Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T01:42:58.670Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What Political Scientists Can Learn from the 1993 Electoral Reform in New Zealand

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Jack H. Nagel
Jack H. Nagel*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In November 1993, 100 years after becoming the first nation to enfranchise women, New Zealand again made electoral reform history as its citizens voted by a 54–46 margin to replace their venerable, U.S.-style first-past-the-post (FPP) method of electing legislators with a new mixed-member proportional (MMP) system. Political scientists in the United States and elsewhere may find New Zealand's decision instructive in six ways:

• as a harbinger of a wider movement toward electoral reform in established democracies and of a global trend toward mixed-member legislatures;

• as a demonstration of how constitutional reform can overcome entrenched interests;

• as a symptom of political backlash against the imposition of orthodox economic policies of the sort advocated by the IMF and other international agencies;

• as a partial repudiation of the Westminster model that U.S. reformers have often taken as their ideal;

• as the source of a new method of ensuring fair and effective representation for a minority ethnic group; and

• as an example of how political scientists can play influential roles as institutional designers and public educators.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , September 1994 , pp. 525 - 529
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The author thanks the Politics Department at Victoria University of Wellington and its chair, Professor Margaret Clark, for providing a base and valued help for his 1993 research in New Zealand. He is also grateful to all the New Zealanders—far too numerous to list here—who generously shared their knowledge, ideas, and hospitality. Sir Kenneth Keith, Arend Lijphart, Alan McRobie, Paul Quirk, and Jack Vowles provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

References

Boston, Jonathan. 1987. “Electoral Reform in New Zealand: The Report of the Royal Commission.” Electoral Studies 6:105–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapman, Robert. 1992. “A Political Culture Under Pressure: The Struggle to Preserve a Progressive Tax Base for Welfare and the Positive State.” Political Science 44:1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cossolotto, Matthew. 1993. “Foreword.” Voting and Democracy Report: 1993. Washington: Center for Voting and Democracy.Google Scholar
Jackson, Keith. 1993. “The Origins of the Electoral Referendums.” In Taking It to the People?, ed. McRobie, Alan. Christchurch, NZ: Hazard Press.Google Scholar
Levine, Stephen, and Roberts, Nigel S. 1993. “The New Zealand Electoral Referendum of 1992.” Electoral Studies 12: 158–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lijphart, Arend. 1984. Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Rule in Twenty-One Countries. New Haven: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lijphart, Arend. 1987. “The Demise of the Last Westminster System? Comments on the Report of New Zealand's Royal Commission on the Electoral System.” Electoral Studies 6:97–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McRobie, Alan, ed. 1993. Taking It to the People? The New Zealand Electoral Referendum Debate. Christchurch, NZ: Hazard Press.Google Scholar
Mulgan, Richard. 1990. “The Changing Electoral Mandate.” In The Fourth Labour Government: Politics and Policy in New Zealand. 2nd edition, ed. Holland, Martin and Boston, Jonathan. Auckland: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mulgan, Richard. 1993. “Political Culture.” In Changing Politics? The Electoral Referendum 1993, ed. Hawke, G.R.. Wellington: Institute of Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington.Google Scholar
Palmer, Geoffrey. 1992. New Zealand's Constitution in Crisis: Reforming Our Political System. Dunedin, NZ: McIndoe Publishers.Google Scholar
Royal Commission on the Electoral System. 1986. Towards a Better Democracy. Wellington: Government Printer.Google Scholar
Temple, Philip. 1993. Making Your Vote Count Twice. Dunedin, NZ: McIndoe Publishers.Google Scholar
Vowles, Jack. 1993. “Why Voters Rebel: Opinion on Electoral Reform in New Zealand, 1990–1992.” Presented at the British Studies Association Conference, Leicester, England.Google Scholar