Christopher Lloyd (Universaity of New England, Australia)
The concept of the Australian ‘lucky country syndrome’ captures both the blessing and curse of resource wealth in a particular institutional, economic, and developmental context that differs markedly from some partially similar settler societies and some economically developed societies that have experienced resource booms. The complexity of resource export effects cannot be reduced simply to curses or blessings or to booming sector / Dutch disease types of effects. The consequences of the 200-hundred-year history of resource booms and busts in Australia cannot be understood through pure theory nor through a narrow economic perspective but must be examined historically, politically, culturally, and institutionally. Such an examination, in this paper, reveals that it has indeed been possible to ride the resource waves to beneficial effect, politically and socially, with ‘modernization’ outcomes. One key to this understanding is to see the importance of political and social culture, and another is to understand the centrality of a ‘developmental state’ structure that grew out of inherited institutions as well as from a home-grown and pioneering form of social democratic welfare capitalism that has morphed through several regimes since the late 19th century but retained certain key elements. Whether this political economy can survive the current resource boom is the subject of much current debate, addressed in this paper.
