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Why Small Parties Fail: a Case Study of Act New Zealand

This article examines why the ACT New Zealand political party has experienced an overall lack of success since entering Parliament in 1996. ACT’s lack of success is represented by the fact that despite high expectations and continued confident predictions from within the party, it has thus far failed to receive the substantial share of the vote for which it hoped. Moreover, the party’s support was slashed at the most recent election in 2005, when the party went from nine to just two MPs. This research considers several different explanations for why ACT failed to grow and latterly declined. Three different plausible hypotheses are tested, which respectively suggest reasons related to policy, branding and internal decay. Both primary and secondary sources are used to evaluate the validity of each theory. From the research, it is established that components from all three theories may explain the lack of success of ACT. Over time, the party’s policies became less distinctive and were adopted by other parties. In addition, an image problem in place from the beginning prevented ACT from expanding its support beyond a small niche. Furthermore, ACT came to be seen as increasingly irrelevant by voters and suffered from internal decay in its organisation.