Jacinda Ardern’s triumph of style over substance

Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand Prime Minister, 2017-2023. [Image: CC PDM 1.0]

Jacinda Ardern’s tenure as New Zealand’s Prime Minister (2017–23) was lauded globally as a masterclass in empathetic leadership, her image burnished by deft handling of crises like the Christchurch mosque shootings and the early stages of Covid.

The world swooned over her ‘kindness’ and ‘authenticity’, with fawning media elevating her to near-mythic status.

Yet beneath the polished rhetoric and carefully curated narrative lies a stark reality. Ardern’s leadership, when scrutinised, reveals a troubling lack of measurable outcomes. Her policies, draped in inclusive language and moral posturing, often failed to deliver the substance needed to justify the hype.

By 2020, punters were asking whether Jacinda Ardern was just ‘a show pony’.

In the Unfiltered newsletter, Alexandra Marshall wrote:

And finally, Michael de Percy takes a look back on the legacy of Jacinda Ardern’s ‘inclusive’ and ‘kind’ agenda and whether or not it actually achieved anything meaningful.

In the Morning Double Shot, Terry Barnes had this to say:

Jacinda Ardern’s memoir came out this week. To save you the temptation to part with your hard-earned to read it, Michael de Percy sums Ardern’s leadership up: for all her ‘I feel your pain’ schtick, as New Zealand’s prime minister she didn’t actually achieve very much. Except that is, in the Covid years, when Ardern shut down New Zealand, and turned it into an Antipodean hermit kingdom with a zeal exceeded only by Victoria’s Daniel Andrews. She’s not missed.

My latest article in The Spectator Australia, Jacinda Ardern’s triumph of style over substance.

Key Studies on Jacinda Ardern's Leadership

Research question: What quantitative and qualitative metrics can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of Jacinda Ardern's key policy initiatives during her prime ministership?

Below are the key studies on Jacinda Ardern's leadership I reviewed from the academic literature:

Baker, M. G., Kvalsvig, A., & Verrall, A. J. (2020). New Zealand’s COVID‐19 elimination strategy. Medical Journal of Australia, 213(5), 198. https://doi.org/10.5694/mja2.50735

Beattie, A., & Priestley, R. (2021). Fighting COVID-19 with the team of 5 million: Aotearoa New Zealand government communication during the 2020 lockdown. Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 4(1), 100209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100209

Henrickson, M. (2020). Kiwis and COVID-19: The Aotearoa New Zealand Response to the Global Pandemic. The International Journal of Community and Social Development, 2(2), 121–133. https://doi.org/10.1177/2516602620932558

Howden-Chapman, P., Keall, M., Whitwell, K., & Chapman, R. (2020). Evaluating natural experiments to measure the co-benefits of urban policy interventions to reduce carbon emissions in New Zealand. Science of The Total Environment, 700, 134408. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134408

Rangiwhetu, L., Pierse, N., Chisholm, E., & Howden-Chapman, P. (2020). Public Housing and Well-Being: Evaluation Frameworks to Influence Policy. Health Education & Behavior, 47(6), 825–835. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198120917095

Skilling, P. (2024). The sixth labour government on poverty and inequality: Policy action and political language. Political Science, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/00323187.2024.2441360

Tyner, K., & Jalalzai, F. (2022). Women prime ministers and COVID‐19: Within‐case examinations of New Zealand and Iceland. Politics & Policy, 50(6), 1076–1095. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12511

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