Sometimes the most interesting political parties provide the most boring and bland post-election self-analyses in post-election books – witness the latest Green and Maori party chapters – while the most boring parties can offer relatively interesting and insightful chapters. This is certainly the case with the chapter by Rob Eddy on United Future’s campaign in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. Eddy writes candidly of the challenges and failures of this middle-of-the-road party, and concludes with a surprisingly honest and downbeat prediction about there being no future for United Future. [Read more below]
To what extent does the
left-right political dimension still structure political party competition in
New Zealand politics? Where do the parties sit on that spectrum? What other
political dimensions now underpin our electoral politics? This extensive blog
post presents the findings of a regular survey of New Zealand political
scientists about party ideological conflict that has been carried out for the
three MMP general elections of 1996, 2002, and 2008. Explaining the results,
and drawing on some previous blog posts, it argues that the left-right spectrum
is of declining importance in New Zealand politics, and that ideological
conflict is cohered to a greater degree by post-materialist issues. The major
political parties in New Zealand now all agree on the basic post-Keynesian
economic framework that dominates discourse and policy formation. No party
fundamentally challenges the paradigm shift that occurred with the neoliberal
revolution that occurred from 1984 onwards. All parties now agree, explicitly
or implicitly, that the market is the best mechanism for generating wealth and
distributing good and services. Within this ‘new policy consensus’ there is, of
course, room for some limited discussion of when and where the state should
intervene to correct market failure, but because there is essentially no debate
of any substance around material/economic issues, what might be called
‘postmaterial issues’ now represent the arena for ideological and political
conflict in parliamentary politics. Furthermore, within this post-reform
era political conflict is underpinned by a strong pragmatism rather than
principle. Some explanations are proposed for the rise of the new consensus,
the decline of left-right conflict, and the increasing salience of societal
issues in electoral competition. [Read more below]
A central part of Act’s strategy for 1996 was to recruit some Members of Parliament to the party. The lack of any representation in Parliament prior to the 1996 election had proved a significant disadvantage to Act. Still low in the opinion poll ratings, a sense of desperation developed in the party. In early 1996 the party leadership therefore set about to recruit a number of MPs from other parties, hoping this would rectify Act’s problems. Serious prospects included Maurice Williamson, Phil Goff, Peter Dunne, Bruce Cliffe and the whole United party. [Read more below]
It might seem a bit odd to have a blog post about issues in NZ politics in 2007. But every year the European Journal of Political Research publishes a yearbook looking at what’s happened in the previous year in politics of 20+ western democracies. For the past decade or so, this has been written by Jack Vowles, but this year I’ve given it a go because Prof Vowles is no longer in the country. And the latest Political Data Yearbook (Volume 47, Issue 7-8, 2008) has just been published. You can read this in university libraries, and some universities will have online access to it here. But for those that can’t, below is the text that I submitted to the yearbook. Although it pertains to last year, hopefully what I’ve written is actually a useful context for understanding the current election campaign. The extensive analysis includes discussion of all the major issues from an action-packed policy year involving the ‘anti-smacking’ law, the Electoral Finance Act, extensions and enhancements to KiwiSaver and Working for Families, the terrorism raids, scandals about Air NZ in the middle east, employment and politicisation in the public service, and the charging of Labour MP Phillip Field with corruption and bribery. There was also the rise of John Key and the attempted revitalization of Labour. I argue that although it appears contradictory, political consensus and conflict increased in tandem during 2007. [Read more below]
When the United Party was established in 1995, it appeared to be the ultimate elite-cadre type party, set up from within Parliament by MPs rather than by any strong social force. As a result it had only a very insignificant-sized membership. [Read more below]
The United Future party is very deliberately a party of the middle class. Its leader, Peter Dunne, was determined to establish such a party since the early 1990s when he broke away from the Labour Party. [Read more below]
Despite having only a tiny party organisation, the United Future party has had some interesting third party linkages – mostly with ethnic minority and Christian organisations. [Read more below]
