> Looks to me like the Whitlam government was overthrown by Australia's
> voters in December 1975, when they refused to overrule the Labour
> Governor General's dismissal of Whitlam and returned Fraser's party
> with clear majorities.
> "Coup d'etat" means something very different from this particular
> political episode.
> Brad DeLong
Although I know none of the details save those you describe, the episode seems to have been orderly and within the law. My point was that stable regimes are more likely to have stable growth, and over the long term, that makes a difference. As I said before, if an economy can grow for 1% a year for a century, then it ends up growing a lot more than another economy that grows 50% in a decade when commodity prices are high, then shrinks 33% due to social unrest when the commodity prices collapse, then grows another 50% in a decade when there's an oil boom, then loses another 33% when there is a civil war.
--Lawrence Krubner