From the start, South Australians had an unusually progressive attitude toward social experimentation. The early colonists expected a swift transition to self-government and to popular representation. The colony’s initial commitment to religious toleration attracted a disproportionate number (though never a majority) of Nonconformists, especially Methodists. Their collective influence was most evident in the lively public debates about the role of state support for education. In the 1850s South Australia became the first colony in the British Empire to disestablish religion (thereby separating church and state).

The decisive intervention of the British government into colonial affairs during the financial crisis of 1841–42 curbed the experimental pretensions of the colonists and checked their progress toward self-government. Nevertheless, during the 1850s there was a renewal of the original zeal. In 1851 partial self-government was introduced, and the Legislative Council was reformed to include two-thirds elected membership, based on a property franchise. Pressure for greater autonomy mounted, and in 1856 South Australia instituted some of the most advanced arrangements in the empire. These included triennial parliaments, manhood suffrage, the absence of property qualifications for the lower house, and secret ballots.

Thus, South Australia had established a relatively advanced democratic bicameral government, and its first election on this basis was held in 1857, when the European population was roughly 110,000. But its subsequent legislative record was less exciting than its conception. Some historians say that South Australia had lost its experimental and intellectual zest and that it was not recovered until the last part of the 20th century.

In 1884 South Australia was the first colony in Australia to introduce direct taxes on income and land. This reflected not so much advanced redistributive philosophies, however, but rather recurrent overspending by the government on public works programs and an excessive reliance on the London capital market.

Progress toward popular representation was curiously fitful. There were remarkable accelerations, as in 1894, when, in advance of virtually all other democracies, South Australia extended the vote to women; the Women’s Suffrage League, which included among its leaders Mary Lee, Mary Colton, and Catherine Helen Spence, was instrumental to this achievement. Yet South Australia was slow to vote women into parliament. In 1973 full adult suffrage was accomplished when property qualifications for the upper house were finally abolished. Payment to members of parliament was introduced in 1887. In 1876 South Australia became the first of the Australian colonies to give legal recognition to trade unions. Unionization nevertheless was slow to develop, and there were generally fewer and less damaging strikes in South Australia than elsewhere in Australia.

Political parties became more clearly defined when leaders emerged to represent the urban and working population. The formation of the United Labor Party in 1891 was a prelude to the first fielding of Labor candidates in elections. This precursor of the contemporary Australian Labor Party became the dominant vehicle for the interests of the left. Partly in response to Labor, conservative elements notably converged into the Liberal and Country League in 1932.

The conservative party was generally dominant, and it ruled from 1933 to 1965. For the last 28 years of that period Thomas Playford was premier. During the Playford era the state was transformed from a mainly agricultural economy with a population of 600,000 to a predominantly industrial society with more than 1,000,000 people. The Liberals retained power through an electoral system that grossly underrepresented metropolitan Adelaide. By the 1960s it was generally, but not unanimously, agreed that the electoral system was the most unbalanced in Australia and had become a political scandal. Opposition to the system became vociferous but was resisted until 1969, when the Liberal government initiated electoral reform despite great internal controversy. When Labor attained power, more thoroughgoing legislation was introduced to redistribute voting power toward the metropolitan population. In 1975 electoral readjustments became the responsibility of a permanent Electoral Commission.

The Playford administration was marked by two extraordinary paradoxes. Under the direction of the auditor-general, J.W. Wainwright, Playford committed the Liberals to state-induced industrialization, in contravention of conventional conservative doctrine. This helped to reinforce the influence of state policy in shaping local society, in opposition to the powerful influences emanating from the federal centre in Canberra. The resulting expansion of the urban and industrial population effectively undermined the electoral foundations of the Liberal Party itself.

Except for two years of a Liberal-Country coalition government (1968–70), the Labor Party held sway from 1965 to 1993. Under Premier Donald Dunstan’s administration, South Australia became highly image-conscious, especially in its commitment to culture. Dunstan pledged to make the state the technological, design, social reform, and artistic centre of Australia. Dunstan’s program depended on the affluence connected with industrialization. This affluence had, however, in its turn depended on high levels of effective protection for the local motor vehicle, household appliance, shipping, and electrical goods industries, a large proportion of the products of which was traded outside the state.

Sustained economic growth until 1977 favoured the political program, and unemployment rates in South Australia were lower than in the rest of Australia. But the employment base was relatively narrow and vulnerable to market shifts. During the 1980s and ’90s South Australia suffered greater than average reductions in the level of economic activity, and a growing nervousness affected the business climate of the state. In the last years of Dunstan’s tenure and during the administration of his successor, John Bannon, industrialization seemed to falter as tariff protection became less comprehensive. Earlier advantages diminished, and employment in the manufacturing sector fell. Plans to build a new city at Monarto, near Murray Bridge, were shelved. The state government became more receptive to plans for the exploitation not only of natural gas fields but also of the extraordinary ore bodies around Olympic Dam. Since these ore bodies contained rich uranium reserves, the mining policy of the government became a matter of great political controversy, especially in the Australian Labor Party.

Under Dunstan there had been a rush of adventurous legislation easing censorship and restrictions on liquor, gambling, and shopping hours; extending the vote to 18-year-olds; permitting beach nudity; and reforming the law relating to adult homosexuality. But social experimentation decelerated as the government attempted to consolidate the industrial base of the economy. Under Bannon in the early 1990s, plans were advanced to facilitate large-scale international investment in an elaborate scheme incorporating high technology into the metropolitan area, known as “the multifunction polis.”

The Labor Party, much strengthened by the long-term impact of electoral reform, redefined its relationship with the trade unions while appealing to the middle strata of South Australian society for electoral support. This was emulated by a reunited Liberal Party and by a small coalition called the Australian Democrats that briefly held the balance of parliamentary power several times in the 1980s. Despite the vicissitudes of the state economy, there was no weakening of the central commitment to the parliamentary system of representative democracy.

Having been ascendant for nearly two decades under Dunstan and Bannon, the Labor Party’s popularity declined abruptly in the early 1990s in tandem with the collapse of the State Bank, which had accrued a significant debt as a result of ambitious lending strategies. In the 1993 election the party experienced its heaviest defeat in 60 years. The new Liberal government committed itself to a reduced role in the economy. It privatized many public utilities and sold the State Bank.

The state economy was in the doldrums throughout the 1990s, with higher unemployment and lower economic growth than the national average. However, during that time South Australia sought new growth opportunities in the information technology industry and in exports, and grain and wine exports expanded vigorously. Nevertheless, the state’s recovery from recession was slower than that of the rest of the country, despite the implementation of debt-reduction policies. Expansion in the mining industry at Olympic Dam and large expenditures by the federal government on the construction of new naval submarines at Port Adelaide helped buoy the economy, and a new consortium emerged in 1999 that also brought trade benefits, employment, and new demand for steel production at Whyalla. By the end of the decade, wine, motor vehicles, grains, seafood, and electronics were all exporting well, and strong economic recovery was under way.

Although severe drought reduced agricultural yields in the early 21st century, the state continued to grow in other areas; in 2004 the long-anticipated rail link between Darwin in the Northern Territory and Adelaide, a grand national project first mooted in the 19th century, was finally completed.The Liberals were defeated in the election of 2002, which presaged the return of a Labor government. In 2004 Labor, under Mike Rann, issued a strategic plan focusing on economic development and improvements in health and education over the coming decade. Rann also persuaded the Labor Party to adopt a more positive attitude toward uranium mining.

Rann served as premier until 2011, when Jay Weatherill took over as party leader and premier. The Labor government made a big commitment to fostering the growth of renewable energy, and by 2014–15 it had already surpassed its 2020 target goal of providing 33 percent of energy production through renewable sources. The state’s increasing dependence on the unpredictable availability of wind and solar power and its occasional reliance on power drawn from the national grid, however, sometimes resulted in energy shortages that necessitated rolling blackouts. Prolonged blackouts in February and March 2017 raised howls of criticism and proposals to develop extensive battery-storage capabilities to prevent the need for blackouts as a recourse.