In most respects, the Young Māori Party is best understood as a club or association, not a united electoral bloc.
Anthropologist and author Toon Van Meijl said of the group "the Young Maori Party's programme generated a basic division within Maori society between a relatively small educated elite and a predominantly illiterate mass of poor people".
[9][10][11] Most members of the Party believed that in order to prosper, Māori needed to adopt European ways of life, particularly Western medicine and education.
Later they developed more sensitivity and tended to present Western ways as similar to pre-European traditions.
Recently this perception has been revised by historians such as Ranginui Walker and James Belich, who emphasise the achievements of the Party, especially Ngata, and stress that their strategy of co-operation was effective in the context of its time.