Rethinking Diversity and Social Democracy: Catholic Incorporation in Australia, the United States, and Canada in the Early 20th Century.

In the past decade there has been a proliferation of research on the relationship between diversity and redistributive social welfare policy. In conceptualizing the independent variable, diversity, the paper argues for distinctions between diversity as richness and diversity as evenness. In the dependent variable, redistributive welfare policy, the paper argues for looking beyond measures of generalized trust and spending on welfare to measures such as labor market policy and electoral reform. In terms of causal mechanisms, the paper argues for looking as well at the organizational capacity of the minority groups and policy framing. The usefulness of such concepts are demonstrated by looking at the case of Australia in the early 20th century which faced considerable diversity in that 20 percent of its population was Catholic, a minority population stigmatized by many Protestants. Yet up to the 1930s, Australia was one of the most progressive nations in the world, with considerable unionization, electorally successful labor parties, compulsory voting, and high levels of social welfare spending, while simultaneously raising Catholics to levels of political representation never before seen in Australian history. Brief comparisons with the United States and Canada are drawn. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]