The Contemporary Europe Research Centre (CERC) at the University of Melbourne closed in 2009. However, its Working Papers series are online and they are in the public domain. My Eye was caught by Cas Mudde's Globalization:The Multi-Faced Enemy? which explores the relationship between ‘globalization’ and ‘national populist parties.’We can use this as a way to explore the pathology interpretation of national populist parties.

Mudde says that the main function of the process of economic globalization is the creation of a capitalist world market. In addition to the simple trade, international actors and states are nowadays bound by a variety of rules, and organizations that uphold those rules – such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Globalization has led to a multitude of oppositions within the Western world and it is generally national populist parties or movements that lead the struggle against economic globalization. Mudde argues that these are parties or movements of the radical right share an ideology consisting of the combination of the following four core features: nationalism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, and populism. Nationalism entails a political doctrine arguing the convergence of state (the political unit) and nation (the cultural unit); xenophobia refers to the fear of anything alien (including people, ideas, habits); authoritarianism denotes a strict belief in law and order (yet not necessarily an anti- democratic attitude); and populism refers to an appeal to the people against both the established structure of power and the dominant ideas and values of the society.

The regional populists in Australia (including the now defunct One Nation of Pauline Hanson) strongly opposed the international free market, often argue that Australia should seek self-sufficiency and oppose high levels of non-white immigration. Unlike Europe, the resistance in Australia to cultural globalization, which as it more or less means a dominant American culture, is a resistance to Americanization, has faded. The resistance to the new world order ---the ever growing international political cooperation between states, in particular the growing involvement of the United Nations (UN) that means loss of without the loss of sovereignty-- is also marginal.

The populist radical right is considered to be alien to mainstream values in contemporary western democracies, and this is expressed most explicitly in the “normal pathology thesis”, which holds that the populist radical right is antithetical to the values of liberal democracy and that its success is to be explained by crisis. The radical Right "stands psychologically outside the frame of normal democratic politics". So why the popular support for populist radical right politics?

Bob Katter, one of the regional Independents holding the balance of power, is commonly seen as the ‘‘populist radical right.’’ This edited summary of the policy priorities Katter sent to the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition indicates that Katter does not see regional populism as part of an anti-globalization movement that generally considers itself as ‘left-wing’. His policy priorities are:

1. Creation of a National Energy Grid facilitating resource development, the decentralisation of population and clean energy resources.

2. The removal of the tax on Australian-produced bio-fuels and the introduction of a statutory 10 per cent bio-fuel (ethanol) content in all petrol rising to 22 per cent (as in Brazil).

3. Address the two chain oligopoly in the Australian food retailing sector. The option of divestment (a maximum market share for any chain of 22.5 per cent only) and/or a maximum mark-up of 100 per cent between the farm gate/factory price and the retail price.

4. No carbon tax. No emissions trading scheme.

5. No mining tax.

6. Return of recreational freedoms to traditional pursuits of fishing, camping and outdoor sports and activities. This includes the removal of the Wild Rivers Legislation.

7. Provision of title deeds providing ownership of homes, businesses and farms … to indigenous communities.

8. Legislation to ensure that the constitutional right to full compensation for the taking of property by government be extended also to the taking of any property “rights” by government [such as land-clearing by farmers].

9. Commitment to the use of some part of the Future Fund for the creation of a national development corporation for major infrastructure and strategically important industries.

10. Restoration of collective bargaining rights to Australian farmers. Where a majority of farmers in an industry request collective bargaining arrangements, they be provided.

11. Rural and country hospitals and dental services will be placed under the control of a restored local hospital board and that funding be delivered from Canberra directly to these hospital boards.

12. Agreement that where a food or plant import licence has not been approved, approval can only be granted when the country of origin can establish that is has no endemic diseases that can be imported into Australia.

13. The utilisation of 3 per cent of northern Australia's abundance of water to enable irrigation for small areas of agricultural land sufficient to guarantee a healthy growth in Australia's agricultural sector and to provide food security for our people.

14. Establish a taskforce to secure action to provide: all-weather anchorage roughly every 30 km; … micro resource development at five towns in the Queensland Gulf and Mid-West; … a port to service the southern Gulf of Carpentaria; upgrading the McEwen highway.

15. Government-provided solar hot water systems and/or other measures to reduce the money problems on our older generation caused by rapidly escalating costs for rates, electricity, insurances, car registration and other similar charges, which, increasingly, they are unable to meet.

16. Equal rates of government-funded parental assistance for working mothers and stay-at-home mums as well.

17. An agreement that the Commonwealth meet with the Queensland Government and secure relaxation of restrictions on land sub-division and boundary realignment prohibitions.

18. Address the unfair and artificially high value of the Australian dollar, on which upward pressure is placed by interest rates that are out of step with international benchmarks.

19. Introduce an open, public registry of foreign ownership of farm land, housing, public and private corporations and re-examine the thresholds on foreign ownership requiring FIRB approval.

20. A review of zone allowances for remote areas. Tax should be levied on “real" purchasing power, not monetary purchasing power, as $100 buys a lot less goods and services in Cloncurry than it does in Brisbane.

Anti-globalization is not (yet?) a central issue in the ideology of this regional populism even though it identifies neo-liberalism of the two main parties as explicitly pro-economic globalization and there is an unease with the consequences of globalization for Australia. Katter's list focuses on the state fostering regional development and on an economic policy that benefits ordinary people in north western Queensland.

As Mudde points out the “normal pathology thesis” under "normal" circumstances the demand for populist radical right politics comes from only a tiny part of the population. Hence the search was on for those "abnormal" circumstances in which "populist radical rightwing attitudes" spread. The standard answer is that society is transforming fundamentally and rapidly through modernization, leading to a division between (self-perceived) "winners" and "losers", and that the latter will vote for the populist radical Right out of protest (anger and frustration) or support (intellectual rigidity). Under conditions of massive societal change, the "losers of modernization" will vote for populist radical Right parties. This represents the pathological remnant of a dark past.

Katter's above list of policy priorities indicates that far from being the pathological remnant of a dark past thrown up by crisis, they are connected to mainstream ideas and much in tune with broadly shared attitudes and policy positions of those in regional Australia.