ABSTRACT
Over the past two decades, New Zealand has undergone a profound and comprehensive transformation of almost every aspect of its public and eco nomic life. The economy has been restructured from top to bottom, through the deregulation of financial markets and dismantling of tariffs and import barriers. Public sector management has been totally rebuilt, with an emphasis on efficiency, managerial accountability and quality of services (Boston et al., 1999). New governance arrangements have been implemented in the edu cation and health sectors, with policy separated from the delivery of services, with devolution of decisions about delivery of services closer to local com munities. The industrial relations system has been radically overhauled, in fusing a considerable dose of flexibility into the labor market. There have also been constitutional changes, the most important being an electoral re form that replaced from a first-past-the-post to a fully proportional system of electoral representation. These changes have also been associated with sig nificant transformations of social attitudes. Taking them altogether, it is no exaggeration to say that the whole political economy of the country has been reshaped by these reforms.
