This paper uses two recent large-scale surveys in New Zealand to test the various reasons given for lower rates of union membership among younger workers. Younger workers' disproportionate location in smaller workplaces and those industries where union reach is lowest accounts for a substantial part of their lower union density. Along with the tendency of younger workers to explore their options through labour turnover, this factor offers a much better explanation for the younger-older worker union density gap than do assertions about a growth in individualism in Generations X and Y. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2005.

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In a referendum held at the same time as the 1993 general election, a majority of New Zealanders voted to establish a new propor tional electoral system to replace their traditional simple plurality system, to take effect after April 1995. New Zealanders were responding to the destabilizing effects of party system dealignment, increasing dispropor tionality of election outcomes, and a succession of governments which many believed had ignored public opinion in their efforts to reform the economy. Competition between the two increasingly discredited major parties set a referendum process in motion, which few politicians thought would end in a vote for change. In part due to a political culture support ing populist democratic values, a majority of New Zealanders voted for proportional representation despite a well-funded all-out propaganda campaign against it. With four parties already represented in parliament at the end of 1993, New Zealand will move to multiparty competition. If successful, the experiment could set an example for similar reform in other plurality democracies.

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In 1996 New Zealand changed its electoral system from single-member plurality (SMP) to a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system. This article addresses the effects on turnout of electoral system change, generational differences and national and district-level competitiveness. Both theory and cross-sectional empirical evidence indicate that turnout should be higher after the change to MMP. Yet turnout has declined. Most of this turns out to be an effect of lag effects generated by longer-term trends of declining competition, and generational experiences. MMP has shifted the main focus of electoral competition from the district to the national level, with consequent changes in turnout distribution. Electoral boundary changes also have negative effects under MMP, and most MMP elections have taken place after an electoral redistribution.There is general agreement that turnout tends to be higher in countries with proportional representation (PR) than in those with single-member plurality (SMP) electoral systems, all other things being equal.1 There is disagreement on the size of the effect, the plausibility of explanations for it, and how robust it may be.2 Differences between electoral systems can be identified and analysed on a cross-sectional basis using aggregate country-level data or micro-level datasets such as that from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). But it would be helpful to confirm that such differences can also be found when systems change over time. In principle, the same theoretical logic should apply to cross-sectional and temporal comparisons. There are a limited number of cases of major electoral system

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