ABSTRACT
The 1993 publicity campaign was dominated by the two diametrically opposed lobby groups, the Electoral Reform Coalition and the Campaign for Better Government. The Electoral Referendum Panel was appointed in November 1991. Referendums, where a mass electorate expresses its collective view on a particular public issue, are perhaps the ultimate expressions of participatory democracy in a modern state for they are seen by their advocates as embodying the principles of popular sovereignty, political equality, popular consent, and majority rule. The fact that support for the ‘change’ option in 1992 was substantially replicated in the vote for Mixed Member Proportional in 1993 seems to indicate that many electors decided on their referendum voting intentions well before the panel’s campaign. The twin referendum process which resulted in New Zealand adopting a new electoral system by public endorsement was “an exercise in popular sovereignty”.
