ABSTRACT
Criminal justice has achieved a different level of embeddedness in New Zealand such that crime is regularly used as a wedge issue by politicians appealing to all sectors of the electorate. The unique feature of the Irish system of PR is that candidates of one party can be elected on the transfers of votes for other parties and this is believed to reduce partisanship and enhance the prospect of coalition government. Brief comparison of the operation of the PR systems in New Zealand and Scotland, though strikingly similar in nature. In Scotland, under the Scotland Act 1998 members of the Scottish Parliament are elected using a very similar system to the New Zealand system of mixed member proportional (MMP), which is known locally as the additional member system (AMS). In Scotland, one of the institutional factors that may have had a protective influence on the policymaking process is the committee system.
