The Politics of New Zealand business internationalisation 1972-1996

Abstract

This is a study of the reorientation of New Zealand's international business relations following Britain's accession to the EEC, focusing on the political activity of New Zealand business. It is argued that the specific forms of internationalisation and government trade and investment policies following the break with Britain were constituted by political struggles among distinct business sectors. The study examines the changing power relations among business outside and within the state from 1972 until 1996, when a new international orientation consolidated. The study utilises a neo-Gramscian theoretical framework to overcome limitations of structuralist and empiricist-oriented political analysis. Changing relationships among New Zealand businesses and between business and the state are examined in terms of class differentiation and alliances. Abstract conceptions of class division, or class fractions, are refined at an increasingly concrete level through the use of a range of quantitative and qualitative techniques, including the derivation of value categories from national accounts data, sociometric mapping of networks, content analysis of company reports, and historical narrative. A major change in capitalist class alliances is identified. A longstanding hegemonic alliance of domestic agrarian, industrial, and commercial capital in a dependent relationship with British capital, supported by distinct political representation and specific trade and investment policies, broke down as accumulation difficulties in the 1970s prompted the search for new accumulation strategies. This generated a crisis of political representation, which in turn provided an opportunity for financial capital to forge an alternative hegemonic alliance. Political activity by financial capital was decisive in creating both new forms of political representation and specific policy changes that facilitated the expansion of foreign capital into the country. A new hegemonic alliance based on the changed balance of forces amongst the capitalist class centres on Australian and U.S. capital, together with domestic extractive capital. The study demonstrates the utility of the neo-Gramscian framework when specified at a more concrete level than normally employed. Recent developments in network theory and the quantification of value categories prove particularly useful in this specification, allowing abstract concepts of social class to be deployed much more rigorously at an empirical level than previously.