Douglas to Dancing: a new blog about the Act party

The growing ePolitics phenomenon in NZ is hopefully going to involve a number of academically-rigorous specialist blogs. Possibly the first of this kind has been set up by University of Otago Political Studies student Geoffrey Miller, who has just launched a blog that focuses on the Act party entitled Douglas to Dancing. No doubt this will be an intelligent and dispassionate ‘Act-watch’ website that will add considerably to the local political blogosphere. The site draws and expands on Miller’s Otago honours dissertation From Douglas to Dancing: explaining the lack of success of ACT New Zealand and evaluating its future prospects (PDF) which is usefully downloadable. I’ve read the dissertation, and think it makes an important intellectual contribution to the academic study of party politics in New Zealand – I’ll do another blog post about it in the future.