Te Tiriti, Equality and the Future of New Zealand Democracy

This will be a seminal book in Aotearoa New Zealand political and Māori scholarship. O’Sullivan moves beyond the weirdness of the Treaty principles and interminable originalist arguments. Instead, he provides a language grounded in republican ideals of non-domination and equality to debate the political morality of our current institutional arrangements. He thinks through the practical implications of rangatiratanga, mana motuhake, and community control amongst iwi, hapū and other Māori political authorities – offering a new way of thinking about how we ought to live together, given the legacies of colonisation.

I admire O’Sullivan’s work and think it is significant and timely. He explores the potential of deliberative democracy in a commonwealth that draws upon legacies from te ao Māori, the indigenous ‘world’ as well as cosmopolitan modernity in a way that respects his own critique of ‘a simple Māori/Pākehā or kāwanatanga/rangatiratanga binary’. This holds great promise. As O’Sullivan argues throughout, the challenge is for deliberation and decision-making to be equally shared, rather than unilaterally imposed, as has too often been the case from the beginning.

Professor Dominic O’Sullivan (Te Rarawa, Ngāti Kahu) is a political scientist and professor at Charles Sturt University in Australia. He is the author of eight books including Indigeneity: A Politics of Potential (Policy Press, 2017) and Sharing the Sovereign: Indigenous Peoples, Recognition, Treaties and the State (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

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