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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.

The country is internationally recognised as achieving extremely well on a medals-to-population ratio at Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games.

New Zealand functions as a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of government. The basic system is closely patterned on that of the United Kingdom, although a number of significant modifications have been made. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, but actual government is conducted by a Prime Minister and Cabinet drawn from an elected Parliament.

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.

Britain was motivated by the desire to forestall other European powers (France established a very small settlement on Banks Peninsula in the South Island at Akaroa also in 1840) and to end the lawlessness of European (predominantly British) whalers and traders. Maori chiefs were motivated by the promises of protection of their existing possessions (which was only partially carried out) and by the promise of protection against other Maori using muskets obtained from European whalers and traders (the Musket Wars of 1820-1835).

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.

New Zealand Standard Time is 12 hours in advance of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Between the first Sunday in October each year and the third Sunday in March of the following year New Zealand observes Daylight Saving time which is 13 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. The Chatham Islands are 45 minutes ahead of New Zealand standard and daylight times.

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.

The South Island contained most of the white population until around 1900 when the North Island again took the lead and has supported an ever greater majority of the country's total population through the 20th century and into the 21st.

New Zealand does possess the usual cultural activities such as theatre, dance, fine arts, classical and popular music and creative writing. However, due to the small population base and a lack of arts funding sources, many artists have struggled to sustain themselves economically, even though they may achieve popular success. For this reason many of New Zealand's best artists go overseas, especially to Australia, but also to Europe or America, so they can further their careers.

The first Europeans known to reach New Zealand were the crew of Dutch explorer Abel Tasman's ships Heemskerck and Zeehaen, which anchored at the northern end of the South Island in December 1642 but sailed northward to Tonga following a clash with local Maori. Tasman sketched sections of the two main islands' west coasts. Tasman called them "Nova Zeelanda." The name Nieuw Zeeland appeared on charts of the area shortly afterward, having earlier been applied to an island near New Guinea. Lieutenant James Cook of His Majesty's Barque Endeavour made a fuller reconnaissance, surveying the shores of both islands in 1769 - 1770. Cook returned to New Zealand in both his subsequent Pacific voyages.

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.

Partly because of its geographical isolation from neighbouring countries, and partly because of the number and location of numerous uninhabited islands belonging to it, New Zealand's Exclusive economic zone of marine resources was the world's fifth largest, at 4.2 million square kilometres in the year 2000 (according to New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research).

Because of its long isolation from the rest of the world, New Zealand has extraordinary flora and fauna. Until the arrival of the first humans just a millennium or two ago, 80% of the land was forested and, barring two species of bat, there were no non-marine mammals at all. Instead, New Zealand's forests were inhabited by a diverse range of birds (many of them flightless), reptiles, and insects—some of them almost the size of a mouse (see weta).

New Zealand was featured as the setting for "Middle Earth" in the renowned early 21st century trilogy of films based on Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books. It has brought an additional interest in tourism to the nation.