| Abstract: | The formation of interest groups is path-dependent. The ideology and thus behavior of interest groups cannot be isolated from history, customs, economic conditions and changing alternatives open to individuals. In Australia, there were historical and traditional divisions concerning farmers producing for international markets that depend on flexible world prices and those producing for the domestic market with stabilized and subsidized prices. The National Farmers Federation (NFF) (1979) is the result of a historical-evolutionary-developmental process of preceding agricultural interest groups. Hence, an understanding of the NFF ideology that promotes free competition and the elimination of agricultural subsidies worldwide, in contrast to the agricultural interest groups in the United States and UK, requires an examination, using an institutional and economic complexity approach, of the evolution of agricultural interest groups in Australia. |
