The Political Dynamics of Tobacco Control in Australia and New Zealand: Explaining Policy Problems,Instruments, and Patterns of Adoption

Recent comparative studies of the politics of tobacco control have ranked Australia and New Zealand as two of the most restrictive regimes in the world. Yet traditionally Australia and New Zealand were tobacco-growing countries in which the government supported tobacco agriculture with a variety of subsidies. Despite a slow start in comparison to some other countries, by the 1990s these two had developed strong tobacco-control regimes. This paper addresses the rise of tobacco as a policy agenda problem, what policy instruments were utilised to deal with it, the pattern of adoption of policies between the two countries, and what explains the rapid progress of tobacco-control restrictions in these two countries, based on a comparative perspective.