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Today New Zealand has 12 regional councils for the administration of environmental and transport matters and 74 territorial authorities that administer roading, sewerage, building consents, and other local matters. The territorial authorities are 16 city councils, 57 district councils, and the Chatham Islands Council. Four of the territorial councils (one city and three districts) and the Chatham Islands Council also perform the functions of a regional council and thus are known as unitary authorities. Territorial authority districts are not subdivisions, as such, of regional council districts and a few of them straddle regional council boundaries.

A number of New Zealand commentators have observed that there is no culture in New Zealand. This has led to protests from those who believe that there is a uniquely definable New Zealand culture. Perhaps one of the more memorable protests was the 1980 song "Culture" by The Knobz after outspoken Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon stated that New Zealand pop music was not part of the New Zealand cultural scene.

Maori population figures plummetted after 1820 due to tribal wars (the musket wars) and to unfamiliar diseases - measles, whooping cough, influenza and later typhoid - reducing an initial Maori population of perhaps 100,000 to 120,000 (lower than many contemporary figures, which probably overestimated densities in the South Island) to only 62,000 by 1857 and 44,000 in 1891. Recovery began slowly (though three decades earlier than among Australia's still worse-affected Aborigines), with numbers reviving steadily after the setback of the 1918 influenza pandemic. By 1900 also, Maori had lost most of their land, usually as a result of sales or of confiscations after armed conflict with the settler government.

Sporting and outdoor activities still play a significant part in the recreation of New Zealanders. Participation in a sport, rather than mere spectating, is considered a worthy pursuit. Team sports and sporting abilities are generally held in high regard, with top-performing players often becoming celebrities. However, New Zealanders can often be scathing when national sports teams and athletes lose.

Although less obvious today, in the past team sports, particularly Rugby football, gambling on horse races, and sharing a beer after a hard day's work with some good friends or work mates have been significant images of New Zealand life. This predominantly working-class male cultural image has previously been so strong that it has overshadowed other, perhaps higher, cultural aspects of New Zealand society.

New Zealand (like Fiji) decided against joining the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, and instead changed from being a colony to a separate "dominion" in 1907, equal in status to Australia and Canada. New Zealand retained an avowed loyalty to the British Empire of which it formed a part, and contributed proportionally large numbers of troops to aid Britain in the Boer War (1899 - 1902), World War I and World War II (see New Zealand in World War II). New Zealand's complete independence was formalised by the 1926 Balfour Declaration and the 1931 Statute of Westminster, ratified on November 25, 1947. The monarch of the United Kingdom remains the monarch of New Zealand, which has been an independent constitutional monarchy. In 1951, the Legislative Council was abolished as ineffectual, thereby creating a unicameral legislature.

New Zealand has no native land mammals apart from some rare bats. Later Maori largely subsisted by cultivating the kumara, a type of sweet potato, which they had brought with them from Polynesia.

God's Own Country, or Godzone, is generally accepted, by New Zealanders if nowhere else, as the alternative name for New Zealand. God's Own Country was the title of a poem about New Zealand written by Thomas Bracken about 1890. (He also wrote God Defend New Zealand, which became the country's second national anthem). It was a favourite saying of Richard John Seddon, Premier of New Zealand for 13 years (1893-1906).

Confronted like Australia with the strategic implications of Britain's 20th-century eclipse as a world power of the first rank, New Zealand joined with Australia and the United States in the ANZUS pact in 1951, but the US suspended its defence commitments to the country in 1986 after the then Labour government banned nuclear-powered or armed ships from New Zealand ports.

New Zealand is a country of two major islands and a number of smaller islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. A popular Maori name for New Zealand is Aotearoa, often translated as The Land of the Long White Cloud. New Zealand is a parliamentary democracy and a Commonwealth Realm. New Zealand is responsible for the self-governing states of the Cook Islands and Niue and administers Tokelau and the Ross Dependency.

New Zealand has a modern, developed economy. Its primary export industries are agriculture, horticulture, fishing, forestry and information technology. There are also substantial tourism and export education industries. The film and wine industries are considered to be up-and-coming.

Of New Zealand's four million people, roughly three million live in the North Island and one million in the South Island. These islands are among the largest in the world and the combined land area is comparable to the British Isles or the US state of Colorado. Along with Aotearoa, another Maori name for New Zealand was Niu Tireni, a transliteration of the English name.