Political liberty and social development: An empirical investigation

Liberty is not only economic; it is political. Whether the economic system promotes social development is one question. Whether the political system promotes social development is another question. The empirical investigations indicate that for the world political liberty has a small, though significant relationship with the level of social development.By investigating groupings of alternative economic systems, it is clear that global policies to increase political liberty will not necessarily bring about desired results. In the Socialist, Mixed Socialist, and Capitalist-Statist countries political liberty appears to have virtually no relationship with social development. An increase in political liberty without an increase in economic liberty is even associated with lower levels of social development.     

“All that appears possible now is to mitigate as much as possible the trials of their closing years”1: Alfred Deakin's Attitudes to Aboriginal Affairs

This article examines Alfred Deakin's attitudes towards, and impacts upon, Aboriginal people during the period 1880–1910, drawing on newspaper articles and parliamentary debates as principal source materials. The discussion begins by charting the long, influential and often positive relationships Deakin had with several Aboriginal communities during a period as a Victorian MLA between 1881 and 1884. It then proceeds to document Deakin's extraordinary descent into paternalism and racially‐based fatalism which pervaded his later association with Aboriginal affairs whilst Victoria's Chief Secretary (1886–1890), Victorian MLA for Essendon and delegate to Federal conventions (1890–1900), as the Federation debates took shape. And finally, the article outlines the attitudes Deakin expressed towards Aboriginal people in his various post‐Federation political roles, including Attorney‐General, Prime Minister and Minister for External Affairs. In doing so, the discussion draws out the connections between Deakin's advocacy of a white Australia and his attitudes towards Aboriginal Australia, and demonstrates the extent to which the creation of a new nation both informed and responded to socio‐racial ideologies that mandated the exclusion of non‐white identities from the nation‐to‐come.