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

Abstract

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.