AUSTRALIAN DISCOURSES OF DEMOCRACY

Democracy is to a significant extent what political actors and ordinar y people make of it. The inquiry reported here determines how the indi viduals who are the constituents of any actual or potential Australian political order conceptualise democracy and their own place in it, Po litical discourse analysis and Q methodology are deployed to reveal th e discourses of democracy present in Australia. The four discourses un covered are termed resigned acceptance, inclusive republicanism, right -minded democracy, and anxious egalitarianism. Their results illuminat e Australian political culture, the attractiveness and feasibility of different kinds of institutional innovation, and the real-world prospe cts for various kinds of democratic theory.