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- Date published:
4:45 pm, January 23rd, 2026 - 59 comments
Categories: Deep stuff, International, MMP, Parliament, political parties, Politics -
Tags: Mark Carney, rules based order
Would it be fun or folly trying to map the lessons of Carney’s speech onto our MMP environment? Firstly, to use Carney’s lens to attempt an analysis of how things are at present (state of the nation), i.e., let’s see if there are parallels in mirrored contexts of geo-politics and NZ parliamentary politics. Then, the more fun part of my thought experiment, to transfer his approach to how things could be done differently. Of course, this is further motivated by the fact that by the end of this year the newly elected MPs of the same old parties will be hashing out a new government along the same old lines as they have been doing for decades and particularly since the first MMP election on 12 October 1996 (this determined NZ’s 45th Parliament and at present we’re having the 54th Parliament). Ten MMP Parliaments and 30 years of MMP can be considered a whole generation and a good excuse for an attempted evaluation of sorts.
Carney talked of great (aka hegemons) and middle powers. In the context of NZ Parliament, we have two ‘great’ and four ‘middle’ powers or parties; thanks to the ridiculously high threshold of 5% there are no smaller powers/parties. Political power in NZ has typically been neatly divided along the Left-Right line although this line is, arguably, imaginary and misleading because no sitting NZ political party has openly declared that they want to challenge the [political] system and remove the sign from their shop window, to my knowledge. (NB if they have done so, mainstream media successfully hid and/or buried it) That’s how the current system has sustained itself mirrored and underpinned by that other powerful self-sustaining socio-economic ideology that’s neo-liberalism.
Certainly, during this term, political rivalry in NZ has intensified. Opinions have become more polarised and divided and virtual lines [do not cross!] have become sharper, bolder, and more real. NZ Parliament is now less of a place of representatives and more an amphitheatre of political rivals exercising intense partisan politics in a struggle for power and to protect their vested interests.
Carney said, based on Václav Havel’s essay The Power of the Powerless, that the system [both the political as well at the inextricably linked socio-economic] “persists […] through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false” and that “the illusion begins to crack”. Indeed, also here in NZ trust in politicians and politics has been waning with dire consequences for its social contract.
The rules-based order is fading, argued Carney. In NZ, the equivalent is the decision-making process (e.g., formation of policies and laws) that’s increasingly detached from being evidence-based with adequate public consultation and debate and appropriate scrutiny by Parliamentary Select Committees. The sound leading principles are being replaced by political expediency and intellectual laziness on behalf of the Executive (i.e., the Government).
Of course, it would be naïve to pretend that in the past these sound principles hadn’t been sacrificed for political convenience, that they hadn’t been applied asymmetrically (or unilaterally) to serve a political agenda of the great powers to continue their “unhindered pursuit of their power and interests”. And perhaps thanks to the relatively short parliamentary terms here in NZ everybody got something from this bargain, sooner or later, to a larger or lesser extent and (almost) everybody (therefore) continued to participate in this falsehood and Faustian pact whilst ignoring the growing voice of disenchantment of voters (and the screams of anguish and anger from Mother Nature), not to mention the many (young and educated) Kiwis who left NZ in droves. Carney aptly observed that “[h]egemons cannot continually monetize their relationships”. Indeed, once the ‘family silver’ (e.g., SOEs) have been hogged off there’s nothing left to sell except for further plundering and extraction of Crown land and exploitation of the NZ work force.
Parliamentary power also is slowly fading and its sovereignty slowly eroding by external factors, from the outside in, but this is encouraged by a weakening of the State and undermining, underfunding, and hollowing out of the Public Service in favour of the private sector and international corporations head-quartered overseas through limitations and constraints imposed by various trade agreements and domestic laws. This weakening is deliberately self-inflicted by the neo-authoritarian coalition Government (the hegemon), i.e., from the inside out.
This has led to a diminished “architecture of collective problem solving” coupled with less political will (rejection, if you will) to act collaboratively, constructively, and incrementally (as opposed to radical reforms that are disruptive). Carney suggested that we should be “recognising that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner shares our values”.
It is increasingly fanciful, therefore, to pretend that we live in a true democracy, in a free and open society. It’s performance politics, on the global and national stages, of sovereignty and democratic freedom “while accepting subordination”.
This thought experiment is already getting too long. So, I decided to stop here and leave the more fun, but also harder part, for a follow-up Post. I might get some useful feedback on this one and in the TS spirit of robust debate I should pay heed to that. Please keep it civil.
If part of Carney's solution was for people who are good to each other to form friendships and allyships and rebuild economic and political stability that way, how might this work in NZ politics? Is it possible for any MPs or parties to disassociate themselves from the amphitheater of power-mongering and instead work from a different model?
James Shaw used to talk occasionally about relational vs transactional and I think he attempted to change how politics was done.
I’m still working on the follow-up Post. Foremost, people have to accept that the current model isn’t working as well as it could and should, that people are losing trust and patience, and that it’s not the only or definitive model. I think it’s high time that MMP truly grows up and starts to function in more mature way. This requires a culture change plus some practical technocratic changes (e.g., the lowering of the threshold). A good start would be to commit to accepting and implementing the more than 140 recommendations of the Independent Electoral Review final report (https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/independent-electoral-review-final-report-released) instead of stalling perennially.
Agreed. I am increasingly tempted not to vote at all. My electorate vote is currently useless – I'm in the Epsom electorate. The party vote has some value in the short term in voting for the lesser evil. But over-time, neoliberal capitalism just keeps gaining ground… as well as women's sex-based rights and provisions going backwards.
Patriarchal capitalism always wins.
Protests, and where it is still available, submissions to select committees, lobbying MPs etc, seem to me more useful than voting.
These alternatives at least put it on record how many of us disagree with some of govt's actions and why.
Voting is such an easy thing to do, it's hard to understand why people wouldn't.
Looking at the results for Epsom in 2023, the centre left got 29% of the vote for candidates for Labour, Greens and TOP. If people don't vote, it sends the message to those candidates that it's not worth standing. But standing up and being counted matters for visibility of progressive ideas, and parties garner list votes by standing candidates as well as pushing back against dominant narratives locally.
Voting also puts on record that people object, and at that level, numbers matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsom_(New_Zealand_electorate)
In the short term it matters. But it also gives the impression that the voters are reasonably happy with the left alternatives.
In the long term, we keep going backwards and there's no visibility given to the need for a restructuring of our political system.
People not voting also sends a message that people have no confidence in the system and feel disenfranchised.
How so? It's not like voting is the only thing.
Not sure about that. It gets discussed a bit, but I think the reasons why people don't vote are varied and there's the idea that people don't care. Low voter turnout is a gift to the right and they don't care about people feeling disenfranchised. Personally, I would consider low voter turnout in Epsom to be a sign of people giving up.
But either way, it doesn't lead to politicians or the system changing.
One of the problems we have in the past 5 years is people are overloaded, just too much stuff to be dealing with. There has been work done on electoral reform, it's just not a priority when people are worried about the cost of living etc. I don't know what the solution to that is.
"message that people have no confidence in the system and feel disenfranchised."
Do you seriously think that the Luxons and Seymours of this world give a toss if you register your disenchantment by not voting?
Rather, they welcome your lack of participation!
How else do you explain their attempts to restrict voting?
Weka also pointed out that low turn-out tends to favour the Right. If Left-leaning voters do give up, or give the finger, that would like one shopkeeper removing the sign from his shop window and locking the door to the pleasure of his competitor across the street. While I have growing sympathy for this, I don’t think it helps at all and least of all progressive politics – there are more constructive ways than passive-aggressive actions to try change the way we do things.
Imagine lobbying Left politicians, submitting to Select Committees, etc., but with the threat of not voting for them or voting at all. That’s not a good basis for relational politics, is it?
Of course it is more potential left wing voters that tend to give up – and have tended to give up.
So what are Labour & the Greens doing to engage those who already feel disenfranchised and have given up voting?
Labour is too busy targeting potential middle-income swing voters, rather than spending more time or better strategies trying to engage with the disaffected low and precariously incomed people.
The Greens have the best policies for beneficiaries, low income people & renters, but their voters still tend to lean towards middle income liberals, and young people, especially students.
I have read that Marama Davidson & Chloe Swarbrick are now spending less time campaigning via social media and getting out more engaging with people around the county. That looks to me to be a start. But there's a way to go.
I think there are two main separate ways that can lead to voter disenfranchisement that are connected but they’re not the same. Your comments made me realise that I should draw a clear(er) distinction between the two in future.
The first way is what I wanted to highlight in the OP and follow-up Post and what I think what Carney was discussing in his speech. Carney talked about a rupture, which refers to the deliberately disruptive (and thus destructive) politics that are tearing apart the rules-based order in and of the geo-political arena. I tried to make an analogy with our Parliamentary politics and Government, how politicians perform [in Parliament, and that incudes Select Committees] and behave towards each other. My thesis is that this is not a sound way of doing politics and that it turns off voters. This is rupture creating chaos (and fear).
The second way is that people disagree with parties, policies, politicians and/or that they feel that they’re being ignored and/or there’s no party (policy) that covers a particular issue that’s crucial to them, or at least not in the way they wish. Such a singular issue could be a deal-breaker for a voter but I struggle to see how this might turn off that voter from voting altogether. The voter would simply ignore all other issues and other policies on offer and turn away from the voting booth!? I could see something like that making more sense with electorate candidates when it might specifically affect that electorate in a certain way that’s unpalatable to that voter, but this would still leave to party vote on the table, wouldn’t it? This is bad/poor politics creating discontent (and anger).
BTW. I've not yet said I've given up voting. I said I'm tempted. And some of you have just reacted by throwing your hands up in horror and putting it back on me. And that was after saying I have been lobbying MPs and posting submissions to several Bills.
The problem is something needs to change from what's been done in the past because over time, we've just gone backwards.
The left needs to change. Incrementalism is not working – too many compromises.
Fair point and my comments were also meant more for those who’d already given up. But then again, those people wouldn’t be coming here to read let alone comment on TS and least of all (under) this Post 😉
I think I understood you well enough to not take you the wrong way and your comments have been quite helpful to me, so thank you, so far.
OK. Thanks.
"The left needs to change. Incrementalism is not working – too many compromises."
Totally agree. And, like you, I'm frustrated with the 'centraism' of Labour.
We need a Mamdani!
Yep. Someone strong and with engaging gravitas that would encourage public support.
I’d argue that turning off (mostly Left?) voters is deliberate on behalf of the CoC, or at least welcome collateral damage. Similarly, I expect the CoC parties to fight a dirty election campaign, knowing that this may turn off even more voters. The opposition parties should have steely nerves, and show professionalism, discipline, and integrity.
Indeed, people could at least declare their party vote in the GE and decline to vote for the electoral seat. I’ve never really got used to this 2-vote thing of MMP.
Well I tried engaging with Camilla Belich on the sex-self ID issue. I wrote to her about it – an evidence-based polite letter.
I never got a reply – not even an acknowledgement.
Last election I got rung by someone from local Labour asking for my vote. I mentioned the lack of reply to my letter, and that I was not happy with sex-self ID. The caller asked if I would be OK with Camilla ringing me about it. I said definitely.
I never got a call. That's how much my vote meant to Camilla.
The Labour & Green Parties have lost votes on this issue. I can't think of any other issue where they are so intransigent and unwilling to engage in discussion with the public
Correction, I think on reflection it was the election before last that I got the phone call from Epsom Labour. It diminished my view of Belich somewhat, and I think I gave my electorate vote to the TOP candidate as she seemed less intransigent on the issue.
I agree this is an issue being ignored and cause problems. Even if it's not directly going to affect votes, the right will go hard against the Greens in particular this year on this issue and the Greens can't afford to be looking incompetent again.
The core of the issue for me is doing I want to vote for candidates that represent me, or do I want to vote strategically. It's definitely the latter for me.
Well, Labour and the Greens have handed votes to NZF on this issue. The only reason NZF has adopted the sex-based rights in sports and intimate spaces is because they spied the potential for some votes in it.
Peters and NZF show in their policies and posturing that they are not the least bit interested in challenging the patriarchal dominance and exploitation of females that still exists pretty widely in our society.
They are more like the sex abuser and patriarchal dominance shown by Trump on this issue. Trump and NZF have no interest in ending the damaging exploitation of women's bodies in prostitution ('sex-work' is a damaging neoliberal concept – and unfortunately Labour and the GP have adopted the concept showing themselves to be more liberal than left, and with a very superficial understanding of patriarchal structures and left wing feminism).
Trump has over-corrected on the transgender issue by the way he's opened trans IDed people to marginalisation, abuse and discrimination. I also see no attempt by NZF to ensure that such things don't happen to trans IDed people in NZ.
However, trans IDed males are not a sex-class and do not experience the domination and exploitation that women as a sex-class experience now and historically.
You're absolutely right there, weka. Standing candidates in opposition safe seats is about party votes, tying down the opposition to remain in their electorates to protect their own and party votes rather than swan about the country, addressing local issues, being progressive and flying the flag.
I stood in a safe opposition seat. I found that one large local issue over power generation ownership almost turned the seat over. I had three targets- one to win the seat, one to get the party vote larger than National and one to get a Labour government. I didn't win but the other two were achieved. The party vote here added up to a half list MP, so worth the effort.
Putting up a serious challenge meant that more locals voted. Indeed, I got more votes than some winning candidates in safe seats where voters did not see the point in turning out.
The last point, as we have now had MMP elections since 1996, is that the Left might start to fully realise that MMP affords each voter a party and a candidate vote, that can be used for strategic voting as has happened before, especially to get rid of poor electorate MPs. National of course used it to get an ACT MP to protect the ACT party vote if it dropped below the 5% threshhold.
I am replying in part to Karolyn_IS who was contemplating not voting because of the way she sees the Left performing. Firstly, the Right is quite happy to have lower turnouts and the campaigns in former years which basically said "Don't vote. It only encourages them!" favoured the Right as progressive voters who may vote for principles and ethics were more easily dissuaded than conservatives who voted for more financial and social reasons and knew that the reins of power were still most useful to control the country and the economy.
Secondly, I'd say that a person who cares about politics and social concerns would be very well placed to actually get involved in a political party and help influence, by membership and activity within the party, the policy of a party and the quality of its candidates.
280 or so days to go….
We might not think much (less) of the shenanigans in Parliament and the omni-shambles of the CoC (and the Opposition alike?), but it is still the system we’ve got and the way our social contract operates. At times, one couldn’t help but think that the CoC (at present, but the same could be said of Labour-led Governments) has unilaterally torn up the social contract with large sections of the population, which may be a reason why so many leave the country, and I’m starting to feel more sympathy for people who decide to not vote anymore in the general election.
It’s important to note that Carney didn’t specifically mention anything like a social contract or the will/voice of the people; he implied that all or most Canadians are behind the decisions & actions of their government and that they support (or at least don’t rally/protest against) the people at the top who make the calls, give the speeches, and send out press releases. As with Havel’s shopkeeper, this might be a bold assumption on Carney’s behalf, because the people in the street are mostly concerned about making a living. However, in a time of crisis, real or perceived (or manufactured), it does bring people together and it does seem to focus the minds of [the] people in positive ways (unlike they buy into war-time propaganda).
This could be a statement of fact, or your opinion/belief. It could also be a slogan on a sign that people no longer believe or feel that they must believe – there are alternatives and even with and within the current system of representative democracy there are better ways of doing things without the need of chucking out all the furniture, fittings, and furnaces and doing a complete reno.
You can do all or some of those things, as they’re not mutually exclusive but reinforcing each other, rather. I think that if you make the effort to do all those things then the logical thing would to vote as well – it’s easy!
I agree, and this is important, not just for historians and/or academics. I wish we could come up with constructive, not prescriptive or punitive, ways to increase accountability, transparency, and integrity of politicians. In other words, how can politicians improve their ethical behaviour (not their words and rhetoric) and stay true to their own and their party’s values that people can see for themselves and uphold as models (leaders) to follow and support. By support, I don’t necessarily mean voting or donating (money), but actively agreeing with and respectfully agreeing to disagree. These don’t seem to be asking too much, of politicians and of people, but (social) habits are surprisingly hard to change.
Incognito:
Among NZ MPs of the same party, I wish it were possible for electorate MPs to disagree with their party publicly on some issues. That does happen in the UK and US, but in NZ there seems to be too much emphasis on toeing the party line publicly on most issues. Maybe it's fear of how the current MSM operates to accentuate any differences of opinion in a negative way.
I strongly support lowering the party threshold to allow more minority voices to be heard publicly.
Probably up to the Green Party, maybe TOP, to push for that. The GP needs to sort its own house out first.
Any political system, with pretensions of democracy, depends on competent and honourable "representatives".
Not a bunch of cynical self seeking "Post turtles" put in place by self interested wealthy party funders.
A majority of our politicians currently in power, forgot they are "Representatives, not Dictators, long ago.
Well stand up and stand for Parliament then.
I have a job already.
Grandkids!
I have long advocated for STV for all national and local body elections.
From what I have read it is a better system than MMP which tends to encourage the "weirdos"
I have wondered if STV would be better than MMP. The latter seems to encourage centralism and support of the status quo.
The issue isn’t the electoral system itself. MMP doesn’t “encourage” centrism or the status quo. It simply produces a Parliament that reflects the full spectrum of voter preferences, including smaller parties and viewpoints that might be ignored under FPP.
Centrism isn’t imposed by the system. It arises naturally because most people approach politics through the lens of everyday life: household budgets, schools, local services; rather than abstract grand theories of society. That’s a constant, no matter whether you use MMP, STV, or any other system.
Democracy requires accommodating a range of views, some of which we may strongly disagree with. That’s the trade-off for a system that aims to be fair and representative for everyone.
The solution isn’t to juice the electoral process. It’s to get better at politics.
I think he was saying MMP encourages weirdos. My own view is that MMP makes them visible, otherwise they're hidden inside mainstream parties.
But re your comment, I largely agree about MMP producing a parliament that reflects the range of people's priorities. However, it's also able to be manipulated by money, media, and in the case of Peters, abusing actual centrist positions. Hence the shift in the Overton Window since the 80s
As much as I dislike NZF and Winston Peters, I don’t see how one can “abuse” a centrist position. Policies either resonate with enough voters and succeed, or they don’t and fail.
MMP simply reflects what voters support; it doesn’t manufacture popularity or reshape what people think. Sure, the media influences perceptions, but it’s not the sole determinant of electoral success. And the further a policy or party moves from the center, the harder it becomes to convince voters to switch allegiances.
I didn’t say ‘sole’. I said those things influence.
I also didn’t say one can abuse a centrist position, I said Peters did. But let me rephrase. Peters used the leveraging power of being able to work with either Labour or National so gain policy and power well beyond the proportion of the vote NZF got. He monkey wrenched MMP in the early days eg by implying he would enable Labour and then chose National. The NZF voters punished him the next election but the damage was done in multiple ways. He set the tone for how MMP negotiations and election campaigns went, and we’ve never recovered.
imagine if the centre was to left of Labour and the Greens were queen/king makers. Now imagine if they behaved like Peters.
This is classic Peters' abuse of MMP,
https://thestandard.nz/the-rise-of-winston-follows-the-rise-of-pauline-hansen-and-nigel-farage/#comment-2054817
That's a centrist leader whose party is on 6% of the list vote, playing games to replace the leader of another party, and not just any party, but the one who might get to form government. He can only do that as a centrist, but also as an arsehole.
At the risk of sounding flippant, this is really a case of “don’t hate the playa, hate the game”.
Peters only has leverage when other parties grant it to him. Snd when he’s allowed to spend the 12 months before an election playing footsie, keeping everyone guessing about who he’ll support.
The solution is actually straightforward. Hipkins needs to rule Peters out explicitly and make NZ First’s position politically toxic. Peters’ power depends on ambiguity; remove that, and most of it evaporates.
Maybe 6% of the electorate is comfortable with their vote potentially propping up ACT. But there is no universe in which that expands to 12%. Once that ambiguity collapses, so does Peters’ relevance.
The issue isn’t the mechanics of representation, but the strategic failure of larger parties to cut off that leverage early.
At present, I don’t think that Hipkins needs to do anything.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360936411/te-pati-maori-leaves-door-ajar-nz-first-winston-peters-slam-it-shut-ratana
Perfect!
good.
Lol, nothing wrong with hating both.
It doesn't sound flippant so much as ignoring that the structure of MMP allows arseholes like Peters to fuck with MMP's intent.
And because he's a centrist powermonger. ACT and the Greens couldn't do this. Well they could, but it wouldn't work, because they're not in a position to hold both sides.
Hang on, I thought last year you were arguing for the pragmatics of the utter necessity of winning the next election and that including the possibility of a L/NZF coalition?
Yeah, that does sound like the kind of thing I would say. But to be fair, I don't remember promising that my arguments would always be consistent. Only that they'd be good
But you're right. Hating both Peters and the political contingencies that makes his shameless opportunism profitable is also an option.
I’d personally prefer to keep Winston and his goons as far from government as possible. But personal preferences aren’t strategy. Until Winston explicitly ruled out supporting a Hipkins-led Labour government, there was a genuine case for leaving the door open.
Since then, the contingencies have changed. And our strategy must change with them.
happy to see Hipkins' response. It works so long as they step up.
Haha, fair enough.
That’s a good way to phrase a take-home message from my Post, thank you.
It would help if the American Independents ran candidates like GOP and Dems. That might be enabled by having preferential voting.
Oh for sure! America's electoral system is ludicrously, hopelessly broken.
The need for coalitions does tend to result in compromises which tends to favour the status quo and make it hard for any electoral reform.
Plus, the threshold is too high, and the tendency to toe the party line limits minority voices. Sometimes the minority is right.
And right now we do need a major change from the way politics is done because the left is up against a media, and international influences from the likes of the US that tends to support neoliberalism (and patriarchal systems).
The tendency for incremental slow change by Labour has resulted in politics in NZ shifting more and more to the right over time. Inequalities and the wealth-income gap have increased, and housing affordability etc has all declined.
And with what's coming down the line from the US and the UK (Farage is a contender for next PM) means we just don't have time for continuing to try the failed incremental approach.
We need a major change of direction or the country will be experiencing continuing declines in environment, economics, etc amidst a global crisis in capitalism.
Change is urgent, yes. But simply blaming Labour or MMP won’t solve anything. Coalitions are a feature of MMP: they raise the political cost of unpopular policies and prevent governments from becoming alternating dictatorships.
If our diagnosis isn’t accepted, it’s on us to craft a strategy and argument that convinces people. Not to try to rewrite democracy just because it doesn’t suit us. History shows that if we do, the other side will follow suit.
Politics is hard work. Winning hearts and minds requires clarity, consistency, and persistence far more than frustration and finger-pointing.
Ah, ‘weirdos’, is that dog-whistling about people whom you mis-understand or dislike for some reason?
I dislike them only for the damage they cause to New Zealanders.
In the "old days" I remember politicians went into politics not to better themselves but to better the lot of what Luxon calls the "bottom feeders" or the "stretched middle". Yes they pay lip service to us but then they turn round to help their mates, the landlords, the gun owners et al.
I see MMP as a way for anyone who toes the party line to get in, regardless of whether they are affiliated with Atlas or other disruptive elements. List MPs don't even have to do any electorate work.
STV means that all MPs are electorate MPs so, in my view, they are then a little more "legitimate".
Of course we could go back to the days of Samuel Pepys and get rid of the baubles of office, giving us a lot more to spend on health.
List MPs don’t even have to do any electorate work? In my experience, quite the opposite: I’ve seen my local Green Party List MP far more often than my electorate MP (National).
MMP isn’t a way for “anyone” to get in; it’s a system designed to ensure Parliament reflects the way the country votes. List MPs are central to that, because they make the nationwide party vote matter more than just individual electorates.
If we switched to STV with only electorate MPs, history suggests we’d collapse back into a two-party system, making it almost impossible for alternative voices to compete.
Democracy isn’t tidy or convenient. There will always be people whose views we dislike, and some who game the system. That reality doesn’t disappear with a different voting system; it’s politics.
The hard work is managing it through strategy, engagement, and accountability, not changing the rules to suit our preferences.
Well, that clarified who they are and what they do. Luckily, MMP is protecting us from them.
I'm not sure that mapping Carney's hegemon vs middle powers distinction onto NZ electoral politics works particularly well, other than in the general sense of them both being examples of asymmetric power relationships within the domain of politics.
So in the hegemon-middle powers case, the options open to the middle powers are highly constrained by the interests of the hegemon, but for some middle powers (not all) there is enough commonality of interest with the hegemon that benefits accrue to those middle powers and limited local autonomy is possible. Becoming a client state of the hegemon is therefore a rational strategy – unless the hegemon goes mad, or unless the hegemon was always half mad and its intellectual and moral culture deteriorates even a little bit.
Much of this dynamic is consistent with the coalition-building process in an MMP parliament where major and minor parties wield different degrees of power. But the major parties are not hegemonic in any sense. Just like minor parties they are subject to the popular vote. They need to make quite uncomfortable concessions to minor parties to form coalitions. And the minor parties are actually bits of the major parties that have broken away over time – Key almost totally subsumed the ACT vote within National, and much of what is now the Green vote was contained within Labour until the Lange-Douglas government alienated them.
There IS a hegemony that is seriously constraining the choices we can make, resulting in that diminished “architecture of collective problem solving" you describe. But I don't think it's a product of our party system. Instead I think it is two features of market economies – the extraordinary private power that some people can acquire in these systems and the extraordinary complexity and fragility of these systems that makes them so resistant to change without a storm of unintended consequences.
The corruption from private wealth via funding of right wing parties and the abuse of the checks and balances of power with the over-use of urgency are 2 things that are similar to what's happening in Trump's US. The latter is similar to the way Trump has found a loophole via abuse of executive orders and Presidential pardons.
NZ seriously needs to fix both the extreme of election funding and the over-use of urgency.
Great comment, thanks. Briefly, yes, it’s the asymmetry of power that’s the main point; the hegemon analogy doesn’t work well.
Alliances can be formed between parties and within parties and the latter can lead to fracturing/breaking away and formation of new parties. However, in NZ this hasn’t happened much under MMP, AFAIK, and has not resulted in major culture shifts in Parliament, IMO. (NB this is one reason why I think we should retain the Māori seats and they should be entrenched)
I was referring to our political problem solving in and by Parliament, but this is in lockstep with market-based approaches and ‘solutions’ because that’s with the prevailing ideological dogma dictates (and TINA).
This is a genuinely interesting thought experiment, and I can see why it’s attractive. Carney is clearly articulating a serious, progressive, and coherent response to a global system that at best locked us into a US dominated order and is now visibly under strain.
But I think the analogy starts to break down when it’s mapped onto New Zealand’s domestic politics. Carney is talking about relations between states in a fragmented international order. Our political parties, by contrast, operate within the same constitutional framework, under a shared set of rules. Whatever their many flaws, our democratic institutions are not in collapse. Power in Parliament isn’t hegemonic in the way Carney is describing, and our elections remain free, fair, and meaningfully contested.
The system itself isn’t broken. What we’re seeing is a set of misaligned incentives that our politics has over-indexed for. Parties chase middle voters because that’s how elections are won. Politicians underfund or hollow out the public service because short-term gains are rewarded more than long-term stability. And citizens feel alienated because their material needs aren’t being addressed at scale.
Any serious Marxist analysis: the classical kind, grounded in material conditions and lived experience, not pop-Marx or later ideological spin; starts and ends with material realities. If politics doesn’t speak to that, it won’t matter how coherent or morally compelling the rest of the argument is.
And yes. That also points to the kind of relational politics Carney hints at. Fairer taxes tomorrow, not less tax today. Helping our neighbours so they in turn help us. Compromising on means, but never on core values. I acknowledge that it's probably a lot less romantic (and less fun) than Chloe Swarbrick sweeping into power in a green wave, or some spontaneous anti-neoliberal revolution.
But it actually works: if we keep trying.
Societies change only slowly, and politics even more so. That’s why durable change comes from working with the system we have by strengthening institutions, aligning incentives, building trust and cooperation, rather than chasing dramatic, immediate transformations that the electorate or the system can’t yet sustain.
So, our task isn’t conjuring a new constitutional or political alternative out of thin air. It’s accurately analysing the conditions as they actually are and adapting our political strategies accordingly.
But if we misread our situation as one of institutional collapse or hegemonic domination, we risk adopting strategies that are mismatched to the problem, or even counterproductive.
Reform, pressure, and participation look very different inside a functioning (if degraded) democracy than they do in a genuinely post-democratic or authoritarian context.
Thank you for your considered comment; there’s too much to address here & now, so I cherry-pick your last two sentences.
If there’s a strategy that I’d be advocating, hopefully in my follow-up Post, it would be for a culture change at the human level, of the operators in and of the system (i.e., ‘better politics’). That said, some of our institutions are crumbling and some are growing in size & strength, e.g., the merger of several ministries into a new Ministry of Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport, or MCERT with the simultaneous undermining & hollowing out of the Public Service but they all are captured by [the] prevailing dogmas of neo-liberalism and its closely associated management and accounting models. A stint as Manager of an airline or at Fonterra, with or without MBA, is not a pre-requisite for being an effective MP, for being a good Minister, a good manager of the economy, let alone a strong leader and PM. This ideological dominance, and that of the PMC, is letting us down and leading us down the garden path. Indeed, here in NZ we’re not yet in post-democratic era but neo-authoritarianism has crept in and made steady progress in the last two years and it would be our folly to assume that it will be done by 7 Nov 2026.
I stumbled on this article in Newsroom that has some bearing on our convo here.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/12/17/new-mega-ministry-a-test-case-for-potential-mergers/
Although it wasn’t the hegemon I had in mind in the OP, the proposed ministerial behemoth (and its one or two responsible Ministers) may become a hegemony within Government.
And the New Zealand Initiative think tank also puts its oar in as does David Seymour/ACT. The managerial jargon is strong and the sensitivity feels disingenuous because heads will roll, jobs will be chopped, and people will be snuffed.
This highlights exactly why thinking of public agencies as if they were private-sector businesses is misleading. Mergers in the public sector aren't just about efficiency streamlining. Unlike in a company, they have to balance public accountability, regulatory responsibilities, and the broader social purpose of the organisations.
As my research on public management found, applying private-sector logics wholesale often creates unintended consequences: staff uncertainty, mission drift, and incentives that conflict with the public good.
In this case, the focus on creating super ministry could make sense politically or rhetorically, but the real challenge will be whether the merged entity can maintain its public service purpose without being driven primarily by efficiency metrics or managerial fashion. Roche's emphasis on careful implementation and respect for staff shows some awareness of these risks, but is exactly the kind of context where New Public Management-style assumptions around treating public agencies as businesses can, and often do, backfire.
Given this, it would be fair to describe NPM as a hegemonic idea in New Zealand politics. An ideology that's shaping expectations and constraining what is seen as "feasible" in terms of reform, often regardless of whether it actually improves public service outcomes.