Elite consensus and public support are prerequisites for any civilization shift

Evidence

Despite these economic connections, the Australian Asian ploy appears unlikely to meet any of the requirements for success for a civilization shift by a torn country. First, in the mid-1990s Australian elites were far from overwhelmingly enthusiastic about this course. In some measure, this was a partisan issue with leaders of the Liberal Party ambivalent or opposed. The Labor government also came under substantial criticism from a variety of intellectuals and journalists. No clear elite consensus existed for the Asian choice, Second, public opinion was ambivalent. From 1987 to 1993, the proportion of the Australian public favoring the end of the monarchy rose from 21 percent to 46 percent. At that point, however, support began to waver and to erode. The proportion of the public supporting deletion of the Union Jack from the Australian flag dropped from 42 percent in May of 1992 to 35 percent in August 1993. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 413

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: the two requirements for a nation voluntarily re-rooting its identity — elite consensus plus durable public support — and how Australia, a wealthy Western democracy, still failed at both, offering a generalizable test for identity shifts.