Contesting Governances in Aotearoa New Zealand: Monoculturalism, Biculturalism, Multiculturalism, and Binationalism

Abstract

Aotearoa New Zealand has long enjoyed an international reputation for its harmonious management of “race” relations (Crothers 2007). This assessment is accurate to some extent, even if the outcome has been tarnished in recent years and attained largely by accident rather than by design. But the challenge of crafting an inclusive governance that recognizes diversity and rewards differences has proven increasingly elusive and daunting. The politics of “isms” is partly to blame. Biculturalism narratives clearly dominate; nevertheless, the politics of both monoculturalism and multiculturalism continue to jockey for status (see Spoonley and Trlin, 2004; Liu 2005; O’Sullivan 2006; Sibley and Liu 2007). To the extent that many Pakeha (non-Maori) New Zealanders waffle over an openly monocultural framework, yet recoil from any proposed constitutional changes lest they lose control of the national agenda, they endorse a preference for multiculturalism as the lesser of evils. In that government policy embraces a bicultural commitment as a basis for cooperative governance, indigenous Maori leaders concur, even if a state-imposed biculturalism may compromise their constitutional status as the “nations within” (Fleras and Spoonley 1999). But critics propose a more politicized biculturalism, one that acknowledges New Zealand’s binationality as a two-nation state (Johnson 2008; Maaka and Fleras 2008).