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The authors argue that proportional representation has not marked a fundamental change in the character of New Zealand democracy as of 2014, focusing on the nation's neoliberal reform efforts. According to the article, almost every significant area of public policy in New Zealand was refashioned or reengineered in the aftermath of the New Zealand Labour Party's election victory in July 1984. Economic growth, labor productivity, and accountability by government agencies are also mentioned.

This article reviews the development and impact of the socio-legal field in New Zealand. It begins by assessing the socio-legal presence within teaching and research conducted across New Zealand's law faculties before analysing factors likely to inhibit future growth of the sub-discipline in this remote jurisdiction. Having examined how New Zealand's legal scholars map and influence national legal behaviour, without always recognizing contradictions between these objectives or categorizing their research as 'socio-legal', the article goes on to examine how the next generation of socio-legal researchers might exert stronger influence over the law curriculum and new areas of legal policy. In conclusion, it argues for a distinctive New Zealand approach toward socio-legal studies and notes that future prospects appear encouraging, and in certain respects more promising than those in the United Kingdom, particularly when considering research impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freshwater is increasingly a matter of concern in research, policy and public spheres in New Zealand. Geographers have made diverse and powerful contributions to understanding and performing multiple meanings of water in place. This special issue explores some geographical dimensions to the present political moment around freshwater in New Zealand. Prospects for further explicitly geographical contributions to freshwater discussions are manifold but need to be developed within a coherent value proposition and must be situated within the diversely composed networks of practice in which geographers are embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research note, I discuss results from a recent study assessing the impact that New Zealand's electoral and legislative system reforms had on levels of vote consensus achieved in the House of Representatives. Using a new legislative vote data set spanning from 1987 to 2007, I find evidence that the institutional changes fostered an increase in consensual legislative vote outcomes. I also provide a brief theoretical explanation of the developments and address a few issues concerning the measure of consensus used and the interpretation of the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the status of New Zealand in 2010. Scandals in New Zealand politics are reviewed, including those involving Cabinet minister Pansy Wong, Labour minister Shane Jones, and Labour minister Chris Carter. Competition between several political parties is detailed, including the Green Party, the Labour Party, and the ACT Party. Economic reforms are also discussed, noting the government's response to high unemployment rates and poor economic growth by increasing the comprehensive goods and services tax.

This article explores the supposed shift from New Public Management (NPM) to a new era of 'post-NPM' by looking at one critical case, New Zealand. It finds limited evidence of such a shift, suggesting that the wider literature needs to move to a more careful methodological treatment of empirical patterns. To contribute to such a move, this article applies a three-pronged approach to the study of changing doctrines in executive government. After setting out the broad contours of what NPM and post-NPM supposedly constitute, the article proceeds to a documentary analysis of State Services Commission doctrines; this is followed by an analysis of 'Public Service Bargains' based on elite interviews and finally a case-study approach of the Crown Entities Act 2004. Far from a new era of administrative reform, the 'messy' patterns that emerge suggest a continuation of traditional understandings and ad hoc and politically driven adjustments, leading to diversification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presented is a political survey of the country of New Zealand for the year 2009. It is noted that the governing National Party won high opinion poll rating despite the global economic crisis and subsequent recession in New Zealand. A number of other developments and events are discussed including the actions of John Key as prime minister including a trip to the United States and a meeting with U.S. president Barack Obama, the significant increase in the numbers of New Zealand's unemployed, the deferment of a round of tax cuts.

Recently the much-discussed 'New Zealand model' of new public management (NPM) has become significantly revised. It now lacks the theoretical coherence and the market-led focus that it relied on between 1987 and 1996. Labour-led governments since 1999 have undertaken gradual and pragmatic - yet significant - changes in public management structures and principles, refining and sometimes reversing the model implemented in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This article does a 'stock-take' of public management developments in New Zealand from 1999 to 2008, and argues that New Zealand can no longer be viewed as a leading exponent of market-led NPM. Some NPM principles have been refined, but others have been quietly abandoned. The new National-led government appears unwilling to undertake radical reforms, and, while it may seek a greater role for the private sector, looks set to continue with the 'gradual and pragmatic' approach adopted since 1999. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biosecurity politics in New Zealand is implicated in the constitution of a new dimension of citizenship, a biosecure citizenship. This form is distinct in that the political determinants of citizenship do not fully rest on the individual body, but on the body’s connections to other entities, the inter- and intra-active symbiotic condition of human-non-human ‘living together’. Through its constitutive role in enabling the ‘dangerous’ mobility of pathogens, viruses and invasive species, symbiotic individuality has become politicised as a matter for state determination and control. Contemporary articulations of biosecure citizenship emphasise a variety of contractual and non-contractual responsibilities, which augment the national coordinates of citizenship, reconstitute symbiotic individuality, and justify the state penetration of the private sphere. Drawing on biosecurity legislation, public education campaigns and research with community weed removal projects, I chart the reinforcement and practice of this biosecure citizenship. I argue that there is an urgent need to democratise decisionmaking about the construction of biological threat, about where and how to make cuts in our symbiotic associations with different species, and between species and spaces. By articulating biosecure citizenship not only as a discourse of ecological responsibility but of rights, biosecurity could be reinvigorated as ‘bios-security’, the inclusive politics of continually questioning the ecological good life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an overview of political developments in New Zealand for 2008. It includes an analysis of the political motives of leading public figures, and commentary on trends in public opinion regarding the events described. Various electoral results and notable issues in national politics are discussed. These include a general election which led to the defeat of the incumbent Labour Party, and the challenges faced by the government, under Prime Minister John Key, in handling the global financial crisis which began in 2008.

The article looks at politics in New Zealand in 2007. Topics discussed include environmental sustainability, economic policy, and electoral law. Changes made to the cabinet of Prime Minister Helen Clark are reviewed, noting the resignation of Minister of Social Development and Employment David Benson-Pope, Minister of Justice Mark Burton, and Minister of Research, Science and Technology Steve Maharey. The author also comments on politician John Key, who assumed leadership of the New Zealand National Party in November 2006.

Performance measurement is an integral part of the New Zealand model of public management, as it is for many other modern systems of governmental administration. This article examines data on performance indicators for the policy advice function in five government departments, for the years 1992 to 2005, to determine which types of indicators are used, and to gauge the extent to which they offer meaningful information about the quality of policy advice. As part of its managerialist drive in the early 1990s, the government developed conceptual material designed to improve policy advice and management in departments. In general, our findings indicate that these initiatives did not lead over time to the further development of genuinely meaningful measures of the quality of policy advice, and that the indicators that have been used meet narrow managerial rather than broader political needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at politics in New Zealand in 2006. Changes made to the cabinet of Prime Minister Helen Clark are reviewed, noting the resignations of David Parker and Jim Sutton from the Executive Council. Political issues discussed include economic development, allegations of political corruption made against Parliament member Taito Philip Field, and the alleged extramarital affairs of Parliament member Don Brash. The relationships between various political parties of New Zealand are also discussed, including the Labour Party, the National Party, and the Green Party.

This article examines how output classes and performance indicators have changed between 1992 and 2002 in five selected departments of the New Zealand Public Service. Process, output and largely artificial service quality performance measures have crowded out outcome, efficiency and effectiveness indicators, across the board. Both output classes and performance indicators have been highly labile, though the reasons for this remain speculative in the meantime. The New Zealand state sector is currently implementing a ‘managing for outcomes’ strategy, intended to overcome too strong a preoccupation with the production of outputs. However, because output classes remain the key feature of the Public Finance Act 1989 the means of ensuring and demonstrating policy effectiveness must be more broadly based than a reliance on the countability of organisational output classes and performance measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of ministerial advisers of the partisan variety – a third element interposing itself into Westminster's bilateral monopoly – has been acknowledged as a significant development in a number of jurisdictions. While there are commonalities across contexts, the New Zealand experience provides an opportunity to explore the extent to which the advent of ministerial advisers is consistent with rational choice accounts of relations between political and administrative actors in executive government. Public administration reform in New Zealand since the mid 1980s – and in particular machinery of government design – was quite explicitly informed by rational choice accounts, and normative Public Choice in particular. This article reflects on the role of ministerial advisers in the policy-making process and, on the basis of assessments by a variety of political and policy actors, examines the extent to which the institutional and relational aspects of executive government are indeed consistent with rational choice accounts of the ‘politics of policy-making’. The reader is offered a new perspective through which to view the advent, and the contribution of ministerial advisers to policy-making in executive government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political advisers are an established third element in a number of Westminster-styled jurisdictions, as they are in New Zealand’s institution of executive government. In this paper we report the initial findings of a research project focusing on the role and accountabilities of ministerial advisers in New Zealand. We locate these findings in the context of a growing body of international and comparative research on the role and accountabilities of non civil- or public-service advisers within political executives and comment on the extent to which the findings affirm or refute the view that the ‘third element’ constitutes a threat to the continued application of Westminster principles and practices in New Zealand’s system of government – once described as more Westminster than Westminster. In doing so, we highlight deficiencies in standard conceptions of politicization and argue that there is a need to more clearly differentiate between its procedural and substantive dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at politics in New Zealand in 2005. Topics discussed include economic development, the New Zealand housing market, and the budget proposed by Minister of Finance Michael Cullen. A chart is presented which displays the results of the general elections held on September 17, 2005, noting the number of votes won by political parties such as the Labour Party, the Democratic Party, and New Zealand First. Changes made to the cabinet of Prime Minister Helen Clark are reviewed, noting the resignation of Attorney-General Margaret Wilson.

The article looks at politics in New Zealand in 2004. Topics discussed include accusations of corrupt practices among the police of New Zealand, employment law, and same-sex marriage legislation. Changes made to the cabinet of Prime Minister Helen Clark are reviewed, noting the resignations of Minister of Commerce Lianne Dalziel and Minister for Small Business John Tamihere as well as the appointment of David Benson-Pope as Minister of Fisheries. Race relations with Maori people are also reviewed, noting the resignation of Minister outside Cabinet Tariana Turia, who left the Labour Party to form a new Maori Party.

The pressure for efficiency and accountability that led to reform of public institutions worldwide has had implications for public policy-making as well as the management of public services. The difficulties of providing a coordinated and efficient policy process that can respond to the requirements of a more managerialist style of government were evident in New Zealand in the 1980s and early 1990s. The policy process in 1990-91 leading to the introduction of health reform proposals provides an illuminating Case study of the tension between participation and speed, and between traditional pluralist and managerialist approaches to policy development. The implications of this for subsequent implementation are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various developments related to the politics and government of New Zealand in 1998. The decisions of political leaders to change from one political party to another caused public concern because of its effect on the legitimacy of the new Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) electoral system. Meanwhile, a by-election was called in the electorate of Taranaki-King Country because former Prime Minister Jim Bolger was appointed as ambassador to the U.S. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Jenny Shipley, the government took up issues of welfare and work.

The article discusses several developments related to the politics and government of New Zealand in 1997. Alliance Member of the Parliament Alamein Kopu resigned from her party to sit as an independent in July 1997. Meanwhile, Neil Curton held the position of Minister of Customs and Associate Minister of Health until he was terminated for his persistent criticism of government policy in August 1997. It is noted that the major political issue throughout the year was the conduct of the government given the opening of the first coalition government in the country.

The article discusses issues and topics related to politics and government in 1996 in New Zealand. In this year, the country faced several issues such as immigration, racism and social problems, and economic and fiscal policy which remained at the centre of political debate. However, despite these issues, a coalition agreement was formed which signalled a possible softening of key aspects of government policy. Information about the results of the elections on October 12 and party composition and cabinet members of Prime Minister J.B. Bolger is also presented.

The article discusses various issues related to the politics and government of New Zealand in 1993. There was a decline in support for the two major parties during the general election in November 1993. The cabinet was reorganized in March 1993 after the resignation of Simon Upton as member of the parliament (MP). Meanwhile, voters were asked to choose between the existing first past the post (FPP) or plurality electoral system during a referendum which was held concurrently with the general election.