elites committed tactical or strategic errors in decision-making) and/or because (2) both rural voter dissatisfaction with the major parties and the salience of agricultural commodity prices as a political issue disappeared. An econometric analysis of these parties should find, in other words, that unlike their Australian counterparts, Canadian and New Zealand primary producers adjusted the inputs into agricultural production and the composition of com modity output, and improved the efficiency of agricultural production.
Finally, this study indicates that economic variables were more powerful determinants than non economic (occupational and religious) variables of the formation, electoral support and dissolution of the Australian Country Party. It suggests that an econometric analysis of agrarian party and voter behaviour in Canada and New Zealand would obtain similar results. Such an analysis would find that a multiplicative-exponential function provides a better representation of the Progressive Party’s electoral support than of the Liberal Party’s or the Conservative Party’s electoral support (Canada), and of the Country Party’s electoral support than of the Reform Party’s or the Labour Party’s electoral support (New Zealand).
In consequence, this study’s results re-inforce the doubt, expressed in Chapter 2, cast upon Australian, Canadian and New Zealand studies with non-economic (class, ideological, regional and organisational) interpretations of agrarian party formation, electoral support and dissolution. These studies consider the primary producer to be (in one limited sense at least) economically independent. Each farm is considered to be a self-contained production unit whose exposure to market forces is direct and unimpeded (see in particular Macpherson, 1953:11-20). At the same time, they assert that the primary producer is a depend ent and subordinate (and hence "exploited") actor in the market economy. Although they acknowledge gradations (and even conflicts) of interest among primary producers, these studies contend that farming is, in general, an internally homogenous occupation (Macpherson, 1953pp. 19-20). Accordingly, these studies analyse the political consequences — in terms of class consciousness, ideological coherence and organisational cohesiveness — of this group’s "relatively homogenous class composition" (Macpherson, 1953pp.215-250); (Morton, 1950); (Aitkin, 1972); (Ellis, 1958): (Ellis, 1963); (Graham, 1963); (Graham, 1966).
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This study confirms the benefits of utilising a different set of initial conditions. Like these studies, it accepts that farmers are economically independent and directly exposed to economic stimuli. At the same time, however, it rejects both the logic and the evidence offered to support the contention that primary producers were an "exploited" group. It thus substitutes a well-understood (and diametrically-opposed) concept - the primary producer as a rational actor in a perfectly competitive market - for the vague and largely undefined notion of "exploitation." Its results are consistent with these initial conditions: primary producers are not an economically homogenous group; they are directly exposed to (and therefore ex tremely sensitive to) economic stimuli; and as a result of their heterogeneity economic stimuli influence their electoral behaviour in different - indeed, opposite - ways.
At the Commonwealth elections of 1922, 1925 and 1928 rural Australian voters (indeed, Australian primary producers) did not vote en masse for the Country Party. An experience common to all primary producers thus cannot account for this study’s pattern of results. If all Australian primary producers possessed an agrarian "class consciousness", were "country-minded" or were "exploited" by urban or other interests (Graham, 1966); (Aitkin, 1972); (Ellis, 1958); (Ellis, 1963) and if these attitudes engen dered support for agrarian parties, why did Australian primary producers not vote as an homogenous bloc? Why did the majority of Australian primary producers in districts with Country Party candidates fail to support the Country Party? Most incongruously, why did most Australian primary producers support "urban" parties ostensibly controlled by the "corrupt" and "exploitative" cities?
This study’s results thus highlight - and subsume within a formal theory - the atomised nature of agrarian political behaviour. In so doing, they substantiate an alternate (and empirically-valid) inter pretation of agrarian political behaviour: "the total farm community in the national population is severely fragmented into interests that are independent or even at times in conflict. Numerous investigations (Lipset, 1950pp.5-7); (Hicks, 1933); (Key, 1964) have documented the degree to which shifts in farm sentiment remain within bounds defined by crop area" (Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes, 1960p.404). Further, "the farmer appears to respond to his own economic situation, with little reference to the manner in which others in the same occupational category are faring. Since price and hence economic situation are tied to specific crops, economic winds frequently blow in several directions, leading to a variegated [electoral] response [from farmers]" (Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes, 1960p.419).
This study’s results, in other words, are inconsistent with the assertions of major studies of agrarian parties in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. They are, however, consistent with the hypothesis that the formation, electoral support and partial dissolution of the Australian Country Party (and, by implication, of the Canadian Progressive Party and the New Zealand Country Party) were consequences of a micro- economic stimulus and rational behaviour in political and economic markets. This study therefore rejects the assertion that agrarian parties in Australia, Canada and New Zealand were the consequences of a class, agrarian or regional consciousness and tentatively accepts the hypotheses set out in Chapter 3. It places the study of agrarian party formation, electoral support and dissolution on a more empirically- and methodologically sound basis and thereby advances knowledge of agrarian parties in these three countries.