Men Want Something Real: Frank Buchman and Anglo-American College Religion in the 1920s

In 1925 a Princeton University alumnus told a group of faculty that "men want something real." He felt that students at Princeton and other universities were trapped in institutions historian George Marsden later described as increasingly secularized and secularizing. Their education was too theoretical and their Christianity was too conventional. Caught in such a place, young men wanted some kind of real-life experience, unmediated by books or instructors. They wanted excitement and intensity, the kind their predecessors found in the Great War. In place of immorality, or conventional Christianity, evangelist Frank Buchman organized a cell group movement where men could get an exciting religious experience. He repackaged Anglo-American evangelicalism so it would appeal to modern young people. The movement began in America, but soon included elite college students in Britain as well. It focused particularly on "key men," vital to Buchman's goal of remaking the world.     

Election Campaigns and Television News Coverage: The Case of the 2001 Australian Election

This paper examines the patterns of television news coverage of the political parties, their leaders and the issues they raised during the 2001 Australian federal election campaign. By focusing on some issues, parties and leaders, television has long been argued to constrain voters' evaluations. We find that television news coverage in the 2001 Australian election campaign focused primarily on international issues, especially terrorism and asylum seekers, and on the two major parties—virtually to the exclusion of coverage of the minor parties and their leaders. Within the major party ‘two-horse race’, television gave substantially more coverage to the leaders than to the parties themselves, thereby sustaining what some have called a ‘presidential’-style political contest. John Howard emerged as the winner in the leaders' stakes, garnering more coverage than Labor's Kim Beazley.     

Interest rates and the 2004 Australian Election

During the October 2004 Australian federal election campaign the expected or possible effect of the election outcome on interest rates was a key point of differentiation between the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal–National Party coalition. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we examine whether this effect was a significant factor in the election outcome, as measured by the percentage swing towards the coalition in each electorate. Second, we use standard methodology from financial economics to examine whether the election outcome had an effect on interest rates. Contrary to media coverage of the campaign, we find that the election result did have an effect on interest rates but that the possibility of interest rate changes was not a dominant factor in the election result.