Australasian Political Studies Association Conference 2003
Hosted by the School of Government
University of Tasmania

Australian and New Zealand Politics Stream

We Want a Republic, God Save the Queen:
An Australian Case Study in Democratic Choice

Sinclair Davidson
School of Economics and Finance
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

Tim R L Fry
School of Economics and Finance
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

Kelly Jarvis
Department of Economics
The University of Melbourne

Abstract: The failure of the Australian “Republic Referendum” in November 1999 highlights some issues that can be described as being paradoxical. Opinion polls indicate that most Australians favor a republic, however, the republicans lost the vote. This paper investigates whether voters employ a loss-minimization rule as opposed to a value-maximization rule when making political decisions. Based on the predictions of each rule, political strategies are devised and compared to the official arguments employed by republicans and monarchists during the period preceding the vote. In addition, empirical work relates voting outcomes at both the electoral division level and the individual voter level to factors that are likely to be correlated with political risk aversion. The results are consistent with the notion that voters do not employ value-maximization rules.

J.E.L. Classification: D72

Keywords: Referendum, Constitution, Voting.

The research reported in this paper commenced whilst the last two authors were based at Monash University. An earlier version of this paper was presented at The Economic Society of Australia’s 30th Annual Conference of Economists in Perth 2001. We thank the participants, Jonathan Boymal, Robert Brooks, Keith Jake and Mark Stewart for comments.