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Introduction
It is perhaps surprising that indigenous Maori in New Zealand have had significant opportunities to influence mainstream politics and policy, given a context of 'fast policy' transfer where 'social investment' and greater marketisation are globally proclaimed as solutions to 'wicked' policy problems (Powell and Miller, 2014; Head and O'Flynn, 2015; Peck and Theodore, 2015). Yet, since 2008, the Maori Party has negotiated supply and confidence agreements with the conservative National Party in return for progress on Maori Party initiatives. The Maori Party combines 'a drive towards rangatiratanga [self-determination], and an attempt to address the socio-economic needs of Maori' (Smith, 2010: 215, emphasis added). Social policy has been central to the Maori Party's political platform given the relatively poor levels of health, education, housing and income/wealth amongst Maori compared to non-Maori New Zealanders (Marriott and Sim, 2014). Criticism from both within and beyond its own ranks suggests the Maori Party favours tribal elites at the expense of the poor (Sykes, 2010; Harawira, 2011). Maori voters may support this view, since the number of Maori electorates held by the Maori Party fell from five to one between 2008 and 2014, leaving only two Members of Parliament (MPs) in Parliament (Bargh, 2015). Both facts imply that having an indigenous political party in government has made little difference to New Zealand social policy.
This article challenges this view by examining in detail three of the key social policy initiatives promoted by the Maori Party. Each is assessed against three criteria for innovation: a) did the initiative embed Maori cultural values and governance into mainstream policy? b) was the initiative likely to have been implemented without Maori Party lobbying? and c) does the initiative have potential to improve the lives of Maori New Zealanders? Having established a political context, the article argues that the Whanau Ora strategy's holistic, whole-family approach to social well-being and Maori language revitalisation initiatives are significant social policy innovations. A Ministerial Committee on Poverty resulting from Maori Party negotiations with National also allowed Maori representatives to advocate for important poverty-focused initiatives but these did not embed Maori cultural values/governance, cannot be specifically associated with Maori Party advocacy and barely begin to address the structural causes of material disadvantage amongst Maori. Political constraints thus...