Looking at Te Tiriti through a political science lens offers us something valuable beyond the usual historical and legal interpretations. Let me be direct about what this means for our public management system. Te Tiriti isn’t just a historical document or legal framework – it’s a living diplomatic relationship between two sovereign nations. This isn’t…

I wrote an opinion piece for e-tangata. It is based on a series of pre-and-post election briefings I provided a small number of clients. This particular opinion piece summarises my views on the coalition agreements, and the likely implementation risks the government will need to be actively managing if they are to have any sort…

Today, POLITIK provided us with an important reminder about retail politics. Retail politics is the shaking of hands, kissing babies, playing with goats and dressing up as Captain Cook. It directly sells a candidate to as many voters as possible. I’ve been thinking about it for two reasons. First, retail politics is very different from…

As we move into the last two weeks of the 2023 election, can someone facilitating the leader’s debates ask each leader whether they reject and repudiate political violence and whether they communicate to their supporters that violence is never, never, never okay? Political violence undermines our democracy. This is the real challenge to our so-called…

The term civil service was coined in 1785 to describe the non-military or civilian roles undertaken by the East India Company. For those of you who don’t know the history, the company was formed in 1600 to exploit East and Southeast Asia as well as India. The term was subsequently borrowed to mean all the…