ABSTRACT
65Since the 1980s, New Zealand, in parallel with many other countries, witnessed a clear shift in economic policy in response to global economic change and the perceived limitations of Keynesian interventions, embracing more market-based and supply-side solutions to economic and spatial planning (Mudge, 2008; Peck, 2013). New Zealand, however, pursued these changes far more aggressively than other countries, effectively removing all state subsidies, trade protection, and regional support, and began corporatizing state services and introducing a managerial approach to administration (Peet, 2012; Shone and Ali Memon, 2008). This transformed the country from a champion of the welfare state to one of the least interventionist countries in the world (Challies and Murray, 2008; Conradson and Pawson, 1997, 2009). According to Peet (2012, p. 151), “New Zealand is a particularly interesting case because of its well-deserved reputation as a social democratic, welfare state that went Neoliberal with a vengeance in the mid-1980s”.
