Altman, a cultural historian with a reputation on both sides of the Pacific, is concerned with the ‘Americanisation’ of Australia, a topic both complex and elusive. As Altman notes, there is ‘the tendency to attribute American influence to everything we dislike about contemporary Australia’. If this were not broad enough, there is the further notion that Americanisation is shorthand for globalisation. At other times, when we talk of Americanisation we may be talking about American cultural imperialism, the predominance of American books, films, television shows and popular music. Or do we mean by the word the triumph of neo-liberalism in Anglo-Saxon societies? Here, Maggie Thatcher seems to have been as big an influence as any American. For some, the essence of Americanisation is the omnipresence of the consumer society, epitomised by everything from chain stores to shopping malls, from McDonald’s to McMansions.

How far such trends are universal – with ‘American voices often [simply] the loudest in the room’ – rather than peculiarly and distinctly American, accounts for an explanatory tension throughout the book. To complicate matters further, while there may be competing ideologies of Americanisation, there are also many Americas, some comparable with Australia, others not so. Altman finds it easy to imagine an Australian Brokeback Mountain; difficult to picture Australian urban ghettoes with the depths of squalor, poverty and alienation characteristic of the dead hearts of many of the major American cities.

Altman seeks to manage the discussion by narrowing the boundaries. His focus is on the Americanisation of Australian political culture, by which he means ‘that set of values, beliefs and aspirations through [which we] view politics’. To what extent, in terms of political culture, are we the fifty-first state? His essay falls into three parts: the first an introductory study of the social roots of the political cultures of the two societies, accompanied by a succinct, if occasionally idiosyncratic, account of the historic relations between the two nations; second, a series of studies of potential American influence on Australian life and culture; and a concluding section on the pace and direction of political and cultural change in Australia.

In the most illuminating chapter in the book, Altman compares the social foundations and the political cultures of the two countries. While noting that, apart from New Zealanders and Canadians, ‘most Americans’ lives are more like those of Australians than any other peoples’, his understanding of the two societies leads him to conclude that ‘both history and geography have dictated the creation of unique societies, even if the superficial similarities seem overwhelming’. American settlement depended on slavery and thus left the country with a racial divide not duplicated here. That Americans had to fight for independence left the United States with a specific political ideology characterised by patriotic nationalism, individualism, a distrust of the state and an emphasis on rights, with considerable resort to the litigation of political issues. Australia’s very different history led to a much more uncontested role for government, on which greater expectations rested and less suspicions were focused. The different institutional settlements – Americans opting for a separation of powers between executive and legislature, and Australians for their fusion in a Westminster-type system – reflect these cultures. They, in turn, have furthered a more individualistic approach to politics in the United States, with political advancement more dependent on private wealth, whereas in Australia there is a more collective approach through disciplined political parties. The American people are much more diversified and more polarised than Australians, in part a reflection of their numbers, but also of their widespread dispersal across a land of many distinctive regions. They are also a more polyglot people than Australians, their original Anglo-Celtic majority having disappeared early in the twentieth century, while Australia remains a predominantly Anglo-Celtic society into the twenty-first. Compounding this is the fact that, as Altman notes, the United States ‘can simultaneously contain white extremist militia and feminist separatists, Amish fundamentalists and urban bohemians and the sheer size of the United States means these groups never meet’. This polarisation may help to explain why the United States is a much more violent society, as measured by the homicide rate and the state-sanctioned violence of judicial executions. Or it may simply be that, since World War II, the United States, unlike Australia, has been a militarist society.

Altman tackles a number of contemporary issues in order to examine the impact of Americanisation on Australia: ‘the rise of unfettered capitalism’; the cultural wars; religion, morality and politics; ethnic policies; as well as the present condition of their contrasting political systems. An animus against John Howard and all his works adds a polemical note to these chapters, blurring and sometimes contradicting earlier arguments. For instance, Altman rightly recognises Australia’s intervention in the second Iraq War as an exercise in realpolitik, a relatively low-cost means of refurbishing the American alliance in dangerous times, but succumbs later to a caricature of the Howard government as ‘showing some enthusiasm for satrapy status … an enthusiasm which at times has resembled a schoolboy crush rather than a carefully thought-through foreign policy’. This antipathy to Howard is balanced by Altman’s disenchantment with Labor, which originated many of the trends of which he disapproves.

The most obvious face of Americanisation has been ‘the triumph of American managerialism and economic ideology’, which has helped transform Australia ‘from a society that stresses solidarity to one that privileges individualism [and thus] ensur[es] that popular support for individual wealth would outweigh consideration of equality and social justice’. He sees the state memorial service for Kerry Packer as the epitome of this trend, with Packer being honoured not for ‘service to the country or philanthropy, but essentially for being Australia’s richest man’. The neo-liberal victory has seen the privatisation of government activities, a decline in public services and the growth of inequality. Even here, however, Australia has its own distinctiveness: we now have the most privatised school system in the capitalist world. It is ironic that a government rhetorically committed to social cohesion has encouraged this development, which is likely to entrench social, religious and possibly racial differences in future generations. Altman notes that, in the cultural wars, itself an American concept, the right-wing scribes who infest the Australian media have cleverly appropriated American analyses and language: the élites versus ordinary Australians (Nixon’s Middle America); the evasions of political correctness. ‘Black armband history’, however, seems an indigenous contribution. Nevertheless, Altman argues strongly that ours is not simply an Americanised cultural war; though ‘couched in language imported from the United States it is a debate that centres on Australian concerns and comes to life when it touches local issues and perceptions’. Similarly, in so secular a society as Australia he thinks it unlikely that our politics will ever be ‘suffused with the religiosity’ characteristic of contemporary America. Nor, he argues, is the American ‘melting pot’ approach to ethnic assimilation likely to usurp the multicultural approach in Australia. He does, however, acknowledge that the repercussions of Islamic fundamentalism have introduced ‘a new fragility into multiculturalism’, which may necessitate new and possibly Americanised thinking.

Since our two political systems are so different, Altman struggles to find many parallels, let alone examples of Americanisation. Even if we have picked up aspects of American electioneering, so has everybody else, including the Russians. American-style lobbying may have grown in Canberra, but, as Altman observes, ‘our politicians are less corrupt than their American counterparts mainly because they are not free enough to be worth bribing’. This chapter segues into an admiring examination of Howard’s electoral success and some provocative ideas on how it might be countered.

And what of the future? Altman opines that Americanisation may have reached its zenith and that in future it will be counterbalanced by our geographical position, as the great powers of Asia – China and India – become international giants. While this will certainly pose crucial challenges for our alliance with the United States, it is debatable whether China or India will provide cultural models for Australia. Indeed, within both Asian powers there are internal debates about the Americanisation of their own cultures. Another scenario not advanced by Altman is that the relationship may be undermined in a fit of absent-mindedness or by benign neglect. Altman notes that the relationship is ‘lopsided’: while the United Stated looms large on Australia’s horizon, Australia barely raises a signal on the planet-wide radar of American concerns. I was reminded of this in reading three massive studies of the war in Iraq in which Australia has been America’s most vocal partner after Great Britain: Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor’s Cobra II (2006), Thomas E. Ricks’s Fiasco (2006) and Bob Woodward’s State of Denial (2006). In more than fifteen hundred pages, there were only three mentions of America’s vociferous South Pacific ally. It would be easy for the American elephant, accidentally or inadvertently, to trample on the antipodean mouse.