Dennis Grube

The Rhetorical Framing of Policy Intervention

When prime ministers speak, the nation usually listens. In the Australian federation, prime ministers have consistently used the power of their political pulpit to launch policy interventions into areas of traditional State responsibility. This article suggests that there is an emerging rhetorical pattern to the way these policy interventions are presented. Prime ministers of both major parties have used rhetoric to portray the Commonwealth as acting on behalf of the legitimate interests of constituents who have been ignored by State governments. Occurring in close proximity to federal elections, policy interventions are shown to be weapons which favour incumbent prime ministers in their battles with State governments and federal oppositions alike.

Administrative learning or political blaming? Public servants, parliamentary committees and the drama of public accountability

In theory, within Westminster systems the buck stops with the minister. Ministers are responsible for the actions of their departments and accountable for policy outcomes. In practice, it is often senior public servants rather than their ministerial masters who face the fierce questions of parliamentary committees when things go wrong. This article uses dramaturgy theory and blame theory to assess whether the nature of the parliamentary committee setting encourages or inhibits opportunities for a ‘learning’ type of accountability. Through a comparative study of committee appearances by public servants in the UK and Australia, the article argues that the adversarial nature of committee hearings encourages ‘blame games’ that do little to guarantee better decision-making in the future. 从理论上讲，西敏制下的大臣再不能推脱责任。大臣需要对其部门的行动、对政策结果负责。但在实践中，出了问题，通常是高级官员而非各部大臣面对议会专门委员会的激烈质询。本文借用演剧理论及责备理论评估议会内委员会的设置是有利于还是不利于学习型的问责。通过比较英澳两国议会委员会的样态，作者认为委员会听证的对抗性质只是鼓励“责备”，并不利于未来的正确决策。

Prime Ministers and Rhetorical Governance

Illustrations Acknowledgements 1. The Mutual Delusion 2. Extra-Parliamentary Rhetorical Leadership - from Gladstone to Blair 3. The Rhetorical Prime Minister in Comparative Perspective 4. Persuading Voters - Cycles of Election Defining Rhetoric 5. Prime Ministers and Policy Narratives 6. Policy Intervention in Sub-National Jurisdictions 7. Defining a Legacy 8. Prime Ministers and Mandarins - Rhetorical Consistency Across Government 9. Conclusion - In Search of Authenticity Bibliography Index

Prime Ministers and political narratives for policy change: towards a heuristic

Political narratives play a central role in modern governance. They explain a governments driving principles, and underpin their ability to implement policy change. Rhetoric is the tool that Prime Ministers use to articulate and frame political narratives to support their policy prescriptions. This article examines four case studies of how Prime Ministers in Westminster systems have used political rhetoric to create narratives capable of making a persuasive case for policy change. Common themes are explored to provide the basis for a heuristic that encapsulates contemporary prime ministerial practice in articulating political narratives for policy change.

Speech Cycle? ‘Election-Defining Rhetoric’ in Westminster Democracies

Leaders of government within Westminster democracies undertake a key rhetorical task on the day an election is called. Following a visit to the monarch or the vice-regal representative, leaders emerge to give their opening speech of the election campaign. These are moments of definition; moments when leaders rhetorically frame the battle to come. This paper argues that in Westminster democratic systems, these statements conform to a set pattern of rhetoric, which reflects the length of time the government has been in office. This pattern – or ‘speech cycle’– suggests that electoral rhetoric is not governed solely by the policy issues of the day, and that some restraints apply to governments in the rhetoric they can legitimately utilise at different points in their tenure.

Sticky words? Towards a theory of rhetorical path dependency

ABSTRACT Speech matters. Political actors are defined by what they say as much as by what they do but, with each rhetorical choice, they also narrow the range of rhetorical options open to them for the future. This paper examines the idea of path dependency, a well-established concept in the field of policy studies, and applies it to the study of political rhetoric. It argues that words are sticky, leaving political leaders caught between the desire to utilise fresh and engaging rhetoric to explain new policy choices and the reality that they cannot shake off the wording of their previous promises. In advancing a theory of rhetorical path dependency, the paper builds on the insights of both discursive institutionalism and rhetorical political analysis to suggest that whilst ideas are indeed vital to the shaping of institutions, the arguments that give those ideas shape can themselves be constrained by earlier choices.

Presidents, Prime Ministers and Policy Rhetoric: The 'Credibility Gaps' of Woodrow Wilson and Kevin Rudd in the League of Nations and Climate Change Debates

US President Woodrow Wilson and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd were separated by institutional contexts, relative power positions and decades in time. However, each confronted a similar dilemma — of reconciling rhetorical idealism with policy practicalities. Building on insights from studies of the US rhetorical presidency, we offer a framework highlighting the tensions between ‘outside’ moral appeals which raise expectations and the ‘inside’ technocratic rhetoric of policy administration. We argue that norms encouraging moral appeals have come to transcend institutional differences between ‘presidential’ and ‘prime ministerial’ systems. Despite the different contexts of the Wilson-era League of Nations debate and the Rudd-era carbon tax-Kyoto controversies, we argue that pressures to ‘speak in two voices’ engendered credibility gaps that undermined each leaders congressional and parliamentary support. In concluding, we suggest that this analysis supports a more nuanced appreciation of the rhetorical imperatives that can impede policy efficiency — and the need to limit tendencies to either populist or intellectual partisanship.

Delivering Public Services: Locality, Learning and Reciprocity in Place Based Practice

Policymakers across myriad jurisdictions are grappling with the challenge of complex policy problems. Multi-faceted, complex, and seemingly intractable, ‘wicked’ problems have exhausted the repertoire of the standard policy approaches. In response, governments are increasingly looking for new options, and one approach that has gained significant scholarly interest, along with increasing attention from practitioners, is ‘place-based’ solutions. This paper surveys conceptual aspects of this approach. It describes practices in comparable jurisdictions – the United Kingdom, the EU, and the United States. And it explores efforts over the past decade to ‘localise’ Indigenous services. It sketches the governance challenge in migrating from top-down or principal-agent arrangements towards place-based practice. The paper concludes that many of the building blocks for this shift already exist but that these need to be re-oriented around ‘learning’. Funding and other administrative protocols may also ultimately need to be redefined.

Rhetorically defining a social institution: how leaders have framed same-sex marriage

ABSTRACT Questions about the definition, meaning and limits of marriage have become a topic of fierce political debate in advanced Western democracies over the past decade as political leaders have sought to grapple with the issue of same-sex marriage. The rhetorical choices of leaders as they have made the case for or against moving away from traditional definitions of marriage have been central to shaping the national debate within different jurisdictions. This article applies the theoretical lens of ‘discursive institutionalism’ (Schmidt) and the analytical purchase of ‘rhetorical political analysis’ (Finlayson) to compare the rhetoric of Prime Minister David Cameron in the UK, Prime Minister Tony Abbott in Australia, and President Obama in the USA. We argue that Cameron and Obama have, in different ways, each sought to discursively re-define the institution of marriage by drawing on elements already endogenous to the institution itself.

Is the Westminster System Broken Beyond Repair

Is Westminster dying as a useful conceptual encapsulation of a particular system of public administration? Scholarly critiques over the last decade have suggested Westminster civil services are evolving in ways that erode crucial Westminster “traditions.” Core elements including security of tenure, merit-based selection, non-partisanship, anonymity, and ministerial responsibility are all perceived as in decline or under attack. Influential commentators have proposed concepts such as “new political governance,” changing “public sector bargains,” “court government/politics,” and “presidentialization” to document and interpret these allegedly paradigmatic shifts in public administration. This article places these in context by canvasing different accounts of what Westminster is, before assessing the critiques about what it has become. The article argues that Westminster is not broken beyond repair, but rather it has been remolded to suit the needs of contemporary governance.