With Respect


Book Description

With Respect is an important and practical book about the people involved at the heart of government in New Zealand. It covers history, constitutional principles and the law, but it is mostly about people and the roles they play. Recent events in New Zealand are used to illustrate the key issues. The examples include court cases, parliamentary inquiries and debates. Subjects range from the high drama of military deployments to the day-to-day business of parliamentary expenses. Events are brought to life with a combination of wisdom and wit, to give a clear picture of how government really works. With Respect is an invaluable resource for parliamentarians, public servants and students of politics, public law, public policy and public management.




Racial Folly


Book Description

Briscoe's grandmother remembered stories about the first white men coming to the Northern Territory. This extraordinary memoir shows us the history of an Aboriginal family who lived under the race laws, practices and policies of Australia in the twentieth century. It tells the story of a people trapped in ideological folly spawned to solve 'the half-caste problem'. It gives life to those generations of Aboriginal people assumed to have no history and whose past labels them only as shadowy figures. Briscoe's enthralling narrative combines his, and his contemporaries, institutional and family life with a high-level career at the heart of the Aboriginal political movement at its most dynamic time. It also documents the road he travelled as a seventeen year old fireman on the South Australia Railways to becoming the first Aboriginal person to achieve a PhD in history.




Reconstituting the Constitution


Book Description

All nation states, whether ancient or newly created, must examine their constitutional fundamentals to keep their constitutions relevant and dynamic. Constitutional change has greater legitimacy when the questions are debated before the people and accepted by them. Who are the peoples in this state? What role should they have in relation to the government? What rights should they have? Who should be Head of State? What is our constitutional relationship with other nation states? What is the influence of international law on our domestic system? What process should constitutional change follow? In this volume, scholars, practitioners, politicians, public officials, and young people explore these questions and others in relation to the New Zealand constitution and provide some thought-provoking answers. This book is recommended for anyone seeking insight into how a former British colony with bicultural foundations is making the transition to a multicultural society in an increasingly complex and globalised world.




Electoral Engineering


Book Description

From Kosovo to Kabul, the last decade witnessed growing interest in ?electoral engineering?. Reformers have sought to achieve either greater government accountability through majoritarian arrangements or wider parliamentary diversity through proportional formula. Underlying the normative debates are important claims about the impact and consequences of electoral reform for political representation and voting behavior. The study compares and evaluates two broad schools of thought, each offering contracting expectations. One popular approach claims that formal rules define electoral incentives facing parties, politicians and citizens. By changing these rules, rational choice institutionalism claims that we have the capacity to shape political behavior. Alternative cultural modernization theories differ in their emphasis on the primary motors driving human behavior, their expectations about the pace of change, and also their assumptions about the ability of formal institutional rules to alter, rather than adapt to, deeply embedded and habitual social norms and patterns of human behavior.




Patterns of Democracy


Book Description

Examining 36 democracies from 1945 to 2010, this text arrives at conclusions about what type of democracy works best. It demonstrates that consensual systems stimulate economic growth, control inflation and unemployment, and limit budget deficits.




A Colonial Autocracy


Book Description

Summary: A collection of humorous films by renowned cartoonist & filmmaker, Bruce Petty. Leisure - Academy award-winning film that takes a wry look at work and leisure through history. Megalomedia - a look at the development of the media. The Movers - provides an historical perspective on technological development.




Towards Sustainable Global Food Systems


Book Description

One of the major knowledge challenges in the domain of Resilient and Sustainable Food Systems refers to the integration of perspectives on consumption, patterns that support public health, inclusive value chains, and environmentally sustainable food production. While there is a long record of the analysis of separate interventions, this special issue generates integrated insights, provides cross-cutting perspectives, and outlines practical and policy solutions that address these global challenges.The collection of papers promotes the view that sustainable food systems require thorough insights into the structure and dynamics of agri-food production systems, the drivers for integrating food value chains and markets, and key incentives for supporting healthier consumer choices. On the production side, potential linkages between agricultural commercialization and intensification and their effects for food security and nutritional outcomes are analyzed. Value Chains are assessed for their contribution to improving exchange networks and markets for food products that simultaneously support efficiency, circularity, and responsiveness. Individual motives and market structures for food consumption need to be understood in order to be able to outline suitable incentives to enhance healthy dietary choice.The contributed papers focus on interfaces between food system activities and processes of adaptive change that are critical for overcoming key constraints and trade-offs between sustainable food and healthy diets.




Bringing Them Home


Book Description




New Zealand Yearbook


Book Description