ABSTRACT
The terms ‘individual’ and ‘community’, together with their associated ideologies — individualism and communitarianism — constitute the framework within which we examine questions of social and education policy. We approach these questions concerning policy at both a philosophical and a methodological level; in other words, we are concerned to understand and to analyse, in the widest sense, the changes in political philosophy that have occurred in western liberal-capitalist states and the policy effects of these changes, especially in the interrelated areas education and social policy. While we discuss these changes in political philosophy in the widest theoretical terms, we also provide a specific background and history to the introduction of specific policy regimes within the New Zealand context. There are two main reasons for this, one theoretical, the other pragmatic. First, New Zealand represents a paradigm example of the neo-liberal shift in political philosophy and policy development. From being the so-called ‘social laboratory’ of the western world in the 1930s in terms of social welfare provision, New Zealand has become the ‘neo-liberal experiment’ in the 1980s and 1990s. This complete historical reversal of social principles and philosophy has singled out New Zealand as a ‘successful’ experiment pointed to by a number of powerful world organizations, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the OECD. New Zealand with a ‘thin’ democracy (i.e., one house and strong executive) and a small population, geographically confined, makes an ideal country for social experiment. Second, as New Zealanders living through this experiment we came to develop our political analyses and philosophical understandings in relation to the changes introduced in New Zealand during the 1980s and early 1990s.
