Local Government Political Agendas: Observations and Political Orientation
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Titipounamu Press
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Introduction
A most crucial question to be asked of local authority councillors and candidates is what their political agenda is, that is what they hope to achieve during their term in office. This chapter begins to describe such agenda-sets and explores whether these seem to be embedded in wider ‘political ideologies’ held by candidates, or by candidates with particular characteristics. It draws evidence from a survey of candidates in the seven most populated regions of Aotearoa New Zealand, following the 2019 local government elections, which set out to understand the candidate experience of standing for local office. In the survey, we asked candidates what they hoped to achieve in their term in office and where they would place themselves on the political spectrum between left and right. According to Kingdom (1995, cited in Birkland, 1998), agenda setting is the process by which officials, whether in local or national government, focus their attention on policy issues. The period following the triennial election in New Zealand local government is the opportunity for newly elected local representatives to influence the policy agenda for their locality. New Zealand is well known as an outlier for its limited local government, with its large number of authorities and its longstanding non-partisan nature, the latter with the exception of its largest city region, Auckland (Webster, Asquith, et al., 2019). Local government business in New Zealand traditionally focused on what was colloquially referred to as ‘the three R’s – roads, rates and rubbish’. The Local government Act 2002 and the 2012 amendments to the Act, both enacted by the Labour Government, attempted to expand the purpose of local government by including a power of general competence and a focus on sustainable development. This required local authorities to work towards the economic, environmental, social and cultural wellbeing of their communities (Memon & Thomas, 2006; Webster, 2013). Even so, there is an apparent tendency for political agendas to fall along a continuum between ‘pothole fixing’ only and community facilities, notwithstanding the need to give effect to the broader considerations of sustainable development, such as strategic infrastructure and environmental planning, region-building, and social and cultural policy initiatives. The former approach is known for its penchant for minimising the rates burden and focusing on the interests of ‘ratepayers’ i.e., property owners, compared to the latter, which accounts for the interests of all residents/citizens. Understanding the policy agendas of local candidates is important as not only does this have potential to influence council business but can impact on voter turnout (Goodman & Lucas, 2016). This chapter starts by reviewing the relative paucity of international and Australasian scholarship concerning why local candidates stand and their policy priorities. It touches on agenda setting theory and how councillors reflect perceptions of sustainable development in terms of their political agendas. It then outlines the survey methodology and overviews the research cohort. The findings are presented, first by exploring patterns within the variables; and then asking how the candidates’ agenda priorities are influenced by their gender and ethnicity. Lastly, the chapter examines whether there is evidence of a relationship between candidate priorities and political ideology.
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Webster, K., McLean, L., & Crothers, C. (2023). Local government political agendas: Observations and political orientation. In J. McNeill & C. Cheyne (Eds.), Candidates, voters and voting in New Zealand's local government elections (pp. 84-95). Titipounamu Press.
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