Helped or hindered? Pauline Hanson's One Nation and the party cartelisation thesis

In the course of arguing that party systems are not in decline but simply changing, Katz and Mair caution that the change from catch-all to cartel may prove counter-productive - in particular, they argue, by creating a rallying cry for parties of the extreme right. This paper examines this claim in relation to changes in the Australian party system, and the rise and fall of the most important challenge from the extreme right, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party. It argues that the development of the Australian party system has been more uneven than the schema proposed by Katz and Mair might lead one to suppose; that the development of One Nation was facilitated by a number of features of party systems – from proportional representation to the public funding of parties by the state - that either pre-date the emergence of cartel-like tendencies in the party system or that are part of the cartelisation process itself; and that while One Nation represented the rejection of some of the features of cartel parties it also represents the rejection of various features of the earlier party models as well.