Jacinda Ardern led the New Zealand Labour Party from 2017 and became Prime Minister in October 2017 at age 37, heading a coalition with New Zealand First and a confidence-and-supply arrangement with the Green Party. She was the country's third female Prime Minister and, at the time, the world's youngest female head of government.
Her tenure is internationally associated with three crisis responses:
- The Christchurch mosque attacks (15 March 2019), after which her government rapidly passed amendments to the Arms Act banning most semi-automatic firearms, and she convened the Christchurch Call with French President Emmanuel Macron in May 2019, a non-binding pledge by states and tech companies to curb violent extremist content online.
- The Whakaari/White Island volcanic eruption in December 2019.
- The COVID-19 pandemic, where New Zealand pursued an early elimination strategy with strict border closures and lockdowns. Ardern's communication style during the pandemic contributed to Labour winning an outright parliamentary majority in the October 2020 general election, the first single-party majority under New Zealand's MMP system introduced in 1996.
In foreign policy, Ardern navigated New Zealand's position within the Five Eyes intelligence alliance while maintaining a major trading relationship with China, and her government signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in 2020. She emphasised a "wellbeing budget" framework and indigenous partnership with Māori under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Ardern announced her resignation on 19 January 2023, stating she no longer had "enough in the tank" to do the job justice, and was succeeded as Prime Minister by Chris Hipkins on 25 January 2023. She formally left Parliament in April 2023. Post-office, she has taken fellowships at Harvard University and continued work on the Christchurch Call and online-harms governance.
For MUN and IR researchers, Ardern is a frequent case study in crisis communication, gun-control policy diffusion, pandemic governance, and small-state diplomacy.
Example
In May 2019, Ardern co-launched the Christchurch Call with French President Emmanuel Macron to address online violent extremist content following the 15 March 2019 mosque attacks.