Beyond the Crown: the treaty, equality and the future of New Zealand democracy.

This forthcoming book is not about ‘them’ and ‘us’.

Professor Dominic O’Sullivan on his upcoming book:  

Beyond the Crown: the treaty, equality and the future of New Zealand democracy.

Friday 31 October 2025

This forthcoming book is not about ‘them’ and ‘us’. Instead, it views Te Tiriti o Waitangi as neither a partnership between races, nor between Māori people and the British Crown. Neither does it accept that Te Tiriti created a culturally and politically homogenous non-Māori ‘one people’. The book’s alternative ambition is to help shift treaty discourse beyond a contest between partnership and minimising Māori distinctiveness towards the development of a republican commonwealth. This concept will be explained as a more likely path to balancing and fairly distributing the powers and responsibilities of rangatiratanga, kāwanatanga and citizenship as Te Tiriti set them out.

---

Dominic O'Sullivan (Te Rarawa, Ngati Kahu) is a New Zealand political scientist specialising in indigenous politics and policy. Dominic O'Sullivan currently works at Charles Sturt University where he is a professor of political science. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, an adjunct Professor at the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington and also at the Centre for Māori Health Research at Auckland University of Technology. He has authored eight books and 60 articles and book chapters, and writes for The Conversation, Open Forum and the New Zealand Herald.

To view a recording of this event.