Taking 'WA Inc' Seriously: An Analysis of the Idea and its Application to West Australian Politics

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the term WA Inc (or WA Incorporated) became a by-word in the West Australian community for the failings, especially in their commercial activities, of the West Australian Labor governments of that period. Despite popular and academic interest in the notion of 'WA Inc', it is arguable that the conceptual linkage between 'business' and government, once central to popular interpretations of the term, remains under-analysed. This article has two main purposes: to illuminate usage of 'WA Inc' by identifying several basic referents of the term and relating these to popular criticisms of the West Australian government in the 1980s and to determine the importance of those criticisms, thereby contributing to the larger debate about capacity of government to emulate private sector business.     

Bismarck Ante Portas! Germany and the Seize Mai Crisis of 1877

The seize mai crisis of 1877 was the occasion for last of the three war scares that punctuated Franco–German relations in the 1870s. However, it has not been given the detailed scrutiny it deserves. It was not only important for the amount of influence that Bismarck exerted during a six month period to influence the course of French domestic politics at a critical juncture. This crisis also provides a cipher for understanding the earlier crises of 1873–1874 and 1875 since the German Chancellor pursued his key objective of supporting the establishment of a republic much more openly in 1877 and his tactics are much better documented than in the earlier scares. A closer look at the events of 1877 reveals more continuity in both the means and ends used by Bismarck in his dealings with France during the mid-1870s than was previously thought.     

Media proliferation and partisan selective exposure

The number of Internet news media outlets has skyrocketed in recent years. We analyze the effects of media proliferation on electoral outcomes assuming voters may choose news that is too partisan, from an informational perspective, i.e., engage in partisan selective exposure. We find that if voters who prefer highly partisan news—either because they are truly ideologically extreme, or due to a tendency towards excessive selective exposure—are politically “important,” then proliferation is socially beneficial, as it makes these voters more likely to obtain informative news. Otherwise, proliferation still protects against very poor electoral outcomes that can occur when the number of outlets is small and the only media options are highly partisan. Our model’s overall implication is thus that, surprisingly, proliferation is socially beneficial regardless of the degree of selective exposure.