The lucky country syndrome in Australia: Resources, social democracy and regimes of development in historical political economy perspective

Abstract

The historical experience of economic and social development of the resource-dependent economies (especially the settler economies) has been "unbalanced" (in Hirschman (1958) terminology), to a greater or lesser extent, being heavily skewed towards commodity exports. But that has not necessarily meant they could not achieve developed, more balanced, modern, egalitarian societies. Part of the explanation for the differing experiences is the differing good or bad luck of factor endowments but that cannot get us very far. A simple materialist explanation is more or less meaningless without a socio-institutional-historical argument to frame it. Another way to put it is that luck or good fortune has to be constructed through institutional and political processes rather than simply anticipated (Mehlum et al. 2006; Robinson et al. 2006). "Luck" is too limited a concept, of course, because national "good fortune" is a complex mixture of endowments, investments, institutions and, moreover, contingent historical events and processes. And, as is well known, natural resources are not necessary for economic development as many European and Asian countries have shown.