3 - Analytical frameworks of Australia’s economic history

Summary

Australian economic history as a branch of social science has had a history of disputation and debate between different approaches. Australian thinkers have made distinctive contributions to economic and economic-historical thinking since the late 19th century. The years immediately following World War 2 marked a watershed in Australia's economic development, as in the rest of the advanced capitalist world. In Australia the maturation of the orthodox approach to economic history was a natural outgrowth from the earlier era's interests in the use of statistics combined with a causal narrative presentation and also sectoral development theory. The seminal works of Fitzpatrick, which were heterodox but not strongly Marxist, had a central emphasis on social class and capitalist power. Noel Butlin's concept of 'colonial socialism' attempted to bring institutional political economy further into the centre of analysis, a perspective implicit in much older writing about Australia's history but one lacking conceptualisation.