Category Archives: Political Economy & History

Leadership and Nationbuilding

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Revised version of a paper presented at a conference, July 2004.
Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Introduction

The Nationbuilders described a particular phase in New Zealand’s economic and political history, between 1932 when Gordon Coates became Minister of Finance and the election of the Labour Government in 1984. It follows a group of (mainly) men embarking upon a strategy of developing an independent nation with its own economy and culture but engaging with the rest of the world. The story is told through their biographies, but it could have been told through historical sequence or policy themes, or with more biographies had there been the space.

Economic Leadership

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation, Political Economy & History on by .

Notes prepared for an informal presentation (June 2004)

Keywords: Growth & Innovation; Political Economy & History;

The ‘Growth Culture’ report of the Growth and Innovation Advisory Board (on which I am on) raises major questions about the direction of economic policy. The survey had been commissioned to understand how the public could be involved more effectively in the economic growth strategy. However their responses firmly indicated that the large majority of the public had objectives which were different from those espoused by the nation’s economic leadership.

Leading a Nation

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Notes for a chapter in a book Leadership and Political Change (June 2004)

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

My book, The Nationbuilders, described a particular phase in New Zealand’s economic and political history, between 1932 when Gordon Coates became Minister of Finance and the election of the Labour Government in 1984. It describes a group of (mainly) men embarking upon a strategy of developing an independent nation with its own economy and culture but engaging with the rest of the world. I told the story through their biographies, but it could have been told other ways, through historical sequence or policy themes for instance, or with more biographies, had there been the space.

830 New Zealanders (review)

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A STRANGE OUTCOME: The remarkable survival of a Polish child by John Roy-Woljciechowski and Allan Parker.

Listener: 22 May, 2004.

Keywords: Miscellaneous; Political Economy & History;

One of the proudest letters any New Zealand Prime Minister wrote was by Peter Fraser in 1943, beginning, “With reference to our discussion concerning the reception of Polish refugee children in New Zealand … I have to inform you that the New Zealand Government would be very willing to afford the hospitality in New Zealand to a total number … of 500-700.”

1999 and All That

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Strange as it seems, Helen Clark and Michael Cullen may be revolutionaries.
Listener: 24 January, 2004.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

The standard New Zealand histories cite 1890, with the election of the first Liberal government, and 1935, with the first Labour government, as years of “revolution” –– albeit constitutional and evolving ones –– when the economy and society took on a new direction. So much so that the Reform government came to power in 1912 and the National government in 1949 primarily as consolidators rather than reversers.

Will You Look at That

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Fact: New Zealand has a national portrait gallery. Not many people know that.
Listener: 17 January, 2004.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

You would hardly know that New Zealand has a national portrait gallery, hidden on the busy corner of Wellington’s Bowen St and Lambton Quay in the debating chamber used when Parliament House was being refurbished. The local bookseller tells me that he constantly has to point the way.

Strange Benchmates

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Why does the Left hang together and the Right hang separately?
Listener 29 November, 2003.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Despite it being 10 years since a referendum committed New Zealand to MMP, many commentators still think in terms of the old winner-takes-all (WTA) regime. They suggested that voters were illogical because in last year’s election Labour won more of the list vote in many National-won seats. But seats are still won on a WTA basis, so the shrewd elector –– apparently smarter than many commentators –– gave their electorate vote to the least objectionable front-runner. So those who were anti-Labour tended to vote National.

Treasury: the New Zealand Treasury 1840-2000, Malcolm Mckinnon

This entry was posted in Governance, History of Ideas, Methodology, Philosophy, Political Economy & History on by .

This is a much longer version of a review published in New Zealand Economic Papers, 37(1), December 2003 295-302.

Keywords: Governance; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History;

Treasury Secretary from 1986 to 1993, Graham Scott, got it quite wrong when he said shortly after the 1987 election, ‘I’m interested in getting back to the old money-bags role, what Treasury did in the nineteenth century – the core of the finance ministry is its old functions. That’s our knitting.’ Historian Malcolm McKinnon is too polite to point out this is another example of an ahistorical economist misrepresenting the past. Except by his writing a history of the Treasury.

Public Policy and Thinktanks

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Panel Presentation for Public Intellectuals Seminar, Friday 26 September. A later panel was The New Intellectuals?

To begin, as is appropriate, with a dissent from the conventional wisdom. The notion of ‘Public Intellectuals’ seems to me to be unhelpful, because it focusses on individuals, and is likely to generate jealous spats of just who is or who is not one. It is the public intellectual discourse which we should focus on, the process by which intellectual activity is applied to questions of public policy in its widest sense.

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, by Greg Palast (review)

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Listener: 9 August, 2003.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

With sex no longer secret, we move on to the mysteries of corporations and their couplings with governments. Investigative journalists, among whom American Greg Palast is exceptional, today lift the curtains from the corporate bedroom windows. This book describes his recent investigations.

A Visit to Poyais

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Review of SIR GREGOR MACGREGOR AND THE LAND THAT NEVER WAS: The Extraordinary Story of the Most Audacious Fraud in History: David Sinclair (Review $59.99)
Listener 5 July 2003.

Keywords: Business & Finance; Political Economy & History;

The story told here is so extraordinary that I wondered whether the book was a hoax. Its writer, David Sinclair, is a reputable English financial journalist with non-fiction books to his credit (notably The Pound: A Biography), but belongs to a profession which often has a hankering for fiction. However, his key references appear in international bibliographies, while a Google search found independent mention of the country of ‘Poyais’ about which the fraud occurred.

The Irish in New Zealand: Historical Contexts and Perspectives

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Brad Patterson (ed). An unpublished review written in June 2003.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

There are probably as many New Zealanders of Irish descent as there are of Maori descent – around 600,000 or 15 percent of each. But historian Edmund Bohan reminds us in this stimulating set of essays from a seminar in 2000, of a question posed by Patrick O’Farrell (who contributes a personal reflection on being New Zealand Irish). ‘How was it that New Zealand’s history came to be hijacked by English?.’

Being a Public Intellectual

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Lawrence Simmons and Brian Easton in dialogue   The following is based on a dialogue between Lawrence Simmons and Brian Easton, which took place in early 2003. It is the basis of a chapter in speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand, edited by Laurence Simmonds and published by Auckland University Press in…
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After Uncle Sam

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Contribution to a Listener feature article “After Uncle Sam” by alister Bone, 15 March 2003.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

The most likely scenario for a major and early demise of American financial and economic hegemony would be that the financial fundamentals of the private sector are already ruined, and that Bush’s tax cuts creates a government deficit which is as damaging to the public sector. This would be reinforced by the depleting resource base – especially for oil and water – which, coupled with an extraordinary vigour and optimism, has been the foundation of US economic development.

Economic Globalisation and National Sovereignty (II)

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Chapter for the New Zealand Government and Politics 2ed, edited by Raymond Miller (OUP). First Edition Chapter

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Governance; Political Economy & History;

In recent years there has been increasing concern that the phenomenon of supranational economic integration, popularly known as economic ‘globalisation’, is undermining the sovereignty of the nation state. In New Zealand, this has been symbolised by international agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and World Trade Organisation (WTO). This chapter will explore the economic context of the debate.

Economic Reforms: Index

This entry was posted in Business & Finance, Distributional Economics, Globalisation & Trade, Governance, Growth & Innovation, History of Ideas, Methodology, Philosophy, Index, Labour Studies, Macroeconomics & Money, Political Economy & History, Regulation & Taxation, Social Policy on by .

History
Sequencing (December 1983)
Freeze and Thaw
 (July 1984)
Ssh …It’s the Big ‘‘D’’ (August 1984)
Confidentially Yours (August 1984)
Devaluation!: Five Turbulent Days in 1984 and Then … (July 1985)

Economic Liberalisation: Where Do People Fit In?
 (May 1987)

From Run to Float: the Making of the Rogernomics Exchange Rate Policy (September 1989)
Liberalization Sequencing: The New Zealand Case (December 1989)

Towards A Political Economy of New Zealand: the Tectonics of History (October 1994)
The Wild Bunch?: An Inquiry is Needed to Restore Treasury’s Integrity (August 1996)
The Great Diversification: Ch 9 of Globalization and a Welfare State (December 1997)
The State Steps In: Michael Bassett Makes A Case for Intervention. (August 1999)
Remaking New Zealand and Australian Economic Policy by Shaun Goldfinch (August 2001)
The Treasury and the Nationbuilding State (December 2001)

Evaluation
New Zealand’s Economic Performance This is an Index
Economic and Other Ideas Behind the New Zealand Reforms
 (October 1994)
For Whom the Deal Tolls (Of Dogma and Dealers) (August 1996)
The Economic Impact of the Employment Contracts Act (October 1997)
Microeconomic Reform: The New Zealand Experience (February 1998)
Some Macroeconomics of the Employment Contracts Act (November 1998)
View From Abroad: What Do We Know about Economic Growth? (May 1999)
The Model Economist: Bryan Philpott (1921-2000) (August 2000)
Comparison with Australia: New Zealand’s Post-war Economic Growth Performance (August 2002)

The Debate
Waist Deep in the Big Muddy? (February 1991)
Friends in High Places: Rogernomic Policies Have Powerful Allies in Australia (April 1994)
Systemic Failure (December 1995)
Ignoring the Critics (February 1997)
A Permanent Revolution? (March 1997)
In the Dark: The State of Research Into the Economy is An Embarrassment (June 1997)
The New Zealand Experiment: A Model for World Structural Adjustment? (Review) (July 1997)
Out of Tune: Even the Officials Admit the Health Reforms Were Fatally Flawed. (December 1997)
Money for Jams: the Government Response to Roading Reforms is Commercialisation. (January 1998)
Reforms, Risks, and Rogernomics (March 1999)
The London Economist and the New Zealand Economy (December 2000)
Locked Out: of Free Press and Free Economics (May 2001)
A Surplus of Imitation (June 2001)
Government Spending and Growth Rates: A Methodological Debate (January-May 2002)
From Pavlova Paradise Revisited by Austin Mitchell (July 2002)
Manure and the Modern Economy: Has Economic Policy Hardly Changed? (September 2002)
From is This As Good As it Gets? (December 2002)
1999 and All That (January 2004)

Books
The Commercialisation of New Zealand (1997)
In Stormy Seas: the Post-war New Zealand Economy (Chapters 15-16) (1997)
The Whimpering of the State: Policy After MMP (1999)

Rhetoric and Iraq: Arab Brothers and Oil Sisters.

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade, Listener, Political Economy & History on by .

Listener 19 October 2002.

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Political Economy & History;

It is easy to argue that US policy on Iraq is driven by its oil interests, especially since its president is from a Texan oil family who has surrounded himself with Texan oilmen. Thus the clever email about how the ‘Seven Sisters’ – the world’s great oil companies – are determining US policy which accompanies this column. If only it were so simple.

New Zealand’s Economic Performance (index)

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation, Political Economy & History on by .

The base references is the book In Stormy Seas. (1997) An extract is Capital and Technological Change: Some International Comparisons.

In early 2004 I updated much of In Stormy Seas in a long paper The Development of the New Zealand Economy. There is also a short version of the paper.

A summary of the policies which flow on from the paper is Tractatus Developmentalis Economica. (October 2002)

The Political Economy Of Robert Chapman

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Revised version of a paper presented to the 1996 conference of the New Zealand Political Studies Association, Auckland.

Keywords Political Economy & History

Robert McDonald Chapman began his work on the New Zealand electoral system in an era where there were no opinion polls, no computers, and little readily available social data. It was a pioneering if, by today’s standards, primitive research program. which made him the father of psephology in New Zealand.(1) Yet his was not a mechanical manipulation of the available electoral data. Behind it all was an account of the political economy of New Zealand. It is this aspect that this paper recalls an updates.

The Historical Context Of the Woodhouse Commission

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Revised version of paper for Looking Back at Accident Compensation: Finding Lessons for the Future. Victoria University of Wellington Law School: 2-3 August: 2002. [1]

Keywords Political Economy & History, Social Policy

Although it is rarely presented this way, policy making is a problem solving exercise. At the heart of the success of any solution is how well the problem is addressed.[2] This approach, analogous to Karl Popper’s approach to the development of science requires us to be ‘as clear as you can one can about the problem, and watch the way it changes’.[3] A task then, of an historian, is to identify the problem or problems which drove a solution.