RELINQUISHED: The making and unmaking of Australian public policy: using Historical Institutionalism theory to understand the path from Medibank to Medicare

This research takes the unique case of the history of Australia's health insurance model, which exemplifies the complexities of major policy reform. Paradigmatic change and incremental adjustment form a two-dimensional analytical toolkit to categorize and explain how public policy change occurs. In recent years Historical Institutionalism theorists, questioning this approach, have convincingly argued that processes of change are much more varied and must be understood as the result of complex interactions of pressures building over time. This will be the first Australian research to interrogate directly diverse historical sources in order to refine the theory of historical institutionalism in policy studies.