John Halligan

Reintegrating Government in Third Generation Reforms of Australia and New Zealand

Public sector reform has persisted for a sufficient length of time in several countries to examine patterns over the longer term. Australia and New Zealand are both early and long-term reforming countries that display distinctive features as well as being Anglophone countries identified with new public management. As third generation reformers, the products of more than two decades of reform activity are becoming clearer: the starker manifestations of new public management have less prominence now and a set of distinctive trends has emerged with commonalities across the two countries. The synthesis of elements in the third generation suggests that system integration and performance are central to the prevailing approach and that an emergent model is best represented in the mid-2000s as integrating governance. The article explores the constituent elements and significance of the new model and its relationship to earlier models.

You Win Some, You Lose Some: Experiments with Joined-Up Government

In 2004 a bold experiment in the use of joined-up approaches to policy-making and implementation, best captured in the design of new policy architecture and the creation of a co-location model for service delivery, was undertaken to address the entrenched disadvantage of Indigenous Australians. In this article we report on inhibitors, explaining the under-performance of the joined-up experiment, and facilitators, which explain, in part, the existence of a small number of examples defying the broader trend.

Civil service systems in Anglo-American countries

Anglo-American civil service systems - an overview, John Halligan administrative traditions and the Anglo-American democracies the civil service in Britan - a case study in path-dependency the Australian public service - redefining boundaries the New Zealand public service - national identity and international reform the Canadian public service - balancing values and management civil service systems comparative perspectives.

Comparing Public Sector Reform in the OECD

Public sector reforms in the OECD during the last 20 years have been notable for the magnitude, breadth and significance of the changes. There have, however, been wide variations between countries in terms of the pace and extent of reform, and the level of commitment to NPM.

On the road to performance governance in the public domain

Purpose - This article seeks to assess how performance management in the public domain has evolved over the last several years both in terms of theory and practice in selected countries. The paper also aims to act as the editorial for the special issue of the journal. Design/methodology/approach - Drawing on Bouckaert and Halligan as a framework for analysing performance management in the public sector, this paper reviews findings from their work (on the evolution of cases from six countries), a recent survey of seven countries from four continents, and three additional case studies at the micro, meso and macro levels of analysis. Findings - The article finds that the evidence for progress towards a “performance governance” regime in the public domain is mixed, with little progress in countries outside the Anglo-American or Nordic examples studied by Bouckaert and Halligan. Several reasons for this are suggested from the recent survey (in this issue), including the impact of public sector values and the role of elites. However, case studies of particular sectors in countries with limited progress on performance management in general (Portugal and Ireland) suggest that significant inroads can nevertheless be made along the trajectory proposed by Bouckaert and Halligan at micro and meso levels. Originality/value - The paper draws together evidence from various examples of performance management in the public domain to critically assess and extend existing theory and to suggest alternative trajectories on the road to performance governance.

Bureaucracy and the Alternatives in East and Southeast Asia

East and Southeast Asia are essentially terms of geographical convenience used to delineate a disparate group of countries that demonstrate enormous ethnic, cultural, linguistic and political diversity. Once they could be identified, perhaps with others, under the vague notion of the Far East. In the 1950s, the term ‘Southeast Asia’ was normally used to mean ‘the non-European, non-Middle East, non-socialist, non-Soviet and non-Japanese part of the Eurasian continent’.1 Even Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea were often judged to lie within Southeast Asia because they were poor and underdeveloped. China was simply seen as China, a self-perception that still dominates in China today. Attempts to forge regional identity have been largely a process of post-Second World War cooperation especially associated with economic growth and manifested in organisations such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). The difficulties encountered by Malaysia’s prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, in attempting to establish the East Asian Economic Group (EAEG), later recast as the East Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC), reveal continuing ambiguities about regional membership and what it actually means to the participants.

The Fate of Administrative Tradition in Anglophone Countries during the Reform Era

The ‘old Commonwealth’ — or the ‘Westminster democracies’ (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom) — have formed a natural group of industrialized democracies with institutional roots in the British tradition. This chapter addresses the Anglophone administrative tradition identified with these countries and explores the impact of two decades of recent reform.1 This reform has been generally more radical than reform in other countries during the same period. One question to be addressed is whether change of this level and type is sufficient to challenge the nature of a tradition or whether an administrative tradition can accommodate such change. At the height of the reform era, when NPM was dominant and accepted as the future of public administration, market mechanisms were seen to be supplanting bureaucracy, the political executive was being strengthened, and open, flexible government was replacing the relatively closed, traditional systems. These developments looked to pose challenges for administrative traditions. Observers foresaw a turning point, with propositions such as ‘The End of Whitehall: death of a paradigm?’ (Campbell and Wilson 1995; Chapman 1996). Yet debates in the subsequent decade have centered on post-NPM models, and there is also evidence of the resurrection of discarded pre-NPM features — perhaps the reassertion of tradition (Christensen and Laegreid 2006; Halligan 2007c).

The evolution of Public Service Bargains of Australian senior public servants

The agreements between the Australian senior public service and the political executive have undergone several shifts during the reform era of the last thirty years. These have involved fundamental redefinitions of the role, responsibilities, identity and autonomy of the senior public servant.There has been a succession of challenges to the relationship focusing on the role and status of the public service on the one hand and the behaviour and resources of the political executive on the other. Over time the trend has been towards strengthening the political executive, but punctuated by debates about issues that slowed the rate of change and contained political pressures on the public service. This process has produced clarifications of central aspects of the relationship and a clearer articulation of the range of roles provided by departmental secretaries. The article examines the evolution of public service bargains centred on the changing roles of the secretaries of departments of state, and analyses the implications of the changing relationship for the role and functioning of the public service in governance and public policy. Points for practitioners The article addresses how the roles of departmental secretaries in Australia have varied in significance during the reform era. A new arrangement has now emerged which clearly articulates the roles and codifies them. One of the roles, stewardship, recognizes that secretaries have a part to play independently of ministers.

Coordination of Welfare Through a Large Integrated Organization: The Australian department of human services

Abstract An integrated organization is one option for handling the provision of services in a welfare state. Australia’s welfare administration is centred on a mega department, the largest within the public service, with wide delivery responsibilities. Integration means that many welfare relationships are largely internalized, but this does not preclude the horizontal and vertical coordination problems of a large and complex organization, particularly where elements of the policy system extend outside. The research examines how to explain the use of an integrative form of coordination for service delivery, and how policy and implementation is coordinated.

Australian Experiences with Whole of Government: Constraints and Paradoxes in Practice

Increasingly, public managers are faced with complex problems that require thinking and working across boundaries. Such problems span agencies, portfolios and jurisdictions and require actors to work across these boundaries, however, working in this manner requires inter-agency collaboration and cooperation and is based on the premise that important goals of public policy cannot be delivered through the separate activities of existing organisations. Such approaches are pursued due to the notion that the coordination or integration of services will achieve a better result than each party acting separately. In addition, a common assumption is that working across boundaries will enable more efficient and effective policy development, implementation, and service delivery. However, in practice, constraints and barriers lead to less than optimal and, sometimes, paradoxical outcomes.This paper reports upon the initial stages of a large-scale study of whole of government (WG) experiments in the Australian Public Service (APS). Drawing on empirical research across multiple organisations the paper addresses three areas. First, we identify conflicting terminology and provide definitions of whole of government derived from its use in practice. Second, we report on the critical enablers and major barriers to effective whole of government operationalisation. Thirdly, we consider ongoing tensions and some emerging paradoxes which emerge from attempts to work across boundaries in a WG fashion. Some tentative advice for developing effective WG working is proffered.