The Five‐Thread Model & Academic Policy Entrepreneurs: From the White Australia Policy to Multicultural Australia

ABSTRACT Why did Australia go from the White Australia Policy, which excluded non‐whites, to institutionalizing multiculturalism policy in the 1970s? This question defies traditional political ideologies of the major political parties, which had long supported the White Australia Policy. This article is a rare empirical demonstration of the Five‐Thread Model—a synthesis of key policy theories—and refines it for a parliamentary setting to explain this policy change. With reference to partial couplings in policy change, it advances the notion of academics as significant policy entrepreneurs who gained access to and effected change in the policy advisory systems of the Department of Immigration and associated government bodies. The article illustrates how, throughout different policy stages, academics in Australia initiated, framed, and coupled threads to institutionalize multicultural policy from the 1960s onwards; and, on the other hand, how academics were pivotal in challenging multiculturalism policy in the 1980s. Both these sides test hypotheses of policy change relating to the role of agency, the power of shared beliefs in forming coalitions, and political power. It concludes that the FTM is demonstrably appropriate for addressing complicated and controversial policy changes like societal shifts from a white Australia to a multicultural Australia.