Restructuring, Democracy, and Geography in New Zealand

Abstract

The speed, transparency, and extent of the reregulation of New Zealand society over the last decade offer many insights into issues of social change and systems of regulation and governance. The forms of reregulation have been embedded by the set of new regulations and reorganised state practices referred to as the ‘reforms’. These have involved a major shift in the sites and exercise of power within and between economic, social, and political spheres. They have been promoted and articulated in a restructuring discourse which has dominated New Zealand's reaction to the expiry of its social democratic settlement. Reconstructions of space and democracy have been heavily implicated within the processes of change, both as explicit goals of the reform programme and as overt strategies for the achievement of other redistributions. They are also definitive outcomes of a decade of upheaval. The authors explore the spatialities of core-state reform. They develop the concept of an altered dominant representation of space to explore new configurations of space and democratic practice. They seek to inform contemporary debates over the stability of New Zealand's reconstructed social formation. The discussion is illustrated with references to the spatial reorganisation of the institutions of government and core-state activities; in particular the altered administration of education and public health, and changes in local government organisation.