The diverse stories of Māori political agency: a Q method study

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhile there is much research and writing on Māori self-determination, little of it focuses on how Māori individuals and organisations conceive the necessary antecedent to self-determination; Māori political agency. To remedy this research gap, we explored the political aspirations of Māori individuals with a research method built to study such subjective topics: Q method. Combining Q method with some practical innovations from Kaupapa Māori Research method, we developed a unique way of researching the stories our participants tell themselves about politics. Our results suggest some Māori individuals do think of politics as a collective endeavour as the self-determination literature suggests, but just as often Māori collective forums and other non-Māori political institutions are seen as barriers to Māori individual and collective political agency and thus to Māori self-determination. We also found that Māori view the political autonomy and participation necessary for self-determination as possible in numerous diverse spaces, suggesting the focus on low voter turnout amongst Māori in the literature is missing the point: the stories told by this research suggest Māori individuals perceive their political agency to be hindered, not by majoritarian politics of non-Māori, but by Māori and non-Māori elites.