Rob Manwaring

The Big Society in Australia: A Case of ‘Non’-Policy Transfer?

The Big Society was a flagship policy initiative launched by the UK Conservative party, under the leadership of David Cameron, to win office in 2010. Closely associated with the ideas of Phillip Blond, the Big Society agenda seeks to introduce new forms of civic activism and revive wider civil society. There has been speculation that the Big Society agenda might take hold in Australia, and Blond has been active in promoting it in Australia. Using Dolowitz and Marshs policy transfer heuristic, this article examines the likelihood of the Big Society being adopted by the Abbott Liberal Coalition. The article outlines a number of potential variants of the Big Society, and concludes that for a variety of reasons it is unlikely to be adopted by the Liberal federal government in Australia. The case also highlights both strengths and limitations in the Dolowitz and Marsh framework, arguing that it can be used in an innovative way to speculate on potential transfers, but is limited in accounting for why transfer may or may not take place.

Network Governance and the 2020 Summit

The idea that governance has replaced government, and that networks have replaced hierarchy as the dominant mode of governance, have become mainstream views in the public policy literature. In this article, we consider a key initiative of the Rudd government in Australia, the 2020 Summit, which, at first sight, seems like an example of network governance in action. Having considered the operation and outcomes of the Summit, however, we argue that it more accurately illustrates how governments, perhaps particularly in Westminster systems, attempt to preserve hierarchy, through a process of metagovernance.

From new labour to Rudd/Gillard: dilemmas, lesson-drawing and policy transfer

From December 2007 until May 2010, both the Australian Labor and British Labour parties were in government. This was an unusual occurrence and had only taken place twice since the Second World War. The concurrent governments, headed by Gordon Brown in the UK, and Kevin Rudd (twice) and Julia Gillard in Australia were a curious mixture of innovation, policy differentiation, and yet beset by a range of underpinning problems. This special issue tracks the policy agendas of these two sets of governments, and examines the links, common dilemmas and policy transfer between these ‘modernised’ forms of British and Australian social democracy. More specifically, this special issue maps the policy agendas of these governments in the realms of political economy (Spies-Butcher and Wilson), social policy (Manwaring), foreign policy (O’Neill), public administration (Legrand), party management (Gauja) and ideology (Edwards and Beech). The special issue seeks to make a contribution in three distinct ways. First, these empirical cases provide key insights into the wider policy transfer, diffusion and convergence literature. There are significant gaps in how we can understand and conceptualise the links, and transfer of policy, between sets of governments (e.g. Marsh and Sharman 2009; Benson and Jordan 2011; Stone 2012; Manwaring 2015). These centre-left cases provide key insights into the evolving knowledge of policy transfer, diffusion and convergence. As a number of contributors in this issue point out, including Manwaring, O’Neill and Gauja there was learning, transfer and influence between the two sets of governments. Yet, the cases shine a light upon some key limitations in the policy transfer and diffusion literature, especially in seeking to understand why there was influence and/or transfer. The authors in this issue consider the transfers across a range of the Labour governments policy domains, including social policy, political economy, and innovatively, O’Neill considers the policy transfer literature in the domain of foreign policy – an area which tends to be neglected by policy transfer/diffusion writers. As the policy transfer/literature evolves, the contributions in this issue address some of the key limitations in the policy transfer literature. First, policy transfer heuristics, notably the framework offered by Dolowitz and Marsh (2000, 2012), offer useful, but limited ways of understanding why and how transfer takes place (Evans 2009). Generally speaking, as Evans (2009) and Manwaring (2015) point out, the transfer frameworks tend to be

Unstable Bipartisanship or Off the Agenda? Social issues during the 2013 election campaign

The 2013 federal election was dominated by economic issues, carbon policy and the controversies surrounding asylum seekers, driven by the Abbott Coalition’s campaign to damage the economic and political credibility of the Rudd–Gillard governments. As a result, the role and place of social policy issues during the campaign was uncertain and had less prominence. With the exception of the issue of paid parental leave, traditional social policy issues such as education and health did not play a decisive and direct role in the outcome. In part, this was the result of a deliberate strategy by the Coalition to neutralise key social issues, often perceived as the ALP’s traditional areas of strength (McAllister and Pietsch 2011: 19–20). Nevertheless, there was some social policy convergence between the two major party groupings but this was for tactical rather than ideological reasons.

‘Mediscare!’: Social Issues

In the election campaign, one social issue dominated all others—the Australian Labor Party’s so-called ‘Mediscare’ campaign. This chapter offers a critical survey of how social issues played out during the election campaign. It sets out some initial context for social policy in Australia, and then briefly examines the critical debates around health, education, poverty, housing and related social policy.1 Overall, while the there was a strong focus on Medicare and health policy, social policy did not feature strongly at the election, for a range of reasons we explore at the conclusion of this chapter. Most crucially, we find a worrying lack of imagination and debate about a range of critical social policy issues facing Australia.

Understanding Impact in Policy Advisory Systems: The Australian Case of the “Thinker in Residence”

ABSTRACT The dynamics of policy advice giving in a policy advisory system (PAS) is complex, multifaceted, and relational. Research on policy advice has shifted from a “first wave” to a “second wave” that places a greater focus on the dynamics of PASs. This article expands our understanding of the impact of advice giving in a PAS by developing a framework that integrates supply, demand, content, and contextual factors. This article introduces a new type of policy actor (the “thinker in residence”) to better understand the relational dynamics of a PAS and compare why some actors achieve greater impact than others.

Issue competition between Green and social democratic parties in majoritarian settings: the case of Australia

ABSTRACT The emergence of green parties has injected new lines of competition into national party systems, with discernible issue competition effects for established, ideologically-proximate social democratic parties. Despite a burgeoning literature on green and social democratic issue competition tactics in settings where coalition government is common, we have less understanding of these same effects in settings where majority government is the norm. Using the case of the Australian Greens and the Australian Labor Party, we explore issue competition dynamics in a polity where the majoritarian electoral system reduces opportunities for coalition formation. We find that the absence of strong electoral imperatives for either party to enter coalitions has encouraged them to compete adjacent to one another, rather than in direct competition.

Book Review: David J Bailey, Jean-Michel De Waele, Fabien Escalona and Mathieu Vieira (eds), European Social Democracy during the Global Economic Crisis: Renovation or Resignation?European Social Democracy during the Global Economic Crisis: Renovation or Resignation? by BaileyDavid JDe WaeleJean-MichelEscalonaFabienVieiraMathieu (eds). Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014. 285pp., £75.00 (h/b), ISBN 9780719091957

ways in which the New Zealand, British and Australian Labour parties shifted away from ‘traditional’ social democratic paths. The degree to which each party adopted neoliberal settings varied a good deal, and in Schulman’s account Australian Labor was the least ‘neoliberal’ in character, compared with the other two cases, mostly due to a much stronger union approach (p. 96). The book is pitched at scholars and the general reader interested in the dilemmas facing the centre-left. It is clear, well-written and the case chapters would be good supplemental reading material for relevant politics topics. More broadly, the book is another important contribution to the debates about the state of the centre-left. While Schulman makes a persuasive case, the analysis could have been deepened. Crucially, it is not wholly clear from this book if the trade unions operate as an independent or dependent variable to explain the neoliberal embrace. It could well be that the relative weakness of the union movement is just another indicator of the wider transformation, rather than a driving explanatory factor. For a comparative book, there was scope to compare the cases more closely with available empirical data, something the author has not done. For example, he could have tracked employment and related economic inequality trends across all three cases simultaneously. There is a tension too between claiming the ‘end of labourism’, and then noting that the neoliberal embrace has been only a partial phenomenon (p. 108).

Book Review: Jason Schulman, Neoliberal Labour Governments and the Union Response: The Politics of the End of LabourismNeoliberal Labour Governments and the Union Response: The Politics of the End of Labourism by SchulmanJason. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 167pp., £63.00 (h/b), ISBN 9781137303165

regular troops. They include partisans, guerrillas and insurgents. For Scheipers, the distinction between regular and irregular combatants is the contingent result of an interaction between agents and structure. In search of that origin, the book follows the development of the concept of the ‘irregular combatant’ from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Scheipers argues that starting from the French Revolution, the concept of the irregular combatant has been deployed to delegitimise those to whom that label is attached while reinforcing the idea of regular troops as virtuous and law-abiding. She further claims that it was the uncertainty caused by the use of irregular troops that prompted the codification of the laws of wars during the nineteenth century which only defined regular combatants, putting irregular troops beyond the pale of legal protection. Following World War II, irregular combatants who had fought the occupying forces were recognised as liberators. This positive perception of irregular fighters was later used by decolonising movements to justify their struggle. The author thus places the contemporary use of the concept of the unlawful combatant – which excludes opponents in the War on Terror from the protection of the laws of war – within a longer historical narrative. The book presents an account of the development of the concept of the irregular combatant over three centuries that is terse and compelling. The historical breadth and the attention paid to contingency pay homage to the intention of placing the book in the genealogical tradition of Nietzsche and Foucault. By concentrating on pivotal episodes, Scheipers manages to cover centuries of historical ground while keeping the book concise. In order to support her claims, she musters an impressive array of secondary sources. However, the book might have benefited from engaging with some key primary sources, such as the Hostages and High Command judgements of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals which dealt specifically with the issue of irregular combatants. Although the book concentrates almost exclusively on Western approaches, this is a consequence of the Western-centric development of the laws of war; a fact that the author readily concedes. Unlawful Combatants offers a compelling account of the genesis of the concept of irregular combatants and its role in the development of the laws of war.

From New Labour to Rudd/Gillard – transferring social policy

ABSTRACT From 2007 to 2010, there were national Labour governments in Britain and Australia, the longest and only third time this had occurred since the second World War. The period of New Labour was closing in the UK, and in Australia the Rudd government came to power after 11 years in opposition, directly influenced by the, at times, trailblazing UK Labour government. In the domain of social policy, New Labour was a source of policy inspiration and transfer. Specifically, the Rudd/Gillard governments borrowed heavily its ‘social exclusion’ agenda, and also the use of ‘compacts’ with the third sector. This article examines the policy diffusion and transfer between the UK and Australia, and in doing so offers critical insights into the policy transfer literature. The article examines the reasons for the Australian Labor Partys adoption of these policies, and links this to wider dilemmas and identity crisis that are afflicting centre-left governments across the globe.