Response Splitting a northern account of New Zealand’s neoliberalism Nicolas Lewis School of Environment, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Abstract: This review responds to Richard Peet’s ‘policy regimes’ account of New Zealand’s neoliberal experiment published in this volume of the New Zealand Geog- rapher. It welcomes Peet’s intervention, especially its comparative approach and its political economy focus, but suggests further insight may have been gained from closer engagement with the work of New Zealand geographers. The review argues that Peet misses opportunities to learn from the New Zealand case. The review subjects a ‘northern’ account of southern experience to a critique by ‘splitting’, a characteristically southern approach to analysing social change from the Antipodes that pays close attention to the situatedness of knowledge production. Key words: Antipodean economic geography, political projects, post-structuralist political economy, southern theory. Despite its peripherality, New Zealand Geog- raphy is tightly networked into the Anglo-US centre of disciplinary dominance. We routinely benefit from the visits of disciplinary leaders, who engage widely with academics, state and community agencies and students. Richard Peet is one such visitor, and one who responded positively to an invitation to write a paper for this journal despite the potential pitfalls of any invitation reading ‘on the basis of your brief visit, write something about our place’. The recent sensitivity of Antipodean economic geographers to the hegemony of ‘Northern’ theorising ups the ante (see Le Heron & Lewis 2007; Larner 2012). Peet’s account of New Zealand’s neoliberalism invites a constructive response. Peet’s paper makes a number of valuable contributions. First, it makes a case for com- parative policy analysis in geography, especially in critiques of neoliberalism. Peet advocates a ‘policy regimes’ approach, which he suggests will take us beyond the surface level gestures to contingency that mark critical geography’s ‘turn to neoliberalism’. His argument is well made and timely, even if it perhaps overstates the absence of more penetrating comparative analysis (see e.g. England & Ward 2007; Smith et al. 2008; Keil & Mahon 2009). His point is that the conceptual apparatus of the ‘policy regimes’ approach taken by political scientists will establish greater rigour in comparative work. While I would debate the merits of reduc- ing the richness of geographical accounts of the many actualised neoliberalisms to prior catego- ries for comparison, airing the argument is helpful. Second, the paper reminds us again of the extraordinary aspiration and transformative politics of New Zealand Treasury’s (1984) Eco- nomic Management document.The external eye here is particularly valuable, because with notable exceptions (Larner 1996; Lewis 2004a), New Zealand geographers have not engaged significantly with this document or its com- panion piece Government Management New Note about authors: Nicolas Lewis, is Senior Lecturer at the School of Environment, The University of Auckland. E-mail: n.lewis@auckland.ac.nz New Zealand Geographer (2012) 68, 168–174 doi:10.1111/j.1745-7939.2012.01239.x © 2012 The Author New Zealand Geographer © 2012 New Zealand Geographical Society