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The article presents information on a different perspective on the birth and future of the Australian Democratic Labor Party (DLP). Although religious in its origins and sponsors, the DLP has deep roots in the strains of shifting socio-economic status. It may therefore serve a transitional function of realigning politics and social class in Australia. The DLP's political permanency is thus far from guaranteed. The paper is divided into four sections. It will first explore the historical antecedents of the DLP, giving special attention to the Catholics and their allegiance to Labor in general and the Australian Labor Party in particular. Next, it will trace the actual evolution of the DLP. Third, it will examine the socio-economic status of the DLP constituency as compared with that of other parties. And finally, it will consider some general problems of political change with reference to the role of third parties within nominally two-party systems. In this respect, the DLP serves as a case study for broader speculation concerning other "two-party systems" such as those in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. Like the politics of other Western democracies, Australian politics have always been based primarily upon social class. In fact, they have been even more devoid of religious and ethnic complications than most.

An examination of the relation between authoritarianism and conservatism is made using newly developed balanced forms of the 'D' and 'F' scales together with scales to measure political, social, moral and economic conservatism. Neither 'BD' nor 'SF' scales predicted voting preference. The 'BD' scale was significantly, positively related to the political, social and moral conservatism scales but was non-significantly, negatively related to economic conservatism. It was concluded that both the 'BD' and 'SF' scales are equally good measures of general authoritarianism among supporters of Australian political parties and that while it is in general true that dogmatic people tend to be ideologically conservative, an exception must be made for economic conservatism. This exception is seen to be inferable from the theory of 'working class authoritarianism' advanced by Lipset (1960). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]