Neo-Populist Party emergence in advanced industrial democracies: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

Abstract

This dissertation develops an explanatory model of neo-populist party emergence in advanced industrial democracies, specifically the founding of Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party in Australia, the New Zealand First Party in New Zealand, and the Reform Party in Canada, in the decade of the 1990s. Using qualitative and quantitative data, this study considers both structural and agency variables including the widening cleavage between rural materialists and urban post-materialists, the effect of increasing non-white immigration and indigenous activism, the changing policy platforms of the major parties in each country, as well as the impact of charismatic leadership, the media, and epistemic communities of conspiracy theorists on the emergence of neo-populist parties. The paper analyzes the political representation of formerly powerful constituencies and the nature of the shifting power relationships in Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand politics in an era of globalization that has altered political and cultural centers of power in each country.