Georgetown University School of Foreign Service – Centre for Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Studies
5:00PM September 22, 2020 (EDT)
Zoom webinar
Click here to RSVP
Labour party leader Jacinda Ardern pulled off a stunning victory in 2017, along with the Greens and New Zealand First, ousting the National Party In the intervening years, all before turning 40, Ardern led a government that was tested by New Zealand’s largest terrorist attack, the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, and the consequent disruption to the economy. Will Labour be returned to power? And what will happen to her coalition partners? Can National make inroads?
To discuss the 2020 electoral prospects we are joined by two New Zealand panelists.
Jennifer Curtin is Professor of Politics and Director of the Public Policy Institute at the University of Auckland. She has been a principal investigator on the New Zealand Election Study since 2006, and has published widely using data from the NZES. Jennifer is co-author of A Bark but No Bite: Inequality and the 2014 New Zealand General Election (ANU Press 2017) and co-editor of A Populist Exception? The 2017 New Zealand General Election (ANU Press 2020). Her analysis appears in a range of academic and media outlets. Jennifer was a NZ-Fulbright Research Scholar at Georgetown in 2012.
Stephen Levine is Professor at Victoria University’s Political Science and International Relations Programme. He has been studying and writing about New Zealand politics and elections since the 1970s and served as Director of a publicly funded research programme on the effects of New Zealand’s electoral system change (to a ‘mixed member proportional’ system, approved in 1993 and implemented in 1996). He is the founder and organiser of the Parliamentary Internship Programme, presently in its 21st year, giving postgraduate students opportunities to experience New Zealand’s parliamentary politics and legislative processes first-hand by working with Members of Parliament over a seven-month period. A contributor and editor of a series of books on New Zealand’s general elections, he is presently organising a post-election conference in December, to be held at Parliament, with participation from party leaders, journalists, commentators and academics. His most recent book, ‘Stardust and Substance: The New Zealand General Election of 2017’, was published in September 2018.
This event is cosponsored by the Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies, University of Texas, Austin.
